As I began to read Annie Proulx's "The Shipping News", I was struck by the opening description of Quoyle’s father, who  referred to his young son as a "lout".  The father appeared to focus solely on young Quoyle’s failures.  As the story progressed many expressions in the book showed that Quoyle had grown up with deep irrational feelings of guilt, failure and rejection.   It is well known that abusive parents create children who feel guilty because they (i.e. the children) think they have done something to cause the parents' dissatisfaction with them, not realising that the problem lies with the parents themselves.  Quoyle is a classical example of this and during the course of the novel we find him battling with these feelings. 
 
 

Quoyle marries a very promiscuous woman, named Petal Bear, who gives him two children, Bunny and Sunshine.   Even though Petal is very abusive, Quoyle does not leave her and is afraid to confront her, we read: "Quoyle believed in silent suffering… The sharper the pain, the greater the proof. If he could endure now, if he could take it, in the end it would be all right. It would certainly be all right" (page 16-17).  This is a man blaming himself for his wife’s misbehaviour, just like children tend to blame themselves, when their parents abuse them.  He does not know what true love is.   During the course of the novel he comes to a deeper understanding of why this happened. 

He is therefore able to tell Wavey, whom he marries later on in the novel: "Petal wasn’t any good. And I think maybe that is why I loved her" (page 308).  Wavey responded with: "It’s like you feel to yourself that’s all you deserve.  And the worse it gets the more it seems true, that you got it coming to you or it wouldn’t be that way".  This is the reasoning of abused children.  They feel guilt for other people’s problems. 

When Quoyle’s daughter, Bunny, fears dogs that are not there, Quoyle again blames himself, he feels guilty, even though his aunt tells him, that Bunny’s problems might be caused by her being over sensitive to things.  Quoyle, however, is only able to focus in on himself: "Feared that loss, the wretchedness of childhood, his own failure to love her enough had damaged Bunny" (page 134). This unreasonable guilt which Quoyle feels, returns for the last time in the book when he is faced with Jack’s "death": "Quoyle inhaled, cold air rushed up his nose and he was guilty because Jack was dead and here he was, still breathing" (page 328). 

After Quoyle writes an interesting article for the paper about a yacht, Tough Baby, which was originally designed for Hitler, he is very nervous about the way the article will be received.  When he hears Jack Buggit, the newspaper’s owner, arrive: "Quoyle went sweaty and tense.  It’s only Jack Buggit, he thought. Only terrible Jack Buggit with his bloody knout and hot irons. Reporter Bludgeoned" (page 143).  Jack’s response to Buggit also tells us a lot about Quoyle’s frame of mind: "You sound like you’re fishing with a holed net, shy most of your shingles standin’ there hemming and hawing away".  This episode finishes with a very sad statement: "Thirty-six years old and this was the first time anybody ever said he’d done it right".  Up to this point Quoyle had not been able to take encouragement. 

Due to his problems as a child, Quoyle expected his own children to have similar experiences. After Bunny’s first day at school he: "Expected to hear what he had felt thirty years before – shunned, miserable" (page 190), but Bunny did not react this way. 

When Quoyle is at a party, we find that everyone runs off and Quoyle is left behind, the feelings of rejection return and we read: "The party had gone somewhere else without him. Just like always. Quoyle left out. Not a damn thing had changed. In a huff of rejection he reeled away down the road toward – what?" (page 256). 

After moving to Newfoundland and buying a boat, which was quite an achievement for Quoyle as he had a natural fear of boats, we read his self assessment as: "Stupid Man Does Wrong Thing Once More" (page 89).  It required a lot of courage for him to use the boat he bought, because he feared boats, something he did not understand, as it seemed to be an irrational fear.  The boat would however help him in getting to his job, which was just across the bay from his house.  Going by boat was much quicker than going by car. 

When feelings of fear come over Quoyle he has strong flashbacks of childhood problems.  When fixing the roof of the house at Quoyle’s Point he is faced with an immense fear which is described as: "Quoyle felt a black wing fold him in its reeking pit. He had never been on a roof, never put down a single shingle" (page 105). 

After Quoyle visits Gaze Island, his ancestral home, and is in a boat together with Billie Pretty in thick fog we read: "Uneasiness came over him, that crawling dread of things unseen. The ghastly unknown tinctured by thoughts of pirate Quoyles. Ancestors whose filthy blood ran in his veins, who murdered the shipwrecked, drowned their unwanted brats, fought and howled, beards braided in spikes with burning candles jammed into their hair. Pointed sticks, hardened in the fire" (page 174). 

From his early chilhood Quoyle had grown up equating misery with love.  Coming to Newfoundland together with his aunt and children presented Quoyle with an opportunity to deal with the abuse of childhood and to grow into a new and constructive relationship with Wavey. The book finishes with the expression: "it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery".  Up to that point in time love and pain had always gone hand in hand for Quoyle.