The Shell Collector

“Far off, he heard the high, amplified voice of the muezzin in Lamu calling prayer. ‘It’s Ramadan,’ he told the Jims. ‘The people don’t eat when the sun is above the horizon. They drink only chai until sundown. They will be eating now. Tonight we can go out if you like. They grill meat in the streets.’”

Though the shell collector sees the Jims as intruders on his shore, this description reveals the irony of this viewpoint. The shell collector himself exists as an outsider, set apart from civilization. He is not part of “the people” he’s describing. His repetition of “they” underscores this separation.

“By noon they had waded a kilometer out, onto the great curved spine of the reef, the lagoon slopping quietly behind them, a low sea breaking in front.”

The reef is personified, its “curved spine” lending the impression of something animalistic. This, in addition to the soothing diction of “the lagoon slopping quietly,” creates a feeling of calm, as though the environment is a beast of some kind that is at rest.

“Automatically, as the next wave came, the shell collector raised his collecting bucket so it would not be swamped. As soon as the wave passed he plunged his arms back into sand, his fingers probing an alcove between anemones, pausing to identify a clump of brain coral, running after a snail as it burrowed away.”

This passage illustrates the shell collector’s connection with the sea, an important symbol in the story. Here, his body responds intuitively to the water’s movement, as though he is a part of his environment. This contrasts with other scenes in which his body is out of sync with the sea, demonstrating the mutability of his relationship with nature.

“One of the Jims had a snorkeling mask and was using it to look underwater. ‘Lookit these blue fish,’ he gasped. ‘Lookit that blue.’

The shell collector was thinking, just then, of the indifference of nematocysts. Even after death the tiny cells will discharge their poison—a single dried tentacle on the shore, severed eight days, stung a village boy last year and swelled his legs.”

This passage underscores stark differences between the Jims and the shell collector, which mirrors a dichotomy in nature. In the journalist’s dialogue, he displays a sense of wonder, which is then juxtaposed with the shell collector’s musings on the harshness of nature.

“Or maybe it started before Nancy, maybe it grew outward from the shell collector himself, the way a shell grows, spiraling upward from the inside, whorling around its inhabitant, all the while being worn down by the weathers of the sea.”

As the shell collector strives to understand what brought him to this moment with the Jims, a parallel is drawn between the shape of a cone shell and the path of his life, introducing an important motif in the story. The man’s life not only mimics the growth of a shell but also experiences the forces of the world around it, “being worn down by the weathers of the sea.” This establishes the shell collector’s view of himself as powerless against the events that unfold around him.

“He’d never seen anything so clearly in his life. His fingers caressed the shell, flipped and rotated it. He had never felt anything so smooth—had never imagined something could possess such deep polish. He asked, nearly whispering, ‘Who made this?’ The shell was still in his hand, a week later, when his father pried it out, complaining of the stink.”

This passage introduces the theme of Fate Versus Happenstance, which the shell collector directly engages with here. In this first encounter with a shell as a young boy, the shell collector feels a sense of wonder and awe similar to the experience of the Jims on Page 11. In this state of wonder, the shell collector looks to the possibility of a higher power, which will come up again in his conversations with the mwadhini.

“He had realized, finally, that he would only understand so much, that malacology only led him downward, to more questions. He had never comprehended the endless variations of design: Why this lattice ornament? Why these fluted scales, these lumpy nodes? Ignorance was, in the end, and in so many ways, a privilege: to find a shell, to feel it, to understand only on some unspeakable level why it bothered to be so lovely. What joy he found it that, what utter mystery.”

The narrative returns to the shell motif, as the shell collector not only remarks on the structures of shells but also reveals a parallel movement in his mind: “downward, to more questions,” like spiraling thoughts. In addition, this serves as a counterpoint to his desire to identify and name every shell he finds; at age 58, the shell collector comes to the realization that there is value in a lack of understanding.

“The shell collector felt them crowded into the room, these ocean Muslims in their rustling kanzus and squeaking flip-flops, each stinking of his work—gutted perch, fertilizer, hull-tar—each leaning in to hear his reply.”

This passage illustrates the shell collector’s isolation from, and disdain for, the mwadhini and his brothers. This quote is rich with sensory details specific to the shell collector’s perspective: sound and smell. These carefully chosen details paint a picture of these men as fishermen, an occupation that is at odds with the shell collector’s way of life.

“‘Are these,’ he intoned, ‘not strange and amazing coincidences? That this American was cured of her afflictions and that my child has similar afflictions? That you are here and I am here, that animals right now crawling on the sand outside your door harbor the cure?’”

The mwadhini develops the theme of Fate Versus Happenstance by confronting the shell collector and explicitly outlining his own belief that there are no coincidences. He is asking questions, but they are meant to be rhetorical. His tone of assuredness and calm authority emphasizes, by contrast, the shell collector’s uncertainty about fate and nature.

“By the following day everyone knew a miracle had occurred in the mwadhini’s house. Word spread, like a drifting cloud of coral eggs, spawning, frenzied; it left the island and lived for a while in the daily gossip of coastal Kenya.”

Figurative language and personification are used here to help the reader conceptualize something that is intangible. Words in the form of coral eggs make for a memorable image. This description also portrays the spread of information as something that cannot be controlled.

“He seemed so energetic, so good…so stupid. He was like a golden retriever, fetching things, sloppy-tongued, panting, falling over himself to please.”

Simile is used here to characterize Josh, the shell collector’s son, but more specifically the way that the shell collector sees him. Though a golden retriever is not necessarily a derogatory comparison, language like “stupid” and “sloppy” reveals the shell collector’s dismissiveness toward his son.

“An arrhythmic wave sucker-punched him, broke over his chin. He spit saltwater. Another wave drove his shin into the rocks.”

This moment appears close to the end of the story when the shell collector is in a hashish-altered state. His strange state of mind is highlighted here in this uncharacteristic experience; instead of responding to the water intuitively as he has before, he is pushed around and startled by it, signaling a change. Short, declarative sentences add tension, which reflects the dissonance of being out of tune with nature.

“His life had made its final spiral, delving down into its darkest whorl, where the shell tapered into shadow.”

This moment is one of the final uses of the shell motif and illustrates the shell collector’s belief that the venom will kill him. Here, he still sees his life as mimicking the shape of the cone shell, even as he reconsiders the idea of destiny, illustrating that these worldviews are not incompatible.