Post-Reading: Ship Breaker

"You toss your luck in the air and it rattles down on the gambling boards and you either live or die."

To me this quote means that sometimes you just have to see what your luck will give you. You are either lucky and get what you were hoping for or you are unlucky and you don’t. There are many times when people put their fate in luck. For example when you buy a lottery ticket you don’t know if you are going to win or lose, you are seeing how lucky/unlucky you are. Also you sometimes put your fate in other people and it is their choices and decisions that decide what happens to you. For example when you go to court you put your fate in 12 people who know nothing about you and your reasons for doing whatever you did.

In the book Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi the ship breakers (beach rats, ship rats, etc) believe in Fates and luck. They view it as a religion. They give offerings to the Fates so that nothing bad would happen to them and so that they could get lucky. Whenever something happened -good or bad- they say it was because of the Fates. For example when Nailer gets out of the room (which he was trapped in) everyone says that the Fates were on his side and some even give him gifts so that they can be close to Fates. Another example of how the quote applies to the book is found on page 86 and 87. “The captain hadn't been lucky. And now Nailer and Pima were flush because of it.” Nailer and Pima find a downed clipper ship. While scavenging the ship for anything light they find the body of the captain. Nailer realizes that the captains bad luck is his good luck. I think that their is almost always a trade. Your good luck is someone else’s bad luck. Another example is when Nailer is stuck in the room filled with oil. Nailer decides that trying to escape is better than dying without trying. When he goes under to try and open the door he is putting his fate in luck.  

In conclusion this quote doesn’t just apply to the book, it applies to real life too. There are many instances when this happens. For example when you do something dangerous. Yes, when you do something dangerous it is because you know how to do it and are depending on your skill and whatever equipment you have, but your luck decides whether it is successful or not. Examples of this quote are shown all throughout the book, from the beginning to the end. Nailer and all the other ship breakers see Fates as their religion, and luck is a big part of how they live.