43 pages • 1 hour read
Beyond the Bright Sea
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Symbols & Motifs
Names and Identity
Beyond the Bright Sea’s main characters have multiple names, symbolizing their search for identity.
Each of Crow’s names has a distinct, significant meaning. The name Osh gives the baby he finds is an indelible reminder of this event—“hoarse with crying,” she “cawed over and over” (4), so he decided to call her Crow. She grows to epitomize that name with her physical appearance. Crow later learns that her mother Susanna gave her the name Morgan, a name that has several referents. Morgan honors Nurse Evelyn Morgan for caring for Susanna in the leper colony on Penikese. Morgan also means “bright sea” in Celtic, alluding to the importance of the sea in life on the Elizabeth Islands (173). Each of Crow’s names symbolizes a piece of her origin story—until Osh reveals that she has a third, secret name, one that means daughter. No longer armed with only names that denote the past, Crow now has one that points to the future.
Osh also has multiple names, layered to account for his gradual ability to share the story of his own past. When he first arrives on the islands and refuses to speak to anyone, the summer people call him The Painter—a name that reduces him to his work. Maggie dubs him Daniel because “she felt bad yelling across at [Osh] without a proper name” (46). Eventually, he accepts the name Daniel because of what Maggie means to him. To Crow, he names himself Osh, without telling her what the significance of this word is in his native language. When Osh opens up, he reveals full name in his native language to Crow and Maggie. This action acknowledges that he feels comfortable with them. At the close of the novel, Osh deepens this emotional connection, revealing to Crow that “Osh” means “father” in his native language, symbolically confirming once and for all that he fills that role for her, no matter where either came from, or what names they had.
Birds
References to birds occur throughout Beyond the Bright Sea, even in small things like the leper colony island Penikese being transformed into a bird sanctuary, and its gamekeeper Sloan resembling “a sandpiper,” with “a nose like a beak” (102). Most significantly, birds symbolize Crow and her defining characteristics, directly through her name and her physical features like the “curve” in her nose and a birthmark on her cheek that “looked like a feather” (5), and indirectly in their association with concepts like escape and freedom. Crow feels a “kinship” with crows “that drifted over from the mainland like lost kites,” for they “didn’t seem to belong on the islands. And sometimes I felt like I didn’t either” (7).
Having left the place of her birth to arrive in a new home—only to return to the first site later—Crow’s life follows a bird-like pattern of migration. Osh’s insistence that Crow innately knows where to find what she is looking for also echoes this migratory quality.
Still, crows are not migratory birds. Instead, crows represent cleverness, and Crow is proud to be “named for a bird that was smarter than most” (7). Repeatedly, Crow proves her intelligence and ability to outsmart others, from figuring out the clues contained in the tattered letter from her mother, to tricking Kendall to prevent him from claiming the treasure.
The Sea
The sea is “an always kind of thing” in the characters’ lives, (38). It surrounds the Elizabeth Islands, provides Osh and Crow with food and livelihood, and defines their environment’s beauty and danger. Crow personifies the sea in her descriptions, which is comprised of solid features, like sand and rocks, and the fluid, ever-changing forces of water, wind, and weather.
Having brought Crow and Osh to their island, the sea symbolically washes away their histories. Crow comes from the sea, floating onto Osh’s island; Osh arrived there by sailboat years earlier. When Crow grows anxious about her origins, Osh assures her that the sea is in some ways another birth parent to her, since her parents “had the best of all possible reasons […f]or trusting the sea to take you safely away and deliver you safely to a different shore” (129). Osh identifies Crow with the water; when she asks why he’s never painted her portrait, he replies, “I have. Over and over again. Every time I paint the sea” (176).
The novel’s title complicates the significance of the sea in ways that echo what Osh says. Crow’s birth name is Morgan, which means “bright sea” in Celtic—she really is a creature of the seas around the island. But the title raises the question of what is beyond the bright sea, or why it is important to get past it. At first, Osh is uneasy when Crow reaches for her origins, desperate to reconnect her with the sea rather than with flesh and blood birth parents: “When I asked questions about pearls or tides, he did his best to answer them. But when I looked beyond our life on the islands, he became the moon itself, bent on tugging me back, as if I were made of sea instead of blood” (6-7). Eventually, she does manage to reach the “bright sea” when she learns about the woman who gave birth to her and her birth name. At the end of the novel, in realizing the beautiful life she has built with her found family, Crow has gone beyond the bright sea, grown into something even more than the Morgan of her birth.
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