The Complications of Family Bonds

There is a notable pattern in the novel of characters who come from broken homes later perpetuating cycles of abuse once they produce their own children. Almost all of the characters in The Shore have troubled familial relations, although most do have at least one family member whom they care about and can trust.

It is the women, more often than the men, who manage to break this cycle. Ellie, for instance, is remembered as a good and loving mother, although her own mother was a mentally unstable chronic liar and her father was a "deadbeat." Bo's father was a neglectful alcoholic with a violent temper, and Bo's mother died early. Cabel Bloxom grows up to be a sexual predator after being intermittently raised by his "sleazy skirt-hound" of a father, who may be Tiny Bloxom, Ellie's rapist (147). Medora is harshly treated...