Muss Character Analysis

Sel’s friend Muss is a blue mussel in “Somewhere Along the Line the Pearl Would Be Handed to Me.” He’s interested in detaching and living life for the experience of it; he doesn’t think life has, or should have, meaning. Muss grew up on a mussel farm on the West Coast and hitchhiked to the Hudson Bay, where he meets Sel and Gallos. He then leads the two mussels on a cross-country journey back to the mussel farm and ultimately, to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Though Muss and the other mussels become good friends, Muss is selfish and is more interested in doing things he finds interesting than in listening to his friends. Fortunately for him, his friends are for the most part willing to follow him. Sel notes that Muss is obsessed with sex; nearly every time the mussels stop, Muss finds a female mussel to spawn with. Muss is the only mussel still next to Sel when Pearl Harbor is bombed. He survives by dropping down to the bottom of the harbor, where the water is cooler. Sel wonders how Muss will live without someone to watch him.