44 pages • 1-hour read
Gift From The Sea
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Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 “A Few Shells” Summary
Lindbergh explains that she is packing up to leave Captiva Island, the island on Florida’s coast where she stays while writing the book. She reflects upon her time there and whether it provided her with answers to the questions about life that she was asking when she arrived. She concludes, “I have a few shells in my pocket, a few clues, only a few” (127). To explain this enigmatic statement, Lindbergh begins by describing her changing attitude toward the collection of shells on the beach. In her first days there, she says, she collected them in a greedy and indiscriminate way. As she says, “I couldn’t even walk head up looking out to sea, for fear of missing something precious at my feet” (127). Her acquisitive urge meant that she was, at first, blinded to her surroundings.
However, over time, and after filling all the spaces in her cottage with shells, she began to discriminate. She realized “they are more beautiful if they are few” (128). A single double-sunrise shell is significant, Lindbergh argues, whereas having six of them is trivial and commonplace “like a week of schooldays” (128). After this realization, Lindbergh began to shed the acquisitive spirit of suburban living, which focuses on accumulating goods and filling up time and space. She now recognizes the importance of open space and time. In contrast, her life in Connecticut in the suburbs is cluttered. There are too many people and activities there, and there is never quietness or a pause. In such an environment, as with “an excess of shells” (129), even significant activities and interesting people become mundane and tiring.
Yet the problem for Lindbergh is that she must return to the suburbs. Once she is there, she will be drawn again into a world of distractions, busyness, and clutter. She will inevitably become caught in the slipstream of too many activities and people, which will not give her space to appreciate any one thing. The values of quietness and space that she carefully inculcated by the beach will begin to fade. Thus, she says she must keep the shells she collected on the beach close by her in the suburbs. They can be her “island eyes” (134), reminding her of a different way of life and protecting against the excessive encroachment of urban and suburban values.
Chapter 7 “A Few Shells” Analysis
As Lindbergh says, “a candle flowers in the space of night” (128). Beauty and meaning are constituted by absence and by limits on what is or can be seen. Even a remarkable painting can be dulled if it is placed in an overly cluttered and crowded gallery. Yet the beauty that stems from limitation, suggests Lindbergh, is not just an issue of quantity and space. It is also the product of a limiting of choices. This is one of the lessons that she learned from living on an island. As she says, “The geographical boundaries, the physical limitations, the restriction on communication, have enforced a natural selectivity” (129). Unlike in the city, where there is a constant overabundance of choices and activities, isolated beach living “selects for [her]” (130). For example, she has no car on the beach, so she is compelled to cycle to a local shop rather than driving to various malls. By the beach, she does not have a range of entertainment options: cinemas, bars, music clubs, and countless radio and television shows. Thus, Lindbergh is compelled to enjoy the simple pleasures of walking on the beach, swimming, and starwatching.
Further, she writes, “My island selects socially for me too” (131). In the city, “we tend to select people like ourselves” (131) to spend time with. This is because socializing and conversing with those of similar ages, occupations and lifestyles is easier. Given an array of choices, it always seems more straightforward and less taxing to be around, for instance, other middle-aged, professional couples with children if one is in that stage of life. Such people share similar interests and present fewer risks or surprises. However, within the small confines of an island, there are only a handful of people. Consequently, in that context, people may have no choice but to talk with individuals who are very different from them. These experiences, while challenging, are “invariably interesting and enriching” (132). Their unexpectedness and the fact that one cannot control or predict these experiences makes them beautiful.
Similarly, to unexpectedly see a rare bird in the wild carries far more significance than seeing one in an aviary. The challenge for Lindbergh, then, is how to recreate this sense of the unknown, which is based on limitation, upon returning to the suburbs, where limitless choices will re-assert themselves. Her answer is that she must substitute the unconscious limiting and selection that the island provides for her own conscious attempts to limit what goes on in her life. Thus, a sense of melancholy characterizes this chapter. Lindbergh re-creates the mood of tense busyness that she evokes earlier in the text. For example, she notes that in the suburbs “there are so few empty pages in my engagement pad […] or empty rooms to stand alone and find myself” (129). This poetic imagery evokes the claustrophobic cluttered-ness that Lindbergh urges readers to escape. This imagery also reflects Lindbergh’s personal sadness on having to leave the island. The shells on her desk, like the text, serve as bittersweet reminders of another lifestyle.
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