What are some traits of Sheila Mant and the narrator in "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant"?

Sheila Mant is a seventeen-year-old girl who the narrator desperately wants to impress. They don't seem to have anything in common, though. In fact, they share starkly opposing personality traits.

While Sheila is indolent and pleasure-seeking, the narrator is full of energy and vigor. We see how sluggishly she spends her days, sunbathing without much activity. Even when she is in the field playing baseball, she is lacking in zest and absolutely unwilling to actively participate in the game. When the narrator asks her to move closer, she replies:

“I’m playing outfield . . . I don’t like the responsibility of having a base.”

And, when the ball is hit over the left-fielder’s head, she simply stands and watches it “disappear toward the river.”

This shows she’s not just lazy but also irresponsible and lax. She is one of those people who would revel in their team’s victory but wouldn’t put any effort into making it win the game. So, she is a person who can’t be banked on.

While she lazes on a float, the narrator performs swimming feats requiring a lot of physical strain and skill. This tells us that he’s a brilliant swimmer. He must have practiced really hard to accomplish those feats. He says,

"to win her attention [I] would do endless laps between my house and the Vermont shore, hoping she would notice the beauty of my flutter kick, the power of my crawl."

We see how meticulously and painstakingly he prepares his canoe for his date with Sheila. He says,

I spent all of the following day polishing it. I turned it upside down on our lawn and rubbed every inch with Brillo, hosing off the dirt, wiping it with chamois until it gleamed as bright as aluminum ever gleamed.

Whatever he does, he does with great zeal and meticulousness. This is a remarkable trait of the narrator.

We learn much more about their personality traits when they are out on a date on the narrator’s boat. We find out that Sheila is excessively self-obsessed. The few remarks she makes during the trip are mostly about herself.

She is simply bothered about the complexion of her skin, her hairstyle, and her figure. She tells him how people compliment her on her good looks. She says she looks forward to becoming a model.

We are appalled at her callousness when she doesn’t pick up the extra paddle while the young narrator is rowing the boat upstream.

There was an extra paddle in the bow, but Sheila made no move to pick it up.

Instead,

She took her shoes off and dangled her feet over the side.

Besides, she is extremely conceited and strongly opinionated. Fishing is one of the favorite activities of the narrator. But, quite brazenly, she expresses her contempt for fishing.

“I think fishing’s dumb,” she said, making a face. “I mean, it’s boring and all. Definitely dumb.”

This demonstrates how presumptuous and unfeeling she is.

Her most despicable trait, perhaps, is her indifference to how others feel. She doesn’t care in the slightest what interest the narrator. She is completely apathetic towards his feelings, emotions, and interests.

We almost hate her for her insensitivity when she goes over to the narrator only to inform him that “she would be going home in Eric Caswell’s Corvette” and not with him.

The narrator, on the other hand, is full of emotions and excitement. The date on his boat with Sheila means a lot to him. He’s meticulous in his preparation for the date and does all he can in order to avoid giving her a bad impression.

Despite his fondness for fishing, he will no more take up the subject with Sheila after knowing how she hates it. It amuses us to see how hard he tries to keep the fishing rod out of her sight. Unlike Sheila, he is very responsive and observant.

During the sail, when he learns that he has happened to hook the biggest bass of his life, he is faced with a dilemma. He has to choose between the huge bass and the beautiful Sheila. He will eventually sacrifice his biggest catch ever, but not so easily.

We are really impressed by how skillfully he paddles through “a sluggish stream that came into the river beneath a covered bridge,” and “a shallow sandbar at the mouth of this stream—weeds on one side, rocks on the other.” He takes all this trouble so that he doesn’t lose the biggest catch of his life.

Besides exhibiting his impressive boatmanship, the incident shows how determined and optimistic he is. He’s not going to give in so fast.

One of the narrator’s more admirable personality traits is his ability to learn from experience. After the incident, it doesn’t take him long to get over his infatuation with Sheila. He says,

Before the month was over, the spell she cast over me was gone . . .

It isn’t the failure to win over Sheila’s heart but the loss of his biggest catch that continues to haunt him. He says, 

There would be other Sheila Mants in my life, other fish, and though I came close once or twice, it was these secret, hidden tuggings in the night that claimed me, and I never made the same mistake again.

Thus, we see that the narrator develops into a more mature person because of his experience.

Sheila:

• Self-centered (She talks almost exclusively about herself.)
• Vain (She talks about being a model.)
• Opinionated (She says fishing is “definitely dumb.”)
• Beautiful (What else does the narrator see in her?)
• Thoughtless or Selfish (She leaves the narrator for an older guy with a car.)

Narrator:

• Observant (Watches the Mants from afar.)
• Meticulous (Check out how he preps the canoe for the date, sets up his fishing rig, even uses the dog to set the drag.)
• Assertive (He does ask Sheila out and push enough for her to agree.)
• Quiet (As he says at the end, others have often told him he’s different, just like Sheila did.)
• Reflective (He’s telling this story as a way of thinking about it--and he reflected enough at the time to avoid repeating the same mistake.)

Sheila:

- Self-centered (She talks almost exclusively about herself.)

- Vain (She talks about being a model.)

- Opinionated (She says fishing is “definitely dumb.”)

- Beautiful (What else does the narrator see in her?)

- Thoughtless (She leaves the narrator for an older guy with a car.)

Narrator:

- Observant (Watches the Mants from afar.)

- Meticulous (Check out how he preps the canoe for the date, sets up his fishing rig, even uses the dog to set the drag.)

- Assertive (He does ask Sheila out and push enough for her to agree.)

- Quiet (As he says at the end, others have often told him he’s different, just like Sheila did.)

- Reflective (He’s telling this story as a way of thinking about it--and he reflected enough at the time to avoid repeating the same mistake.)

What do characters say or think about the narrator in "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant"?

In W. D. Wetherell's short story “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant” the narrator is a nameless fourteen-year-old boy who is smitten with a seventeen-year-old beauty named Sheila Mant. The story is told by an older version of the main character, who has the benefit of hindsight. In fact, he tells us at the end of the story that “I never made the same mistake again” regarding his choice of Sheila over his true loves: fishing and nature.

Although other characters are referenced in the story, it is only Sheila and the narrator that have any meaningful interaction. If we want to look at what other characters think of the narrator, we can really only consider Sheila.

Look at how she reacts to the narrator's choice of transportation:

It was her face that bothered me. It had on its delightful fullness a very dubious expression. 

“Look,” she said. “I can get Dad’s car.” 

“It’s faster this way,” I lied. “Parking’s tense up there. Hey, it’s safe. I won’t tip it or anything.” 

She let herself down reluctantly into the bow.

Sheila isn't crazy about the canoe. That was an early sign that she didn't share the narrator's interests.

Then, at the fair, Sheila decides to leave with the older guy, Eric Caswell, who just happens to have a Corvette. As she parts with the narrator, she says,

“You're a funny kid, you know that?”

What this really means is that there is something different about him, something she doesn't understand. This doesn't seem to bother the older version of the narrator, who follows with a bit of self assessment:

"...funny, different, dreamy, odd, how many times was I to hear that in the years to come..."

Sheila and the narrator don't connect because they are too different. But the narrator's admitted individualism remains intact throughout his life. Sheila wasn't wrong, but she doesn't know why.  He's “funny” because he is himself, his true self, unlike Sheila, who is a reflection of the expectations of others.

What kind of person is the narrator in "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant"?

The narrator succinctly informs us, the readers, about his nature in the final paragraph of this charming tale:

Funny. Different. Dreamy. Odd. How many times was I to hear that in the years to come, all spoken with the same quizzical, half-accusatory tone Sheila used then. Poor Sheila! Before the month was over, the spell she cast over me was gone, but the memory of that lost bass haunted me all summer and haunts me still. There would be other Sheila Mants in my life, other fish, and though I came close once or twice, it was these secret, hidden tuggings in the night that claimed me, and I never made the same mistake again. 

The term 'funny' does not refer to the narrator's sense of humour, but suggests that he was somewhat eccentric. This is emphasized by the deliberately redundant references to him being 'different' and 'odd'. It implies that he was unconventional in the manner he did things and others could not always understand or appreciate his mannerisms. In the story, for example, he is more drawn in by the idea that he could capture the bass, than by Sheila Mant's conversation and her supposed charm. 

His oddity is further emphasized by his decision to take her on a date in a canoe, when a car would obviously have been a more convenient choice. It is probably this 'oddity' which draws Sheila to him when she accedes to his request. As he calls it, this is his 'trump card'.

However, even though the narrator was obviously overwhelmingly infatuated with Sheila, his love for fishing dominated their entire trip, since all he could think of was capturing the large bass that he had inadvertently hooked. He generally ignored her. Two quotes confirm this: 

... it was a few minutes before I was able to catch up with her train of thought. and

... Sheila began talking about something else, but all my attention was taken up now with the fish.

For someone who had so much longed to be with Sheila, it seems quite strange that he declares:

The rest of the night is much foggier.

... all I really remember is her coming over to me once the music was done to explain that she would be going home in Eric Caswell’s Corvette.

His thoughts were clearly dominated by his experience with the bass and the lost opportunity to capture it. We do learn, however, that the narrator had no regrets about the wasted evening with Sheila, but that he had certainly learnt his lesson regarding the bass (which he had let go by cutting the fishing-line). He asserts, finally: 

... I never made the same mistake again.

 However, the memory that haunts him most is the one of 'the lost bass'.

The fact that the narrator also refers to himself as 'dreamy' implies that he was always lost in thought - a dreamer, probably an idealist and someone who had a lot to think about. The fact that he loved nature and devoted so much time to fishing, further suggests that he was a romantic - someone who aspires to and believes in the greater good.

The unnamed narrator is the story's main character, or protagonist. He is a boy of fourteen who lives (at least for the summer) next to the Mant family, who have rented the cottage nearest his family's. He quickly develops feelings of a romantic, infatuate nature for Sheila, the middle daughter, and he works up the nerve to ask her out, only at the very end of August. She is three years his senior and seems mostly unaware of his existence. However, she agrees to go to a little festival that has live music with him one night, in his canoe, and when he learns that she finds fishing to be "boring" and "dumb," he is anxious to prevent her from realizing that he has actually hooked a massive bass while they've been making their way down the river. In the end, he cuts the line and sets the bass free and Sheila goes home with someone else anyway; he says that he never made that same mistake—of choosing a girl over a fish—again.

Do the narrator and Sheila Mant make a good couple in "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant"?

Definitely not. We can see that the attraction the narrator has for Sheila Mant lies primarily in the spell she casts over him, the way that she is associated with beauty, parties, and popularity. Consider how the narrator views her at the end of the story, just before he cuts the line, in the moonlight:

Not just Sheila, but the aura she carried about her of parties and casual touchings and grace.

It is this that makes the narrator attracted to her. As the story progresses we see Sheila for who she really is: a egotistical, narcissistic and self-obsessed individual. Note her reaction when the narrator tells her there are bats. Also consider the way that when she talks she only refers to herself. The following is a classic example of her selfishness:

"I have to be careful with my complexion. I tan, but in segments. I can't figure out if it's even worth it. I wouldn't even do it probably. I saw Jackie Kennedy in Boston, and she wasn't tan at all."

This shows how she is driven by fashion and popularity, and thus we can understand why the narrator symbolically cuts the line, letting the tugs on his heart that Sheila's attractions exert on him vanish and disappear.