The Shell Collector

“The Shell Collector” is a short story that explores the interiority of its central character, the unnamed shell collector, as he grapples with his desire for solitude and attempts to make sense of the events of his life. The flashbacks that make up the bulk of this story reveal the shell collector’s complex relationship with the world around him—both the natural world and the greater community of people that fall in and out of his private sphere. From the first page, when we meet the shell collector in his life of solitude on a remote Kenyan island, his primary desire—to be left alone in his private world—seems to be at odds with everything that is asked of him. Flashbacks reveal that this is an ongoing struggle, as he sifts through his past in search of answers.

Though the shell collector feels a distinct Isolation From Humanity, his life seems to be marked by a series of violations of his wish for solitude, with each violation leading to the next. Early on in the story, he grasps for an explanation for this escalation, wondering where it began:

[M]aybe it started before