Summary
Foreword
In the Foreword, William Paul Young writes directly to the reader, giving information he has gleaned about Mack's early life and explaining why he will be the one telling the story (rather than Mack himself). Young (who goes by Willie in the book) is a close friend of Mack, having known him for over twenty years. Mack was born in the Midwest, but he left his family home at the age of thirteen because his father was an alcoholic who abused his wife and children. After running away, Mack traveled the world and fought in a war, though Young does not know which. Mack eventually attended seminary in Australia and then moved to Oregon, where he reunited with his mother and sisters, married a woman named Nan, and settled down. Young describes Mack as a quiet, ordinary man, though he had once been prone to harshly criticizing others. Young says that Mack once had "a love/hate relationship with religion, and maybe even with the God he suspects is brooding, distant, and aloof" (12). Mack and Nan have five children: Jon, Tyler, Josh, Kate, and Missy. Young foreshadows that the reader will learn more about Missy later in the book, as well as that something happened in Mack's life that affected him significantly, especially in terms of his religious beliefs. Finally, Young tells the reader that the book was written for Mack's family, not for a broad audience, and cautions that some things in the story might not be completely factual, since he has only recorded things "as truthfully as Mack can remember them" (15).
Chapter 1: A Confluence of Paths
Mack, who works from home making sales calls, is enjoying watching the snow fall outside his house. He is home alone, since his wife took his two children who still live at home, Josh and Kate, to their aunt's house for the day. Mack decides to see if the mail has come, and slogs through the snow and ice to check the mailbox. In the mailbox, he finds one envelope; it has no stamp, no return address, and only his name written on the front. When he opens it, the letter reads: "Mackenzie, It's been a while. I've missed you. I'll be at the shack next weekend if you want to get together. —Papa" (18). Mack is shocked and angered. He starts to walk back toward the house, but he slips on the ice, falls down, and hits the back of his head hard against the ground. Seeing that he has started to bleed, he carefully stands and goes inside. Inside the house, he takes off his wet clothes, removes some of the gravel from his head wound, and bandages himself as best he can. Only then does Mack remember the letter. He calls the post office, but the wise-cracking postmaster named Annie tells him that Tony the mailman didn't make it to Mack's house because of the snow. After getting off the phone, Mack falls asleep.
Mack wakes to to the phone ringing. Nan lets Mack know that she and the children plan to stay at her sister's house because of the snow. Mack doesn't tell her about hitting his head, nor about the strange letter. They talk briefly about how their daughter Kate is doing; Kate has been acting very sad and withdrawn. Nan mentions the name Papa, the same as Mack saw on the letter; it is the name she uses for God because of "the intimate friendship she had with him" (24). When they get off the phone, Mack stares at the note and then puts it in a small tin box. He heats up dinner and takes blankets and pillows into the living room to watch television. As the show goes on, Mack takes a framed photograph of a little girl, holds it to his chest, and falls asleep.
Chapter 2: The Gathering Dark
The next morning when Mack wakes, the snow has melted and his wife and children are on their way home. When Nan arrives, she fusses over Mack's head injury, which he appreciates; he still does not mention the letter. Mack thinks about how he has been experiencing what he calls The Great Sadness since his daughter Missy vanished. He feels it while going about all the parts of his daily routine, and sometimes even has dreams where he sees his daughter running but he is stuck in mud.
Mack thinks back to the circumstances surrounding Missy's disappearance. At the end of summer a few years before, Mack took Josh, Kate, and Missy on a camping trip to Wallowa Lake in northeastern Oregon. They left on a Friday and stopped in Multnomah Falls to buy a coloring book and some disposable cameras. They decided to go on a short hike to see the falls. Missy asked to hear a story her father had told before, that of the daughter of the chief of the Multnomah tribe. In the story, the princess sacrifices her life to save her tribe, the male members of which have fallen mysteriously sick. After Mack finished telling the story, they headed back to the car and continued driving to toward the town of Joseph, a few miles from Wallowa Lake.
That night, they ate steak, brownies, and ice cream. After dinner, they went on a short hike into the woods so they could stargaze without lights interfering. Mack felt very happy and connected to God. After a while, they returned to their campsite to go to sleep. When Mack tucked Missy into her sleeping bag, she stopped him to ask about the story of the Multnomah princess again. Missy compared the princess's sacrifice to that of Jesus and worried that she would also be asked by God to die. Her father assured her that she would not, so she calmed down and fell asleep. Mack tucked his other kids in and silently thanked God.
Chapter 3: The Tipping Point
Mack continues remembering the camping trip during which Missy disappeared. Over Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, Mack and the kids hiked, rented paddle boats, went horseback riding, and played mini-golf. They made fast friends with two other groups camping near them: Jesse and Sarah Madison, a couple, and the Ducettes, a family with three children. On Monday, the whole group took the Wallowa Lake Tramway to the top of Mount Howard. They ate lunch together and hiked to lookout points. Mack held Missy, who had fallen asleep, as they took the tram down the mountain. That night, the three families made dinner together out of their leftover food. After dinner, the Madisons and Mack sat together next to the campfire, and they asked him about Nan, and he told them about her close relationship with God. When they got onto the subject of Mack's father, he became closed off and awkward, and he soon took his kids off to bed.
The next morning, the family was supposed to pack up and go home. However, Josh and Kate begged to go canoeing one last time, and Mack decided to let them do so. Missy sat at a table coloring while Mack cleaned up a breakfast mishap and kept an eye on the lake. Some time later, Mack heard a voice yell "Daddy!" (p.42). He waved at Josh and Kate, but when Kate waved a paddle in return, the canoe tipped over. Mack ran toward the water. Kate's head appeared quickly, but Josh's didn't, so Mack dove in. He found Josh stuck and struggling beneath the canoe, so he flipped the canoe. He dragged Josh, who was unconscious, to the shore and gave him mouth-to-mouth. After a few moments, Josh began to cough and vomit; he was okay. Mack and Kate hugged and cried. They all headed back to the campsite.
Analysis
In The Shack, every chapter begins with a line of poetry, an excerpt from a song, or a famous quote. These are called epigraphs, and it is important to analyze why these were chosen for the beginning of each chapter. The first chapter begins with a quote from a song by Larry Norman, which itself contains an allusion to a poem by Robert Frost. The song and poem talk about roads diverging, which is a metaphor for making important life choices. This quote is likely attached to the chapter A Confluence of Paths because Mack gets a letter from God in this chapter, forcing him to make the important choices about whether to return to the shack and whether to tell Nan about the letter. The fact that Young included the lyrics "I took the road less traveled by" (16) foreshadows that he will make the more risky choice: going to the shack.
Chapter 2, The Gathering Dark, begins with a famous quote by Paul Tournier, a notable Christian physician and author. Tournier, like Mack in The Shack, has told the public that he had a face to face encounter with God, which led him to become a Universalist ("Paul Tournier's Universalism"). Since Young's Universalist views—such as the view that it is possible to love and honor God well regardless of religion—are an important part of The Shack, it makes sense that Young would reference another notable Universalist. The choice of this particular quote, which reads "Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets" (26), lends a dark tone to the chapter where Mack and his three children set off for a camping trip. Though nothing out of the ordinary happens during this chapter, the reader already knows that Missy will disappear at some point on the trip, and the quote foreshadows the confusion and despair to come.
Chapter 3, The Tipping Point, begins with a quote by famous 19th century Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky is notable in the context of The Shack for his passion for Christianity; like Mack, he was strongly spiritual but did not approve of many aspects of the church of his time. The quote that begins Chapter 3 is "The soul is healed by being with children" (33). Unlike the epigraph of Chapter 2, this quote has a tone of hope and positivity. However, in this chapter Mack must save his son from drowning, which leads up to Missy being kidnapped. The contrasting tones of the epigraph and the chapter itself adds to the confusion of the story at this point.
One of the literary devices used the most in this section of the book is foreshadowing. Even in the Foreword, Young lets the reader know that there will be an element of tragedy and mystery later in the book, writing, "Missy, as we were fond of calling her. She...Well, you'll get to know some of them better in these pages" (13) and "But that all changed after a nasty accident with...But there I go again, getting ahead of myself. We'll get to all that in due time" (14). Using foreshadowing keeps the reader intrigued to find out what happens next, especially because Young foreshadows not only that something will happen to Missy but that it will have a great spiritual impact on her father.
An important symbol in this section of the book is Mack's small tin box. Mack took the tin box with him when he left his childhood home due to his father's abusive behavior. At the end of Chapter 1, it is written that Mack puts the letter from God into the box just after he gets off the phone with Nan. Mack had the choice to tell Nan about the letter while he was on the phone, but he does not do so, telling her specifically that there wasn't any mail while he looks at the note. From this, the reader comes to understand that the tin box represents Mack's hidden and repressed thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Mack started hiding his emotions when he was young because of his traumatic experiences at home and after being forced to leave, he has kept the habit of hiding things away. The symbol of the tin box will re-emerge later in the story when Mack learns how to deal with his emotions properly and be truthful with God and his family.
