Cultural Heritage and Identity Theme Analysis

Though cultural differences can be alienating, “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood” suggests heritage can also be a positive force that unites people. For instance, the relationship between John and his grandparents is founded partly on their intergenerational heritage, and they process the loss of John’s mother Jennifer through references to local folklore and song. In this story, heritage and tradition have the ability to unite people with a common history and to help people make sense of the world around them.

First, heritage solidifies the bond between John and his grandparents, who are raising him as a member of their particular culture as rural Newfoundlanders. Genetic heritage, for instance, makes their closeness visual. John’s appearance is similar to his Newfoundland family: “his hair is red and curly and his face is splashed with freckles and his eyes are clear and blue.” The grandparents had five daughters with red hair, including Jennifer. Since red hair is recessive, both grandparents presumably had red hair as well, and the grandfather’s eyes are blue. Blue and “an equally eye-catching red” are also the colors of the checkers the grandfather taught John to make; here, John’s literal heritage enters into his cultural heritage. John’s grandfather has also passed on to him the cultural tradition of fishing. John first appears fishing in the harbor, and when the grandfather first appears, he wears a fisherman’s jersey and a belt buckle “shaped like a dory with a fisherman standing in the bow,” and announces that the weather “will be good for the fishing.” Later on, the grandfather says that “John here has the makings of a good fisherman,” indicating John’s assimilation into Newfoundland culture and intention to follow in his family’s footsteps. The heritage John and his grandparents share is perhaps most apparent when they sing together. Instead of suggesting singing, John “appears with his mouth organ,” and the grandfather “notices him, nods,” and wordlessly fetches his accordion. The grandmother also joins them without ever speaking, implying that this tradition is so established in their family that they do not need to discuss it. The narrator also observes that when the grandparents sing, “they take on the essence of the once-young people” in a photograph of the couple on the wall, and that the three of them “[span] easily the half-century that touches their extremes.” The heritage they share blurs any age distinction, rendering them, like their traditions, ageless.

Furthermore, since Jennifer—the grandparents’ youngest daughter and the narrator’s lover—is dead, MacLeod depicts her presence through heritage like traditional songs. With this, cultural heritage becomes a tool for the characters to communicate and make sense of their world. Although the grandfather struggles to discuss his feelings about Jennifer, he and his wife use their cultural heritage to express their grief. The songs they sing, with lyrics like “on this earth in grief and sorrow / I am bound until I die” and “as the foaming dark waters flow silently past him / Onward they flow over young Jenny’s grave,” bear too much relevance to their situation not to be read as a way of verbalizing their grief. Later on, the grandfather tells the narrator that on the night of Jennifer’s death, “the signs [were] all bad; the grandmother knocked off the lampshade and it broke in a hunnerd pieces – the sign of death; and the window blind fell […] And the dog runned around like he was crazy, moanen and cryen […] and the next mornen, first thing I drops me knife,” and finishes brusquely, “That night [Jennifer and her husband] be killed.” He naturally connects Jennifer’s death with traditional Newfoundland belief, emphasized by his description of Jennifer’s husband James (“from Heartsick Bay he was”) and the reference to the couple being “originally from Newfoundland” in their obituary. Even the narrator expresses his memories of Jennifer in terms of his relationship to Newfoundland belief. While he is imagining looking in on John during the night, he states that “[there] is no boiled egg or shaker of salt or glass of water waiting on the chair.” He goes on to describe “a belief held in the outports” about how a girl might use a boiled egg, salt, and water to invoke a vision of her “true lover.” The absence of these things, and therefore of the girl looking for her lover, references Jennifer’s absence and its impact on him, having returned to the place where he knew her.

 “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood” represents cultural heritage as an overwhelmingly positive force that creates comfort and connection. Even the narrator, not a part of Newfoundland culture, is able to find some common ground with John and his family through local belief and tradition. Likewise, the family mourn the loss of their daughter Jennifer and make sense of her death by framing it as an almost folkloric event, reliant on traditional belief.