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Throughout “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood,” MacLeod uses fog to symbolize the difficulty of genuine connection and understanding between people and the ways in which the reality of one’s circumstances can be obscured. While describing the setting at the beginning of the story, he observes how “somewhere beyond Cape Spear lies Dublin and the Irish coast; far away but still the nearest land […] seeming almost hazily visible now in imagination’s mist.” In this way, MacLeod identifies mist and fog with imagination, something that hides the reality of the situation. This is fitting because it is not immediately clear why the narrator is in Newfoundland—only as the story goes on does the reader develop an understanding of the connection between the narrator and his son, John. Similarly, when John is singing with his grandmother and grandfather, the narrator reflects that “the words sweep up and swirl about my head. Fog does not touch like snow yet it is more heavy and more dense.” He perceives the distance, the “stranding,” between himself and his son’s family as fog swirling around him. MacLeod represents the narrator’s inability to understand the family’s culture or their love for one another as a literal inability to see them clearly. Fog appears again when the grandfather is describing John’s arrival back in Newfoundland and the day of Jennifer’s death: “It be foggy all the day […] And I says, small to myself, now here in the fog be the bad luck and the death but then there the plane be […] soon he comen through the fog […] That night they be killed.” Fog symbolizes distance and the inability to form connections, and it functions doubly as a symbol here, showing the recovery of the bond between John and the grandfather (John coming “through the fog”) and the distance between Jennifer and both her son and her parents becoming irreparable. Reading about her death in a car crash, the narrator learns that “bad visibility caused by a heavy fog may have contributed to the accident,” connecting the circumstances of Jennifer’s death to a symbol of her emotional and geographical separation from her family. Finally, when the narrator realizes that he is completely unable to bridge the gap between himself and John, he describes his own ignorance and self-deception in terms of fog, saying, “I would like to see my way more clearly. I, who have never understood the mystery of fog,” and, later, “I do not know enough of the fog on Toronto’s Queen St. West […] and of lost and misplaced love.” Knowing nothing about John’s life, heritage, and experience, he can understand him only partly and confusedly, as though through an obscuring fog.
Fog Quotes in The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
The The Lost Salt Gift of Blood quotes below all refer to the symbol of Fog. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Lost Salt Gift of Blood Quotes
Even farther out, somewhere beyond Cape Spear lies Dublin and the Irish coast; far away but still the nearest land, and closer now than is Toronto or Detroit, to say nothing of North America’s more western cities; seeming almost hazily visible now in imagination’s mist.
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This quotation, which comes at the very beginning of the story, introduces the reader to the relationship between geographical and emotional distance that is key to the narrative of “The Last Salt Gift of Blood.” Although the Irish coast is far away, it is closer to Newfoundland than any major city in North America; the fact that Newfoundland’s cultural heritage is primarily Irish creates a parallel between the geographical closeness of Ireland and the narrator’s hope to connect with his son’s Newfoundland culture. Though too far away to be seen with the naked eye, Ireland seems “almost hazily visible” in Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciu
All three of them begin to sing, spanning easily the half-century that touches their extremes. The old and the young singing now their songs of loss in different comprehensions. Stranded here, alien of my middle generation, I tap my leather foot self-consciously […] The words sweep up and swirl about my head. Fog does not touch like snow yet it is more heavy and more dense. Oh moisture comes in many forms!
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Here, the narrator looks on while John and his grandparents sing folk songs together after dinner. This quotation demonstrates the depth of the narrator’s isolation and the “stranding” he experiences, on the other side of the emotional gap between himself, his son, and his remaining family. John is deeply integrated into this family and their culture—he knows the songs his grandparents sing and their routine of making music after dinner—but the narrator is “alien,” unable to play an instrument or sing, unfamiliar with the songs, completely cut off from his son’s world. Their singing “spans easily the half-century” that separates Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asp
“When she married in Toronto […] we figured that maybe John should be with her and with her husband. […] Well, what was wrong was that we missed him wonderful awful. […] Like us had no moorings, lost in the fog or the ice-floes in a snow squall. Nigh sick unto our hearts we was.”
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In this passage, the grandfather explains how much he and his wife missed John during his brief stint living with his mother, Jennifer, in Toronto. This passage reflects the complexity of the family’s relationships and, once again, fog appears as a representative of distance, both physical and emotional. Until this point, the grandparents’ conversation with the narrator has been brusque and unemotional, and this is the first suggestion of intimacy between the narrator and the old man, when they are able to overcome the gulf between them and discuss their feelings honestly—or, at the very least, the old man is Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae volup
“Well, it was all wrong the night before the going. The signs all bad […] But still I feels I has to go. It be foggy all the day […] And I says, small to myself, now here in the fog be the bad luck and the death but then there the plane be […] soon he comen through the fog […] Powerful strange how things will take one. That night they be killed.”
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This quotation—which is also from the grandfather’s description of John’s visit to Toronto, his return to Newfoundland, and Jennifer’s subsequent death—uses the symbol of fog to render the restoration of John and his grandparents’ relationship, as well as the permanent severing of John’s relationship with his mother. The grandfather says to himself that “here in the fog be the bad luck and the death,” suggesting the serious and painful harm that distance and alienation can cause, and thinks that John may not be on the plane, implying a fear that he will not be able to reconnect with John after Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor aspe
“Jennifer Farrell of Roncesvalles Avenue was instantly killed early this morning and her husband James died later […] The accident occurred about 2 A.M. when the pickup truck in which they were travelling went out of control on Queen St. W. […] It is thought that bad visibility caused by a heavy fog may have contributed to the accident. The Farrells were originally from Newfoundland.”
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This quotation is an excerpt from the newspaper clipping the narrator reads about Jennifer’s death, describing how she died and the heavy fog that caused the accident. This is the point at which the narrator first learns about Jennifer’s death, the loss of his original connection to the family and to Newfoundland. Both Jennifer’s death and the fact that the narrator has only now learned about it reaffirm his distance from the family, an alienation symbolized, like John’s, by the “heavy fog” on Queen St. West. Jennifer’s death has irreparably distanced John from his parents, and it has also distanced Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. U
And perhaps now I should go and say, oh son of my summa cum laude loins, come away from the lonely gulls and the silver trout and I will take you to the land of the Tastee Freeze […] Again I collect dreams. For I do not know enough of the fog on Toronto’s Queen St. West and the grinding crash of the pickup, and of lost and misplaced love.
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In this quotation, the narrator concludes that the right decision is to leave John with his grandparents, friends, and community in Newfoundland, rather than take him away to the Midwest—“the land of the Tastee Freeze”—and attempt to resolve the alienation between them. He invokes the gulls as a symbol again, describing them as “lonely” and thereby suggesting his own alienation; John, earlier, found comfort and community in the gulls, and their dissimilar reactions indicate their diverging relationships with Newfoundland, its nature, and its culture. This distance, leaving them incapable of truly understanding each other, is what the narrator acknowledges in Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus te
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Fog Symbol Timeline in The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
The timeline below shows where the symbol Fog appears in The Lost Salt Gift of Blood. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
...of my middle generation,” and feels separated from the three of them as if by fog. The three of them sing another folk song about the death of a woman named...
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...were “wonderful scared and not know what to do.” The day of John’s arrival was foggy, and the old man thought that “in the fog be the bad luck and the...
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...Queen St. West in Toronto. According to the clipping, “bad visibility caused by a heavy fog may have contributed to the accident.” The old man then says that he and his...
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...be misguided, thinking, “Again I collect dreams. For I do not know enough of the fog on Toronto’s Queen St. West […] and of lost and misplaced love.”
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