The Boat Alistair Macleod Analysis

In Alistair MacLeod’s “The Boat,” the narrator presents a story that highlights the ever-changing lives of Atlantic Canadians. “The Boat” displays a loss of culture and tradition within a small community family with all of the narrator’s siblings, including him, eventually moving away to pursue a more prosperous life with better opportunities. The passage analyzed in “The Boat” provides a description of the narrator’s father’s room where he spends the majority of his time when not on the water. The passage also showcases the open nature his room filled with books has and how its openness eventually led to each of the children developing a love for literature. This passage of “The Boat” is significant because it illustrates a theme of disorder

The disorder introduced in the passage alludes to the later disorder the father is presented with on the ocean where he eventually dies. The ocean can be viewed as, “always open and its contents visible to all” strengthening the parallel between the room and the disorder found in the unpredictable Atlantic

King’s use of an informal point of view is a great way of calling everyday people to action. The use of this personal point of view allows for the poem to challenge the audience while presenting itself as a simple one-sided conversation or aside. In the line, “I’ve known him, Oh I’ve known him well” the first person conversational nature of the poem is displayed. This contributes to the informal tone of the poem which allows for non-scholars to be more likely to access the poem. This informal tone also contributes to the overall flow of the poem, making it seem as if it were a casual speech rather than an award-winning piece of