The Boat Essay
The extent to which the human body and mind can bear in agonizing conditions shows strength directly from our soul. Alistair Macleod demonstrates this through his writing in his short story “The Boat”. The most powerful element that we know in this world is one shown by Mother Nature; having the ability to tear down cities, drown people’s homes, and take complete control over ones life. But Mother Nature’s intentions are not ones of harm, they are the works to achieve and maintain harmony, wholeness, and balance within the environment. Like the father in The Boat, Mother Nature heals, nurtures and supports all its creations on this planet, and ultimately all life depends on her… and although this will forever be a great conflict and a hard battle between her and her surroundings, it is a necessity. It is inevitable.
Each and every sentence that Alistair Macleod writes has direct and conveying meaning attached to it. Reading the first page of the story, if looked at closely can disclose a summary to all he has written. If you look carefully at the second paragraph, you can see the foreshadowing present in even the first sentence. Macleod is using language that represents a mood of sorrow, in his word choices like grey corpses. When seeing these two words together without any meaning attached to them, they represent the body of something deceased. But when looked at in the context of Macleod’s sentence, they are the remnants of an ashtray that lay beside his bed. This symbolism of death apparent in his every day life is a critical component to the narrators being. You know before even reading the rest of the story that there is going to be a passing that will dramatically effect the narrators life, constantly reminding and haunting him of it. Which, in fact did happen when losing his father to the resilient and aggressive Atlantic Ocean.
A dramatic metaphor used in the story is presented in the father’s room, a display of...