Seascraper

In Part 1, author Benjamin Wood invites the reader into Thomas Flett’s life in 1960s Longferry by writing in the present tense and with great descriptive detail about the minutiae of Thomas’s activities at home and on the beach. Relatedly, the author imbues Part 1 with a slight sense of foreboding by describing Thomas’s anxious state of mind and his difficult circumstances. His opening line, “Thomas Flett relies upon the ebb tide for a living, but he knows the end is near” (3), captures Thomas’s deep sense of dread due to the precarious nature of his profession; the sentence creates an implicit contrast between the cyclical nature of the tides and the more final “ebbing” of a way of life, creating a faintly mournful atmosphere. Thomas’s anxieties also manifest in his nightmares. The author writes that Thomas has difficulty sleeping and that “His dreams are full of slag heaps made from rotten shrimp, and he’s there in amongst them with a shovel, trying to clear a path” (3). The rotten shrimp in this nightmare point to the death of Thomas’s profession, while his attempts to shovel a path through them represent his desire to find another way forward in life.

Thomas’s professional worries help establish the theme of The Constraints of Inherited Labor. Wood paints Longferry as a fast-changing community in which Thomas’s profession has been all but ruined by declining demand and new technology. By showing how Thomas’s work dulls his mind as well as his body—all while failing to provide a decent living for him—the author shows how following his grandfather’s footsteps into a traditional occupation has limited Thomas’s options. While the world around him rapidly modernizes, Thomas continues to rely on his horse and the sea to make ends meet, even as his returns dwindle and he finds himself alone in his trade. The author writes: 

In his grandpa’s day, the shankers all rode out in a procession: twelve carts clopping down the promenade, their horses making such a din it could be heard above the ring of church bells. All those fellas have retired or moved away, and some are in the ground at St Columba’s graveyard. He’s the only shanker left in town who’s steadfast to the old ways (9). 

This passage demonstrates the immense differences between Thomas’s grandfather’s time and his own, revealing that two generations of change have erased a centuries-old profession. By presenting Thomas as the last of his kind, the author emphasizes his isolation and vulnerability but also the change in the broader town’s character; the word choice (“procession”) and reference to church bells imply that the “shankers” were once at the heart of the town’s life and culture, and it is unclear what now fills that void. This sense of decay in the community at large makes Thomas’s situation all the more urgent.

Moreover, the poor monetary returns for Thomas’s work are not his only problem. The novel presents traditional shrimp fishing as a physically grueling task that takes a heavy toll on Thomas’s body, aging him prematurely. The author writes that each morning, “it always takes him half an hour to get his body moving properly. He’s barely twenty years of age, but he goes shuffling down the hallway in his stocking feet with all the spryness of a nursing-home resident” (4). The mundane, routine nature of Thomas’s work wears on his mind, too. His mindless tasks are isolating drudgery: “He knows that he’ll be out here on his own for a few hours, drudging with the seagulls in his ears and shitting on him from above, repeating the same motions as the countless days before. It bores him worse than it exhausts him” (10). By depicting Thomas’s work as compromising his mental and physical health, the author shows that his inherited trade comes with more negative constraints than positive provisions.

Thomas’s creative and intellectual dissatisfaction with his work connects to the theme of Creative Longing in the Face of Economic Hardship. The fact that Thomas keeps his dreams of being a singer-songwriter to himself reveals the difficulty of even imagining another life. In the context of an existence lived from one day to the next, consumed by mindless chores, he does not expect his mother to understand his creative interests. He does tell Mr. Acheson about his interest in music but asks him not to mention it to his mother, underscoring his reluctance to openly pursue his passion. Similarly, Thomas’s private hope that his connection with Mr. Acheson might help make his musical dreams a reality reveals that Thomas’s goals feel far beyond his reach; his current poverty makes it difficult to pursue them himself. Nevertheless, Mr. Acheson’s profession as a film director both fascinates and inspires Thomas, and his brief interactions with this stranger catalyze his character arc by prompting him to wonder what he could do with his musical talents, if given the chance: “Mr Acheson has seen the world on nothing but the strength of his abilities and vision, and it’s rousing to believe that such a thing is feasible. How much imagination does a fella need to build a livelihood upon?” (53). Thomas’s growing sense of possibility shows that while his mind and body are tired, he hasn’t completely resigned himself to a life of repetitive physical toil.

As Thomas grapples with the problems of his occupation and his far-fetched dream, the novel establishes the theme of The Relationship Between Family, Identity, and Aspiration. Wood makes it clear that Thomas’s identity is most strongly tied to two factors outside of his control: his “illegitimate” birth and his inherited work as a shrimp fisherman. The rapid changes in Thomas’s community threaten the latter, while the former is a source of shame. Both shape Thomas’s identity; he is keenly aware of his low status in the eyes of many and consequently doubts that he has the talent to make it as a successful musician. However, the fact that he has no stable positive identity in Longferry is also freeing, and his inner thoughts reveal hope that his experiences as a poor fisherman and son of a single mother will not define him forever. Thomas’s encounter with Mr. Acheson fosters this hope, and he “gets the sense that something’s turning in his fortunes” (69). Ending the chapter on this hopeful note captures Thomas’s newfound feeling of optimism about his chance to become someone different.