The Light Between Oceans

Isabel, also known as Izzy, is a “bold, fearless girl guided only by her heart” (393). Rather than feeling subject to the forces of nature, as Tom does, Isabel feels capable of controlling them.

Isabel loses both of her brothers in the war, and because she knows how easily people can slip out of her life, she assertively asks Tom to marry her. When she loses three children to miscarriage, she refuses to accept that nature and fate have determined she shall be childless. Her past sorrows and her desperation allows her to justify keeping the child that washes ashore Janus Rock, and she loves Lucy profoundly, as if the baby were her own child.  

Isabel is confident in her ability to create her own reality, evinced early on by the map of Janus she creates, in which she assigns names to different parts of the island. Her confidence and her desire to live according to her free will also allow her to believe that keeping Lucy is the right decision.

When Isabel is forced to give up her daughter, she is also forced to give up control of her reality, and she finds that she is mentally and emotionally unable to cope. She becomes like a dangerous animal, full of rage. She irrationally lashes out, creating a new reality to exonerate herself from any wrong-doing. When she finally resigns herself to the loss of Lucy, Isabel is so devastated that she must recuperate in a nursing home, where she retreats completely from nature and submits to a controlled environment governed by rules and regulations.

The daughter of a wealthy timber man, Septimus Potts, Hannah becomes estranged from her father when she marries Frank Roennfeldt, an Austrian man whom many mistake for a German. She forsakes her father’s fortune and, though poor, lives happily with Frank.

Upon losing her husband and infant daughter, Hannah becomes emotionally withdrawn though she never gives up hope that she will learn some news of her husband and child. The town and her family believe she has become unhinged because of her refusal to lose hope. 

An Austrian man often mistaken for a German, Frank exhibits enduring patience and forgiveness towards those who feel hatred toward him after the war. He explains to Hannah that it is much easier to forgive than to remember who to hate and how much to hate them, calling that process “exhausting.” Frank’s example of living by values like generosity and forgiveness ultimately leads Hannah to choose clemency over punishment for Tom and Isabel when their theft of her daughter is revealed.