30 pages • 1 hour read
Anthony DoerrThe Shell Collector
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Figurative Language
Figurative language uses figures of speech such as metaphors and similes to go beyond the literal meanings of words to give readers new insights. Figurative language is employed frequently in “The Shell Collector,” particularly in moments of heightened emotion or marked change. When the shell collector sees the sea for the first time, in the process of going blind, the sun is described as a “smudged yolk” (12). This metaphor contributes to the scene’s visual imagery, allowing the reader to see through the protagonist’s eyes while he can still see. By establishing his connection to nature in this moment through imagery, the author emphasizes the impact of his later blindness. This unexpected change to the way he’s able to connect to the world around him is described as “this twist in his life, this spiral that was at once inevitable and unpredictable, like the aperture in a horn shell” (14). These comparisons do more than describe the event or image; they imbue the moment in the story with a deeper emotional resonance.
Foil
A foil is a character that emphasizes significant aspects of the protagonist, often through contrast. Such aspects include character traits like physical appearance, personality, background, motivation, values, and more. The foil draws attention to these aspects in order to add depth to the reader’s understanding of the protagonist and to develop themes and messages. In “The Shell Collector,” several characters serve as foils to the protagonist, including the mwadhini and Josh, the shell collector’s son.
The mwadhini stands out as someone secure in his worldview, guided by a faith in destiny. This reveals, by contrast, the shell collector’s uncertainty and changing views about life and nature. Though the shell collector appears to be in awe of the mwadhini’s assuredness, he thinks of life events through the more ambiguous lens of organic life.
For Josh, generosity, charity, and altruism are his guides, which makes him a perfect foil for the shell collector’s wariness in dealing with other people. While the shell collector is afraid of both the impact of humans on the reef and vice versa, Josh welcomes outsiders, even providing them with his father’s resources as though they are his own.
Flashback
happened in the past. These are often utilized to provide further depth to the present storyline and to reveal background information without relying too heavily on exposition. In “The Shell Collector,” the narrative opens with the visit from the American journalists, establishing the dramatic present. This timeline is interrupted as the narrative then flashes back to the shell collector’s childhood. The story continues chronologically from this point, jumping from one significant event to the next until it catches back up to the present moment with the journalists. Because of this structure, flashbacks make up the bulk of the story, with the dramatic present serving as a framing device. This structure creates tension early in the narrative, piquing the reader’s interest. It also hints at the shell collector’s internal conflict. Flashbacks then provide context through which the reader can fully understand how this conflict developed over time and culminated in the shell collector’s transformation by the end of the story.
Point of View
Point of view indicates the perspective from which a story is told. “The Shell Collector” is told in third-person limited, its perspective almost entirely coinciding with that of the shell collector himself. This immerses the reader in the shell collector’s interiority, stylistically highlighting his Isolation From Humanity. In the story’s final scene, the narration also dips briefly into Seema’s perspective. The timing of this is significant; the perspective broadens just as the collector’s near-death experience causes him to reconsider his isolation.
In a few cases, the narration also steps away from the perspectives of the characters to address the reader directly, as in this parenthetical directive: “Imagine running a thumb down one, tracing its helix, fingering its flat spiral ribs, encountering its sudden, twisting opening” (14). Moments like this highlight the importance of the image or message by explicitly drawing the reader’s attention. In this case, the directive incorporates tactile imagery that evokes the collector’s experience of the world; because he is blind, he interacts with his shells primarily through touch.
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By Anthony Doerr
