Please come to class next Tuesday, April 8, to write your essays on Stones and The Boat.
If you have posted your commentary on the two stories, view your colleagues' posts before Tuesday.
If you have not commented on the two stories, write your commentary on a word document BEFORE YOU VIEW THE BLOG. Once you have finished, post it in the course blog. Please do ths before the essay date, April 8.
If you read the posts before you add your own, you will feel that there is nothing to add, but if you prepare it before viewing the blogs, you will be able to add your own commentary.
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6 comments:
The Boat, Stones.
These two stories, when compared have many similarities and differences. Both are told mainly in the past tense as accounts of the narrator's childhood. Issues mainly deal with family where one parent is at the focus. In both cases the stories revolve around the fathers and the narrators' tragic relationships with them. In the Boat the relationship is a largely positive one where the father wants what is best for the son and in the end possibly sacrifices his life for that cause. In Stones the relationship, post-war at least, is much different. Although he also wanted better for his children (not wanting them to be soldiers) in the end he tears the family apart. The mothers roles also contrast. In The Boat she is seen as the bad parent, blind to what the children feel and desire for their lives. In Stones she is the good one trying to hold her family together, although she also has her faults putting her children in danger from their drunk father. In both stories the end deals with the hardships of losing parents, either to death or otherwise.
The moods are both sombre, due to the content but Stones to me has a lighter feeling. It is told in a sort of dry, stripped down way, where as The Boat has a very emotional tone. The writing styles of the authors are quite different. MacLoed has a very descriptive style. He goes into great detail in developing the setting and physical features of the characters. 'The brown larvae of tobacco shreds and the grey flecks of ash covered both the table and the floor beneath it. The once varnished surface of the table was disfigured by numerous black scars and gashes inflicted by the neglected burning cigarettes of many years.' He also ties in the theme of books in the story by using numerous literary references such as Moby Dick, Hemingway and 'Dickensian'. Repetition is used by both writers at times for emphasis. Findley, 'No one had said'..., no one had said'..., no one had said'... while MacLoed repeats the date the father drowns, perhaps to signify the importance of his passing. I think Findley lets the tragic events of his story set the mood and doesn't bother with too many details.
I'm not sure what motives either had for writing what they did. The Boat maybe to shed light on a life style few would understand, to contrast the morals of the parents concerning family/success/happiness. Stones shows the enduring love of a child for a parent. Even after all the harm he caused the son still felt he owed it to him to carry out his last request. I thought both were beautiful stories.
The two short stories Stones by Timothy Findley and The Boat by Alistair Macleod are about the author’s fathers. Timothy Findley’s father a World War II colonel and Macleod’s father an east coast fisherman.
In both short stories the mother is viewed as a victim. The mother in stones is a victim of violence and war. She is a victim in both the physical and the mental sense. The mother in the Boat is a victim because she wanted more in life and more from her husband. The time and location differs, The Boat is based in Nova Scotia while Stones is based in 1940’s Toronto. Class issues are touched upon in both stories. Findley’s family feels the tension of being a merchant in the Rosedale neighborhood of Toronto. “People of class were not meant to live in the midst of commerce”pg195 Yonge Street is described as being divided from the east side to the west. In the Boat the mother gets fed up with tourists always coming to their town, and loathing the fact that her daughters are working for a restaurant that “was not run by “our people” and “our people” did not eat there, and that it was run by outsiders for outsiders.” Pg 250
There is more attention to details in the Boat. The descriptions of how their fathers died, Macleod is far more graphic and startling. You would think that since Findley’s story is based in wartime that more graphic descriptions would occur, but it was tame. These stories contrast also because Findley never speaks of the current impact of these experiences but Macleod introduces the story with a present day observation. These short stories were written because they both needed to get their relationships with their fathers off their chests. They both honored their father’s lives in different ways, Macleod went off and became a writer, but still wonders if he should of stayed home. Findley went to Dieppe on his father’s request, but you get the feeling that he did it more out of guilt then love. Looking at how both the stories ended it seems that they were trying to say goodbye to their fathers where they lost them for the first time Macleod lost his father to the sea years before the sea did take his life and Findley’s father was never the same once he came back from Dieppe.
I found a huge difference between the two short stories. The Stones was the first story i read. At the end of it I was left with the feeling of sadnesses and could really understand and connect to the story. The way that Timothy Findley described the details of his story added to the intensity. Where as in the "Boat", I felt that the details would get so far away from the topic it was almost unnecessary to have them there. "Stones" set up the location and vibe of the story like a film would. He layed out what had happened to his father before as if he was skipping ahead in the story. I guess the "Stones" was easier to relate to because of the topic of war and all the information there is about it. The two fathers in each of the stories were entirely different. The father in the Boat was stuck in his ways and would not change his way of living for anyone. Never being embarrassed in front of his family ie. When he got drunk with the tourists. Where as the The father in the Stones was looking to do good for his family by going to the war and ended up reversing his good intentions unintentionally due to the trauma of war. Both Sons were always fully aware of there surroundings. Even when the youngest son, Ben, was not sure why his dad was acting the way he was. He still knew that there was something wrong and disfuctional that he could not fix. His older brother Cy and older sister Rita did a good job of dealing with there father situation. It seems that in the Boat, the only person who had a problem with the father was the wife. She wanted to stay true to her routes by not having tourists over or letting her daughters work at the seafood restaurant run by a family from Boston. Both mothers in each of the stories experienced change so big that they were unable to do anything with it and in case of the stones, it changed the dynamics and lives of the whole family, and neighborhood. The actions of the father in the Boat did not really change the way the family worked, it only had a huge impact on the mother. She was so stuck in her ways and found it hard to accept her girls with husbands who dresses nice etc. The Stones left me feeling sad after and didn't leave anything up to the imagination. Timothy spelled out everything and the emotions he had written about truly hit me, the reader, as it seems he intended. The Boat on the other hand seemed to express less emotion and I think the writer was totally up for discussion in terms of what was right and what was wrong in the family.
Nicholas Teehan's commentary/comparison of "The Boat" and "Stones":
1. how are the two stories similar? how are they different?
The Boat and Stones are similar in that they are 'initiation' stories from the Jungian archetype. They are both set in Canada, one in Toronto, the other in Nova Scotia. Both families are from a class below another they are confronted with from day to day. In Toronto, Yonge street divides the wealthy from the lower class, while in the Nova Scotia, American tourists are "not their people" to the fisherman's family. They are written retrospectively by the male narrators, depicting the the transition from their childhood to their awareness and progression into early adulthood.
In Stones, the narrator is the youngest son in a family of five. The story concerns the change in his father following the his disgraced service at Dieppe. In the pre-war story, the narrator tells of happy times. Visits from the British monarchs, frying eggs on sidewalks, and how mother used to call him "the rabbit" for gorging on salads. Post-war, the story is concerned with episodes of violence, drunken arguments, and silence. His father returns a violent and depressed alcholic. The protagonist deals with the shame of his father's disgrace "Father's cannot be cowards./ It is impossible". And at his father's death, writes that he "would have loved a stone", were his father only more available. The narrator gives his father some absolution in the end, when he brings him back to Dieppe to lay his ashes; "At last my father has come to shore".
In The Boat, the narrator is the youngest, and only son in a family of five. The story also concerns the narrators understanding of his parents, and how his personal evolution changes his perspective. In this story, however, the antagonist is not the father, but the mother. The family comes from two long lines of fishermen, and while the father is "perhaps...never been intended for a fisherman", the mother clings to the sea, and spits at the lifestyles of any other. As the protagonist grows, he learns of his mother's harsh rules, and his father's aloofness to her fiery criticisms. his father is a fisherman who "always wanted to go to university", while his mother thinks books are "wicked", and once slapped her daughter for reading. The violent character is the mother in this story. Both stories deal with a violent and belligerent parent, and how the son deals with and comes to understand this issue. Both stories use the sea as a strong symbol. In The Boat the sea is an entire lifestyle, and the father is washed away, allowing the son to uphold his pledge to stay with him until the end and still move away. In Stones, the sea rescues the father from death at the beach, and eats up most of his ashes before his son can get it to shore years later.
2. How do their styles differ?
The two writer have some ascpects in their style which differ, and some which are quite similar. While they both write in a style which is unassuming and moves along easily, there is a difference that lies within what is, and what isn't on the page. Timothy Findlay's short story uses more dramatic language to allude to events of great importance: "We were all about to be pitched together in a melting pot of violence from which few of us would emerge intact, and the rest of us would perish." This statement is incredibly cynical and very dramatic. It implies not only that war will kill many, but by use of the somewhat ambiguous term "intact", implies that those surviving the war, or peripheral to the fighting may, in fact, perish as well. Alistair McLeod's style is more frank, however equally impactful: "I knew then that I could never leave him alone to suffer the iron-tipped harpoons which my mother would forever hurl into his soul" The fact that Findlay's plot is one surrounded by a great world event, means that here, his style leans toward a more ominscient, first-person tone. This narrator explains inward events with broad, sweeping decriptions, while MacLeod's tone is much more personal, and thus, less dramatic.
The Boat is a much more visceral story, as protagonist is brought up by a strong housewife and burly fisherman: "The twine was as always very sharp and harsh, and blisters formed upon our thumbs and little pathes of blood snaked quietly down between our fingers". The use of longer sentences with little punctuation is a bit like Hemingway, which is suitable, given the story's references to him, and his to fishing. Stones dwells more on the child-like understandings of the main character, and has a more fanciful tone "I wanted to be ten-- the only dignified age a child could be." The boy in The Boat spent less time concerned with dignity than he did with fitting in, while the boy in Stones was near to a more wealthy lifestyle.
3. What are the motives of the narratives (or writers)?
The motive of Stones is, I think, to show the angle of wars effect on families, more than just widows and soldiers. We dwell much on those who do not come back from war, but those who do return are often scarred in ways like the boy's father. How has war effected us all, and how do people deal with alcoholism and abuse? Stones shows how people deal with these family situations, how even at his father's death, the protagonist thinks "I would have loved a stone", if his father had only given him the chance.
The Boat is a story more about willpower, and honour. The boy's mother attempts to influence him with an extremely heavy hand, into remaining at the Wharf and upholding family tradition. The father asks little of his son, merely leading by example, and avoiding the war with the mother. The father reads all day, and speaks with his son about his desires to go to university, but without trying to influence him. When the father dies, the son is freed from his childish pledge to stay with him forever, and as time passes, the narrator thinks of his mother, and of his father. He thinks of his mother, engulfed in bitterness, and his father, dead, and picked apart by the sea. I think this story is about the mother, and what she did to the father, and what those type of people will do to anyone. The author's intent is to make it very clear that one cannot be motivated by the negative, the abusive, and must follow ones own ambitions, or else end up (pardon the cliche) washed up.
"So I told him one night very resolutely and powerfully that I would remain with him as long as he lived and fish with him...And he made no protest but only smiled...and replied 'I hope you will remember whar you've said".
Comparison: “The Boat” and “Stones”
1. What are the differences and similarities?
The similarities are: Both stories deal with the death of a family member, they are written in the 1st person familiar narrative voice and they are a melancholic retrospective of the lives of the diseased. Additionally the diseased family member (the father) died as direct result of their occupation. In the case of “The Boat”, it was a storm that took the fathers life, and in “Stones”, it was the indirect result of having not gone ashore during the 1942 Dieppe raid during WW II. The end result being a slow death through insanity caused by shame.
2. The dissimilarities are: “The Boat” deals with a rural fishing community family death, ironically a result of a fisherman who could not swim “your father like your uncles and all the men that form your past, cannot swim a stroke” (259), and “Stones”, an urban family who is struggling to get by during WW II, and sees Papa go proudly to war, only to return a ghostly shadow of his former self “fathers cannot be cowards. It is impossible” (210) Additionally they dissimilar in detail: “The Boat” describes how “the fish had come and eaten his testicles and the gulls had pecked his eyes out”, while the “Stones” gently describes “I let him down between my fingers, feeling him turn to paste- watching him divide and disappear”. (212)
3. The motives of the narrators are to cathartically deal with the loss of a loved. In the case of “Stones” , there is the secondary agenda of class : “The people living there regarded money as something you had - as opposed to something you went out and got” .(196) Additionally a gender consciousness is evident with “our mother had finally gained her freedom from a life that had become intolerable”.(206) In “The Boat” language is used to graphically shock the reader, “grey corpses” and “alone with death” , personify the physical fact of mortality. (243) The motive is to poignantly elicit a visceral reaction from the reader with such terms as “upon a purple bloated mass of his face”, which graphically horrify the reader. (260)
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