The Boat Alistair Macleod Summary

The Boat by Alistair MacLeod is about a boy who grew up in a fishing town and wanted to escape it retelling his story. The unmanned narrator starts the story by telling the readers of his first boat ride. We learn from the story that his father is a fisherman and his mother has always known this life of fishing. So the narrators entire life was spend on a boat; from reading thee we will learn that the boat is a reoccurring theme and it is kind of personified. The we learn that the narrator’s father is an avid reader and is always reading. This makes mother angry; she thinks that books are pointless; she even goes as far to say “In the next world God will see to those who waste their lives reading useless books when they should be about work”

“She seemed to always be repairing clothes that were ‘torn in the boat’ preparing food ‘to be eaten in the boat’ or looking for ‘the boat’ in our kitchen window which faced upon the sea (Macleod 3). Their life only revolved around the boat. Whenever father returned from work that’s what was always talked about, the boat. Another quote that set the mood of the story is when the narrator talks about his mother. He says: “My mother was of the sea, as were all of her people, and her horizon were the very literal ones she scanned with her dark fearless eyes” (Macleod 6). I think the narrator is saying that like the sea his mother is dark and intimidating like her people who are also fishing people. In my opinion I think the mother makes the mood of the story dark and melancholy. She wants so much out of her husband and children, and when they don’t do what she wants she doesn’t talk to them. The mother puts too much pressure on the family to do what her family did. I can understand that the mother didn’t want to be alone, but as a mother you should want you kids to do better than you did and want them to succeed in life. When her only son was going to school , she said; “ I never though a son of mine would choose useless books over the parents that have you life”(Macleod 18). It shows how the mother was putting so much pressure and guilt