What does the story "The Boat" by Alistair MacLeod suggest about the internal struggle to make moral decisions?
In life, as in literature, individuals often face a dilemma. In the process of making moral decisions, people struggle to determine and choose their paths. The decision may not come down to right or wrong, but it is an important consideration that can affect their quality of life for years to come. The story "The Boat" by Alistair MacLeod depicts how individuals can grow from a child to a young man by making moral decisions. It is about a boy and his family, their relationship, and the effect of his choice on his life and future. The story suggests that individuals, who face a dilemma in their life, often struggle to reconcile the right course of action when they are choosing self-fulfillment over pleasing others.
The young boy from the story "The Boat," by making moral decisions about his life, cannot reconcile his choice in the future. The young boy being pressured by both his parents fights within himself at a different stage of life. He does not exactly know what to do: to pursue his dream of getting an education, or staying with his father and become a fisherman. He compels to choose one over the other, as he cannot reconcile the two. He says, "I wished that the two things I loved so dearly did not exclude each other in a manner that was so blunt and too clear." He chooses to be an educated person. This decision does not "sit well" with him because he wants to do something in return for his parents, to help his father make money, and his mother for having him stay to work. He expresses, "And then there came into my heart a very great love for my father and I thought it was very much braver to spend a life doing what you really do not want rather than selfishly following forever your own dreams and inclinations." It obviously has a great impact on him and is forever etched on his soul. He thinks that getting an education is selfish and guilty toward his parents. He feels responsible for his father's act of suicide, committed in order to release him from the life of a fisherman. By this action, the father has made the son's choice for him. The pivotal events of his life shape him into the man he is today: he teaches at a Midwestern university and is wracked with regret for the choice he has made. Years later he is looking back at that time with hesitation and sees that he is living a different life than that of the one he might have lived if he followed in his family's traditions. He is haunted by his responsibility for his father's death and betrayal of his mother and trapped by memories that he cannot put to rest. The speaker states, "And it is not an easy thing to know that your mother looks upon the sea with love and on you with bitterness because the one has been so constant and the other so untrue." He finds himself in a depres...
