Summary Of Alistair Macleod's 'The Boat'

The Cost of Free Will “The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.” David Russell
Deciding the path on which you wish to tread for the rest of your life is a difficult one and often complications arise. In this short story, the son is unsure of whether his chosen role is the one he truly wants. However, because of the decisions he has made, there is no way to go back across the already charred and blackened bridges of his past. The author develops the idea that when roles are pressed upon individuals, the result may be decisions that are not necessarily desirable to them. In Alistair MacLeod 's "The Boat," the father sacrifices himself in order to give his son the opportunity to choose
The mother forces tradition on her entire family, but especially on her only son. She uses guilt to manipulate her son, attempting to keep him in the "chain of tradition" (MacLeod 452). She sees her son as next in line to take up the torch of spending his life by the sea, not necessarily by choice, but because it is who he is meant to be. It is in his blood and in his soul. He is expected to choose this life because it’s tradition. The protagonist’s mother is also mildly disgusted with his father because even though he works as a fisherman that is not where he places value; it is not where he wants to be. As the story unfolds, and we watch the father teach his children beyond the ocean, the mother becomes angry. She sees that it is nigh impossible for her and her traditions to compete with such knowledge and freedom in words. For that reason, throughout the narrator’s life, the mother is seen refusing to try to understand the father’s, and children’s, need and want for education. She even says: "God will see to those who waste their lives reading useless books when they should be about their work" (MacLeod 543). She does not see education as anything more than a waste of time, while seeing nothing but value in the hard work of a fisherman’s