The Light Between Oceans

“Then he wakes and he’s in a place where there’s just wind and waves and light, and the intricate machinery that keeps the flame burning and the lantern turning. Always turning, always looking over its shoulder. If he can only get far enough away—from people, from memory—time will do its job.” 

Tom is haunted by his memories of the war. He has survived the war that took so many lives, and his survivor’s guilt combines with his existential angst to make for an uncomfortable life. The rotating light of the lighthouse symbolizes Tom’s fretfulness and his inability to resolve his grief and his guilt.

“Of course, the losing of children had always been a thing that had to be gone through. There had never been a guarantee that conception would lead to a live birth, or that birth would lead to a life of any great length […] Like the wheat fields where more grain is sown than can ripen, God seemed to sprinkle extra children about, and harvest them according to some indecipherable, divine calendar.” 

The people of Partageuse have become resigned to loss and grief; they are victims of fate who lack control of their own lives. The war took so many lives, and other forces beyond their control loom, inspiring dark resignation and a casual but self-protective attitude towards life.

“And here was someone just having a bit of fun. It suddenly felt like solid proof that the war was really over.” 

In this quotation, Isabel’s joyful laugh represents to Tom the potential for a happy life after the war. That someone is able to laugh in such unrestrained way suggests that life has resumed a sort of normalcy and that grief does not have to endure forever.

“He must turn to something solid, because if he didn’t, who knew where his mind or his soul could blow away to, like a balloon with ballast.” 

As Tom takes in the view of Janus Island for the first time, the starkness of the vast seascape overwhelms him, and he realizes that he could easily lose all sense of reality while living on this remote island. 

“He looked at his wife, who was smiling proudly at her handiwork. If she wanted to give things names, maybe there was no harm in it. And maybe she would come to understand his way of looking at it, eventually.”

Tom and Isabel see Janus Island differently. Tom sees the island as a whole place, and he is its caretaker. Isabel, on the other hand, sees it as a collection of separate places that she has the authority to divide and name according to her wishes. Though Tom cannot understand Izzy’s impulse, he is optimistic that they will understand each other eventually, foreshadowing other conflicts to come.

“Where had this baby’s soul been? Where would it go? Where were the souls of the men who’d joked and saluted and trudged through the mud with him? Here he was, safe and healthy, with a beautiful wife, and some soul had decided to join them […] He’d been on death’s books for so long, it seemed impossible that life was making an entry in his favor.” 

The unknowable forces of nature inspire Tom to reflect on the path his life has taken. Life seems to come and go at the whim of some outside force that Tom cannot understand or know. Tom is mystified by the way this force is acting on his life; he does not feel as though he has control nor does he possess free will; rather, Tom lives at the mercy of fate. 

“Just like the mercury that made the light go around, Isabel was—mysterious. Able to cure and to poison; able to bear the whole weight of the light, but capable of fracturing into a thousand uncatchable particles, running off in all directions, escaping from itself.” 

Isabel is capable of deep emotion, and she feels sorrow and anger as intensely as she feels joy. Unlike others who seem to accept grief with resignation, Isabel seems equally inclined to fight it and to allow herself to be destroyed by it.

“A life had come and gone and nature had not paused a second for it. The machine of time and space grinds on, and people are fed through it like grist through the mill.” 

Humans are subject to the uncaring force of nature that gives and takes life without care. Isabel feels victimized by this force, so when the boat containing the baby washes ashore, she is compelled to take back control and to determine her own destiny, regardless of whether she is making the morally correct decision. Isabel’s disregard of the question of morality contrasts with Tom’s personal code of ethics.

“I know how much your rules mean to you, and I know that this is technically breaking them. But what are those rules for? They’re to save lives! That’s all I’m saying we should do, sweetheart: save this life. She’s here and she needs us and we can help her.” 

Isabel argues persuasively with Tom, convincing him that they should keep the child. Tom values the black-and-white clarity of the rules set by his employer, and Isabel’s desire for a child introduces a gray area that sends Tom back into the dark chaos he felt during the turmoil of war. He is deeply uncomfortable breaking rules as he relies on them to govern his existence; without rules, there can only be chaos and pain.

“The line between the ocean and the sky became harder to judge, as the light faltered second by second.” 

The symbolism of this passage illuminates the complexity of Tom’s predicament. As the arguments for and against keeping Lucy grow more complicated and personal, Tom’s ability to navigate the line between right and wrong is challenged, just as he is less confident distinguishing between the ocean and the sky. While, on the one hand, he sees the joy that Lucy brings Isabel, her parents, and himself; on the other hand, he knows that others, like Hannah, are feeling equal amounts of pain and loss.

“The town draws a veil over certain events. This is a small community, where everyone knows that sometimes the contract to forget is as important as any promise to remember.” 

The people of Partageuse understand that grief and pain can cause people to act in terrible ways, and they exhibit tolerance towards individuals who prefer to forget their losses. Each person has individual experiences with grief, so it is easier for many to let these actions lie rather than make them worse with an investigation of the complexities of their sorrow.

“Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can’t tell which is which until you’ve shot ‘em both, and then it’s too late.” 

Ralph summarizes the challenge of navigating decisions according to tenets of right and wrong; sometimes, there is no clear answer. As Tom and Isabel become further entrenched in their choice to keep the baby that does not belong to them, the arguments to keep Lucy and to give her up each grow stronger; the right answer becomes less clear with every passing day. 

“He […] gave a bitter laugh at the thought that the dip of the light meant that the island itself was always left in darkness. A lighthouse is for others; powerless to illuminate the space closest to it.” 

As Tom’s feelings towards Lucy deepen, he loses perspective and becomes less able to see moral matters clearly. Though he sought out Janus Rock for the simple, black-and-white life it offered, he finds himself in a place of emotional turmoil and moral confusion that the lighthouse cannot illuminate.

“Time and again, Tom wondered at the hidden recesses of Isabel’s mind—the spaces where she managed to bury the turmoil his own mind couldn’t escape.”

This quote captures the different ways that Tom and Isabel cope with their choice to keep Lucy. Isabel is able to deny the moral ambiguity of their decision, justifying their decision and consciously ignoring the possibility of wrongdoing, while Tom is constantly tortured by it.

“The island swims away from them, fading into an ever more miniature version of itself, until it is just a flash of memory, held differently, imperfectly by each passenger

When Tom confesses to the police, the moral limbo offered by their isolation position on Janus is destroyed. Right and wrong become clear again to Tom, while for Isabel, her invented truth takes over completely. The island symbolizes their ability to rationalize their wrongdoing while alone together; once back in the realm of society, however, their decision is blatantly wrong.

“A lighthouse warns of danger—tells people to keep their distance. She had mistaken it for a place of safety.” 

Just as Tom’s feelings about the lighthouse have shifted, so have Isabel’s feelings changed. Tom once considered Janus Rock a place of refuge, but now it has become a place of danger, while to Isabel, the island enabled her to will a life she wanted into being; now that this life of her design is collapsing, Isabel feels destabilized and unsafe. 

“There was nothing he was going through that the stars had not seen before, somewhere, sometime on this earth. Given enough time, their memory would close over his life like healing a wound. All would be forgotten, all suffering erased.” 

Tom takes comfort in the vast space around him that he remembers appreciating when he arrives alone on Janus Rock; in his small cell, he later imagines the vastness of the stars and finds comfort in knowing that the pain of his lifetime will eventually disappear.

“He has the sensation of being part of a connected whole, of being enough. Another day or another decade will not change this. He is embraced by nature, which is waiting, ultimately, to receive him, to re-organize his atoms into another shape.” 

Tom recognizes the insignificance of his own individual experience, reflecting on the fact that human lives are an insignificant part of a much larger universe. The universe, whose rules humans are subject, ensures that humans appear in nature for a time and then disappear as though they never existed at all. 

“Janus was real. Lucy was real. Everything else was just make-believe.” 

Isabel explains what enabled her to keep Lucy; on Janus, Isabel was able to operate outside the rules that govern civilization. On Janus, it was possible to act outside of ways that are acceptable in society and ignore the consequences.

“Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it's done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.” 

Ralph tells Isabel that difficult experiences do not necessarily happen for a reason, and people do not always receive their fair share of neither peace nor hardship. The guiding forces of fate are portrayed as impersonal, distant forces acting on people without regard for their happiness nor safety.

“Putting down the burden of the lie has meant giving up the freedom of the dream.” 

Tom’s decision to act morally has resulted in unhappiness and deep suffering. By setting things right by returning Lucy to her mother, Hannah, Tom has given up his own dream of being happy. In this moment, the line between right and wrong has blurred as Tom recognizes the pain of his decisions.

“‘We always have a choice.’ A lightness fills her chest, as if a great breath has rushed through her.” 

As Hannah contemplates her choice to punish Tom and Isabel or to forgive them, she recalls Frank’s choice to forgive. Hannah finds freedom in releasing herself from the burden of hatred, and she looks instead to a future with her daughter. Hannah’s exercising of free will suggests that fate does not always overrule the human potential to make decisions.

“There are still more days to travel in this life. And he knows that the man who makes the journey has been shaped by every day and every person along the way. Scars are just another kind of memory […] Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone.” 

Tom, now an old man looking back at his life, sees the events of his life without feeling pain nor fear. Rather, he understands that all the moments of his life, good and bad, have made him the man he is. The good and the bad are equal players, and they are both unfeeling forces that act without neither malicious nor benevolent intent.