Why The Boy Must Decide Between A Bass In Sheila Mant

Throughout the short story “Sheila Mant,” the boy must decide between a bass and Sheila Mant. There many pieces of evidence as to why the protagonist would choose the bass over Sheila. Firstly, the boy spent most of the summer fishing or practicing fishing. As stated in the text: “I was back in our driveway practicing casts, and when I wasn’t practicing casts, I was tying the line to Tosca… to test the reel’s drag, and when I wasn’t doing any of those things, I was fishing the river for bass” (Wetherell 2). This quote proves the fact that the boy enjoyed to spend his time fishing and spending time outdoors. Secondly, the teenager had brand name fishing gear. “I could have surreptitiously dumped the whole outfit overboard, written off the forty or so

The following is a piece of dialogue in which the boy spoke with Sheila: “bass. They come into the shallows at night to chase frogs and moths and things. Big largemouths. Micropterus salmoides,’ I added” (Wetherell 2). In this portion of the story, the boy was speaking to Sheila about his immense knowledge of largemouth bass. He became lost in his thoughts of bass and kept speaking about the fish that Sheila clearly had no interest of. In contrast to the boy choosing the bass, there are also many pieces of evidence that may have lead to the boy choosing the girl. For example, the boy tried to impress Sheila on plenty more than one occasion. One example from the text is: “to win her attention would do endless laps between my house and the Vermont shore… but she was never watching… my longing was like a madness and I couldn’t stop” (Wetherell 1). The boy went out of his way for Sheila to notice him, and although she never did, he never gave up because he was very determined to have her recognize his existence. Another piece of evidence is how he hid his passion of fishing because Sheila said that she thought fishing was “definitely dumb” (Wetherell