Malcolm Lowry's October Ferry to Gabriola is about the necessity of finding balance between the past and the present. The unknowable nature of the past, and the way it undergoes metamorphosis in the memory, provides a challenge to discovering this balance. False memory and guilt are parodied by the criminal distortions of the media. There is a purposefully oversimplified contrast between the city and the country that arises as ethical tensions. The antiphonal voices of urban and bucolic externalize opposing aspects of the protagonist's self -- the aspects, that is, of guilt and innocence.
