Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Past the Shallows, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Brotherhood, Loyalty, and Hardship
Addiction and Abuse
Tragedy and Blame
Father Figures and Responsibility
The Duality of Nature
Summary
Analysis
Rather than work on the task of cleaning out Granddad’s house, Miles walks down to Lady Bay beach and looks at the shark tooth he found between the seats of Mum’s wrecked car. He mulls over whether he has ever seen the tooth before or to whom it could have belonged but cannot come up with any memory of it.
Miles does not remember the night of the car accident; finding the car seats and shark tooth in Granddad’s shed seems to have made him suspicious of the crash and Mum’s death. His instinctive fixation on the tooth implies that this object may hold an answer.
Themes
Suddenly, a bully named Gary Bones approaches Miles on the beach and snatches the shark tooth out of his hand. Miles impulsively sprints after Gary and jumps onto the larger boy’s back, sending Gary crashing down on top of him. They both fall into the water, and Gary’s forehead slams into Miles’s face and bloodies his nose. Gary’s father’s fishing rod is broken in the tussle.
Miles is generally a kind, respectful young man, yet this incident of impulsive violence shows that he has been deeply affected by Mum’s death, to the point that he is willing to lash out when the potential clue as to what happened to her is taken from him. Miles’s behavior here also has echoes of Dad’s violent ways, which suggests how powerful father figures can be in shaping a person’s identity.
Themes
Fearing that Gary will lash out about the broken rod and beat him up, Miles tells Gary about finding the shark tooth and how he wants to keep it because it may have something to do with his Mum. Gary relents and drops the tooth in the sand.
Although Gary is a bully, the tragic, mysterious circumstances of Mum’s death seem to evoke his sympathy.
Themes
After the fight, Miles inspects his bloody, swollen face and plays with a tooth that has come loose from the impact of Gary’s head. Joe returns from the dump with Harry and asks what happened to Miles’s face, not believing his brother’s lie that he fell. Upset, Miles exclaims that the crash that killed Mum was not an accident—he says that she wanted to die and crashed on purpose.
Joe and Miles, while extremely close, still have typical moments of sibling conflict. Having found the shark tooth, Miles is deeply unsettled by the idea that Mum’s death may not have been as straightforward as he thought, and the young man grasps for someone or something to blame.
Themes
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Joe is furious and refutes this accusation, telling Miles that Mum had a high blood pressure condition and that a sudden heart attack caused her to lose control of the car. Harry overhears this argument, but Miles does not care and tries to pretend that his little brother does not exist.
Joe, unaware of the shark tooth, does not feel the need to blame the tragedy on anyone or anything—rather, he seems to believe that the crash was truly an accident. This gap in understanding causes such an emotional rift between the two brothers that Miles has a rare moment of forgoing his concern for Harry.
Themes
