Ship Breaker

“Nailer balanced on the ledge, on the edge of decision. Live or die, he thought. Live or die. He dove.”

Most of the scavengers believe in the idea of fate: that their lives are predetermined and that there is nothing they can do to circumvent their destiny. Nailer’s decision to try to survive is based in part on fate, as he knows that if he stays, he will die anyway. However, he refuses to just wait on the ledge and see if fate has other plans for him. The metaphor of balancing on the edge of life and death during key decisions recurs throughout the novel, and his decisions to take the risk nearly always pay off.

“Nailer shook his head. ‘I don’t believe in Fates.’ But he said it quietly, low enough that she wouldn’t hear. If Fates existed, they’d put him with his dad, and that meant they were bad news. Better to think life was random than to think the world was out to get you.”

Nailer realizes that believing in fate means that his life is controlled by a higher power that doesn’t seem to have his best interests at heart. By refusing to believe that his life is already mapped out, he gives himself a chance to shape his own destiny. If he believed religiously in fate, he would be tied to his father forever; free will means he might escape his life on Bright Sands.

“They were all looking at the water now. Hungry. ‘You think they even know we’re here?’ Moon Girl asked. Pima spat in the sand. ‘We’re just flies on garbage to people like that.’”

While the clipper ships symbolize both freedom and the upper class, Pima recognizes that dreaming of being part of that life is useless. The ship breakers are so insignificant to the upper class that they don’t even register as human. Even the freedom that the ship represents is hopelessly out of reach for them.

“Silence stretched between them. ‘Lost it, huh?’ was all his father said, but Nailer could tell that dangerous gears were turning now, fueled by the rattle of drugs and anger and whatever madness caused his father’s bouts of frenzied work and brutality. Underneath the man’s tattooed features a storm was brewing, full of undertows and crashing surf and water spouts, the deadly weather that buffeted Nailer every day as he tried to navigate the coastline of his father’s moods.”

The passage compares Nailer’s father to a city killer storm—unpredictable and completely deadly. Nailer must tread softly around his father’s moods to avoid a physical beating, but the drugs and alcohol his father uses make his acts of violence as random and senseless as a hurricane’s path of destruction. Family is turned on its head in Nailer’s situation; the basic functions of family are to provide love and safety, but his father provides neither.

“The man had become more unpredictable as he worked less on the crews and worked more in the shadow world of the beaches, as his drugs whittled him down to a burning core of violence and hungers.”

Bacigalupi uses the imagery of a “shadow world” and “burning core” to compare Richard Lopez’s world to hell. Unpredictable, violent, and filled with illicit hungers, Richard is a demonic figure and fits the archetype of a savage predator villain.

“Men and women dangling and dropping like fleas jumping from a dog, plummeting into the increasing surf.”

The comparison of the scavenger society to “flies” or “fleas’’ repeats throughout the novel; The ship breakers, like fleas, are parasites living off the detritus of the Accelerated Age, and the class stratification is so extreme that the scavengers have zero ranking in society. They don’t create anything and provide no value to the upper class other than the metals they scavenge off abandoned wrecks.

“The man was a drunk and a bastard, but still, they were blood. They shared the same eyes, the same memories of his mother […] Family, as much as he had.”

Nailer sees family simply as a matter of genetics because his only living family member, his father, doesn’t provide any of the security that a caregiver should. The only relationship he has with Richard is one of shared blood. The genetics and traits that they share are abhorrent to Nailer because he doesn’t want to be like his father: a brutal, cruel predator.

“The beach was empty. Not a sign of human habitation. Out in the blue water, the shadows of the tankers still loomed, randomly scattered like toys, but nothing else remained. The soot was gone, the oil in the waters, everything shone brightly under the blaze of morning tropic sun. ‘It’s so blue,’ Pima murmured. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen the water so blue.’”

The city killer storm, a Class 6 hurricane with the destructive power to wipe out entire cities, has redrawn Bright Sands, washing away the metaphorical grime and dirt of the Accelerated Age. The unimaginable power of the storm introduces an elemental conflict of man versus nature; the city killers are a result of the selfish and reckless practices of a bygone age that relied on fossil fuels and denied the consequences of climate change. Although the characters view nature as an antagonist, when the storm erases all evidence of human habitation, Bright Sands becomes stunningly beautiful.

“Ahead, the gull-white hull of the wreck gleamed in the sunlight, beckoning.”

The personification of the wrecked clipper ship, which “beckon[s]” Nailer and Pima, underscores the moment’s symbolism. The beckoning gesture is an invitation to change; the wrecked ship will complicate Nailer’s and Pima’s lives and entangle them in confrontations with an implacable enemy, but it will also provide the impetus to change their lives for the better and ultimately represent an escape from Bright Sands. Bacigalupi uses the “beckoning” image at the end of the novel as well; when the ship breakers are about to board the Dauntless, the blue sea beckons to them.

“Richard Lopez wouldn’t hesitate. He’d slash the rich girl’s throat and take the rings and shake the blood off them and laugh. A week ago, Nailer knew for a fact that he could have done the same […] but now, after his time in the oil room, all he could think of was how much he’d wanted Sloth to believe that his life was just as important as hers.”

Nailer undergoes a significant change after his experience in the oil room; after facing death and pleading with Sloth to help him, he empathizes with Nita’s predicament. The juxtaposition of Richard and Nailer in this passage demonstrates the difference in their attitudes toward violence; Richard kills with pleasure, but Nailer doesn’t want to be like his father. Nailer now believes that every person’s life is equally important, whether they are crew or not.

“‘That’s what surge rats use. Combat squads. Half-men. It’s for animals.’ She caught herself. ‘I mean…’

‘Animals, huh?’ Nailer exchanged a tired smile with Pima. ‘That’s about right. Just a bunch of animals here, making money for you big bosses.’”

Nita discovers that ship breakers use the same drug recreationally that her people use on half-men to make them more effective killers. Her response exposes a deep class bias that shapes her perspective towards the ship breakers. However, Nailer affirms the dehumanization, describing himself as an animal working for the “big bosses”; his answer reveals his hidden feeling that he has more in common with half-men than with swanks.

“Richard disappeared into the vines and the night screech of the jungle, a pale skeleton of a man fading into the blackness.”

Bacigalupi employs imagery to paint Richard as the incarnation of death. His fade into the blackness is supernatural, and the comparison to a skeleton is a reminder of his ability to kill. This image creates an atmosphere of foreboding and heightens the narrative tension; the novel depicts Richard, the principal antagonist in the novel, as preternaturally terrifying.

“‘Pyce’s people would have killed them all anyway. He wouldn’t have wanted witnesses.’ Pima grinned. ‘Damn, the swanks and the rust rats are all the same at the end of the day. Everyone’s looking to get a little blood on their hands.’”

Nita’s matter-of-fact comment on the expendability of her ship’s crew exposes the ruthlessness of her company’s corporate machinations. Pima recognizes that immorality transcends class boundaries; the swanks may have more nice things, but in the end they are the same as everyone else. Good and bad people exist on both ends of the class divide.

“My dad will never forget this. No matter what anyone says, he’ll never forget.”

Nailer is commenting on the impossibility of his remaining in Bright Sands even if Sadna brokers a truce with Richard to protect him. When Nailer killed Blue Eyes, a member of his father’s crew, he betrayed his father, and his father will not forgive betrayal. Nailer’s recognition of his father’s nature motivates him to gamble on escape; he is dead if he stays, so he has nothing left to lose.

“You trying to tell me you blood buyers got some kind of clean conscience? Like making some petrol is different than buying our blood and rust out on the wrecks for your recycling?”

Nailer points out the irony of Nita’s show of virtuousness. Her corporation won’t make petrol that damages the environment, but corporations like hers from the Accelerated Age were responsible for the climate change repercussions that Nailer’s people are facing now. Her people may not push planet-warming fossil fuels, but their recycling of oil tankers and freighters kill the ship breakers on a daily basis.

“They sped above the mossy broke-back structures of a dead city. A whole waterlogged world of optimism, torn down by the patient work of changing nature.”

Nita, Nailer, and Tool’s flight away from Bright Sands and Richard Lopez involves hardship, but the mood is mostly optimistic; sharing stories and enduring the lack of food and water create a bond between them. However, personifying Orleans II as “dead” and with a “broken back’’ alters the mood; the ruins are foreboding and disheartening, signifying that there will be more hardship ahead. Orleans II was the answer to the destruction of New Orleans, but the engineers’ optimism was misplaced and underestimated the power of nature after climate change. The passage highlights the conflict between humanity and nature, which nature is winning.

“‘I’m sorry,’ Nita said. ‘I didn’t want to leave him, either.’

Nailer gave her a withering look. ‘He was helping us.’

‘There are some fights you can’t win.’ She looked away.”

Nita’s apology reveals the change in her character, as the old swanky Nita would never deign to apologize. However, Nailer views fleeing the fight as betrayal; Tool was crew and a mentor to both of them. Tool later echoes Nita’s statement about unwinnable fights when he asserts that he doesn’t lunge into battles he cannot win (243). While Nailer takes loyalty very seriously, both Tool and Nita are more pragmatic and place their survival above loyalty to crew.

“The captain saw a ship breaker, tattooed with work stamps and scarred with hard labor. A kid with his ribs showing through. That was all. A bit of beach trash. Nailer stared at him. ‘Lucky Girl used to look at me the same way you’re looking at me. And now she doesn’t. That’s why I’m going with you.’”

Nailer recognizes the disdain that colors Candless’s perspective of him, but he no longer buys into it. Working alongside Nita in Orleans II has demonstrated to him that swanks are just people, no more or less than ship breakers. Nita’s perspective has changed as well, and it is her recognition of Nailer as an equal that drives his desire to find her.

“‘Don’t worry about a killing blow and don’t go for the head. It will extend you. Go low and hit them in the belly, the knees, behind the legs. If they’re down…’

‘Cut their throat.’

‘Good boy! Bloodthirsty little bastard, aren’t you?’”

Captain Candless teaches Nailer how to use his knife in battle and praises him as if he were a dog, indulging in the swank’s habit of comparing the lower classes to animals. While Candless displays enthusiasm for the battle to come, Nailer is succinct and businesslike. As Pima noted earlier, both swanks and people in poverty can enjoy getting their hands bloody; however, in spite of having encountered more violence than Candless, Nailer has no enthusiasm for bloodshed.

“Nailer watched in awe as the crew fought to do their work. Rain slashed them. The seas rose and tried to drown them with huge surging waves, but still they grimly wrestled the ship to their will.”

The imagery describing the storm is violent; the rain “slashes” and the seas attempt to drown the clipper crew. The crew, in turn, “wrestle” the ship. The description of the crew battling the storm reflects a recurring conflict in the novel: man versus nature.

“There were always safer options than crewing with an old loyalist like me.”

Candless recognizes that loyalty in this world can be dangerous. However, loyalty also provides safety; having a loyal crew provides safety in numbers, and in a corporate war he must depend upon loyalty because there is no visible difference between crew and enemy. While fanatical loyalty and sacrifice go against the code of survival, Nailer also recognizes the value of loyalty, often placing his obligation to his crew above his own survival.

“[T]he waves were all around and he could see there was a rhythm to them. They were past the Teeth and out of the vortex and now, suddenly, the current was on their side, pushing them forward, taking them exactly where they wanted to go.”

After struggling against the waves and nearly drowning, Nailer flows with the sea instead of fighting it. Working with nature instead of against it, Nailer and Nita resolve the man versus nature conflict by submitting to nature, which rewards them by taking them where they want to go. Metaphorically, the currents carry them away from the danger of the past and out of the chaos of the present, directly to the future that they choose.

“‘Maybe in a year you’ll have mostly forgotten. But it will still be there. You’ve got blood on your hands.’ She shrugged. ‘It always costs. It never goes away.’”

Nailer feels numb and unmoved after killing his father, yet he also feels guilty about his apathy. Sadna tries to help, assuring him that while he may not feel anything now, he will later. Nailer’s response to his father’s death actually reveals the difference between him and Richard; his father would have celebrated killing an enemy, and Sadna recognizes that fact, telling Nailer his lack of response is “good.”