MacLeod depicts the seagulls living in the harbor of the village as a symbol of the complex types of alienation that characterize the lives of the narrator, John, and Jennifer. At the beginning, the narrator describes them in as much detail as though he has never seen gulls before, and, with similes like “flapping their wings pompously […] like overconditioned he-men who have successfully passed their body-building courses” and phrasing like “murmuring softly to themselves,” creates the image of a strange hybrid of human and gull. MacLeod renders the gulls, through the narrator’s eyes, as an alien novelty, indicating how unfamiliar and even threatening the narrator finds his son’s world. The gulls also serve as a symbol of the narrator’s alienation from Newfoundland when he considers taking John “away from the lonely gulls and the silver trout” to the Midwest, framing the gulls, and by extension the place where they live, in opposition to himself and his world. Though the narrator’s alienation from Newfoundland leads him to view the gulls as strange and even threatening, John, who has a deep connection to Newfoundland and its culture, finds happiness and reassurance in them. When he travels to Toronto to be with his mother, feeling “wonderful sad” and out of place, he is comforted by the presence of gulls over Toronto’s harbor, indicating that although he is geographically distant from Newfoundland, he is not yet wholly alienated from it. Finally, the two injured seagulls that bookend the story seem to symbolize elements of John’s struggle with alienation as well.
The tame seagull named “Joey” evokes Jennifer herself, who is “tamed” in her move to Toronto, a major metropolis without the wildness of Newfoundland, though simultaneously injured (like the wounded gull) by the loss of her son, and dies in her new environment. John’s friends’ ability to talk cheerfully and casually about its death parallels John’s lack of knowledge, and perhaps lack of interest, about Jennifer’s death, due to his profound emotional disconnect from her; the boys’ search for a new gull reflects the arrival of the narrator, the suggestion that a new parent and a new bond may come into John’s life. At the end of the story, on the other hand, the crippled gull the boys discover—about which the narrator thinks, “Perhaps they will make it well”—signifies that although the narrator’s bond with John is permanently “crippled,” John’s bond with his family, friends, and culture has been strengthened and “healed” by the narrator’s decision not to take him away.
Gulls Quotes in The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
One of them used to have a tame seagull at his house, had it for seven years. His older brother found it on the rocks and brought it home. His grandfather called it Joey. […] It died last week and they held a funeral about a mile away from the shore where there was enough soil to dig a grave. Along the shore itself it is almost solid rock […] It’s the same with people, they say. All week they have been hopefully looking […] for another seagull but have not found one.
“John here has the makings of a good fisherman,” says the old man. “He’s up at five most every morning when I am putting on the fire. He and the dog are already out along the shore and back before I’ve made tea.”
“When I was in Toronto,” says John, “no one was ever up before seven. I would make my own tea and wait. It was wonderful sad. There were gulls there though, flying over Toronto harbour. We went to see them on two Sundays.”
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.
Gulls Symbol Timeline in The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
