22 pages • 44 minutes read
W.D. WetherellThe Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant
Fiction | Short Story | YA | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
When Dreams Collide
Few things are more intense than an adolescent’s obsessions. The narrator’s crush on Sheila Mant matches in intensity only his love of fishing. When these passions come into conflict, his heart is wounded by the awful choice he must make.
On the one hand, Sheila Mant, the dream of every boy at the summer resort, represents for the narrator the height of romance. On the other hand, his years-long enthusiasm for fishing connects him to nature and to moments of sublimity. What he doesn’t realize until it’s too late is that despite the strength of his feelings, only one of these obsessions has staying power and deep-seated meaning. His summertime crush on Sheila has consumed him for weeks, while fishing has nurtured his soul for years. The chance to be with her feels intensely bright with promise, while the beloved sport of bass fishing, always available, becomes something he takes for granted.
The collision of these two great passions happens so quickly that the narrator has no time to think. Just when Sheila announces that fishing is dumb and the narrator tries to hide his fishing tackle, the line snags a giant bass. Caught between his yearning for her and his intense desire to catch a great fish, the narrator confronts an impossible choice between two things of seemingly equal importance.
He makes his choice, snipping the line and setting the bass free. But he soon comes to regret the choice—though he thinks he is letting fishing go to get Sheila, she has never been a romantic option for him. He has deluded himself into comparing his crush on an unavailable older teen with the rewarding and satisfying hobby of fishing.
However, he gains much more from the mistake than he loses. He now knows what’s important to him—in the future, he will walk away from beautiful distractions that ultimately waste his time.
Standing Up for Oneself
The narrator thinks of his canoe trip with Sheila as a first date with the girl of his dreams. Little does he know that he is deluding himself—Sheila is interested in a college student, not a boy three years younger than her. The need for acceptance is powerful, so it makes perfect sense that the narrator sacrifices his deepest interests to win Sheila’s approval. She is an intimidating presence—she’s beautiful, she’s from a socially powerful family, she has an attitude of superiority, and all the boys want to date her. The narrator feels inferior to her, and he goes out of his way to impress her with cushions, music, and a spotlessly gleaming canoe. In all these ways, the narrator is trying to rise to her level.
Though he can never feel comfortable or at ease with the clearly out-of-his-league Sheila, the narrator feels himself on a par with the elusive largemouth bass. Given his many catches, the teenage boy is proud of his abilities and enchanted by the process of reeling in the large a fish. Automatically accepting the challenge posed by the hooked creature, he feels assured and in his element.
Faced with the choice of repressing his best quality or incurring the disdain of his crush, the narrator gives up the catch of his life for a chance at continued attention from Sheila. But this is a mistake: Sheila has no interest in him anyway, and the would-be date is a failure.
The narrator learns a powerful truth from this experience: It’s always more important to stand up for your own best qualities than hide them to impress others. Someone who holds another person’s dearest passions in contempt can never form a worthwhile bond with them.
Infatuation and Reality
Mistaking infatuation for love, the narrator stumbles over himself as he pursues a foolish crush on an older girl. Only when he spends time with her does he discover that they’re not well suited.
At the summer resort, all the boys fall hard for Sheila Mant. Her physical presence sends the narrator’s heart soaring: “I took the full brunt of her long red hair and well-spaced freckles” (Paragraph 7); “her white dress went perfectly with her hair, and complimented her figure even more than her swimsuit” (paragraph 17). To elevate himself above the boys who only admire her physique, the narrator pretends to take an interest in her moods, projecting emotions onto her as he watches from afar.
He doesn’t yet understand that, though he thinks she is everything to him, he doesn’t have the slightest idea of who is she as a person. As he canoes Sheila to a dance, it begins to dawn on the narrator that Sheila is more than her face: She has interests that he finds superficial, while she disdains fishing, which he loves.
His infatuation ends when she reveals her own desires—for Eric, a college student. The narrator’s clumsy effort to hide his deepest interests from Sheila has only led him to lose out on catching a huge bass. Dating her has never been a possibility; the real thing, with a person with whom he enjoys shared respect, lies in the future.
