47 pages • 1 hour read
M.L. StedmanThe Light Between Oceans
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2
Chapter 10 Summary
The opening of Part Two returns to the day of the dinghy’s arrival to the island. Isabel tends to the graves of the three babies she has lost, one of whom was stillborn just two weeks prior, when Isabel was seven months pregnant.
Now, with the shipwrecked infant in her arms, Isabel easily shifts into motherhood, soothing, bathing and dressing her. She is overwhelmed with feelings: awe, amusement, reverence, and the pain of her own losses.
By law, Tom is required to record every occurrence on Janus in his logbook. After the chaos of war, Tom finds comfort in faithfully writing down the facts of every incident. Therefore, he grows uneasy at Isabel’s request to wait a day before recording the incident of the baby’s arrival.
His uneasiness grows as Isabel begins breastfeeding the child and names her “Lucy,” a name that means light. A sense of foreboding enters into Tom’s psyche as his anxiety over Isabel’s growing attachment to the baby intensifies.
The next morning, when Tom is supposed to report the incident, Isabel calmly suggests that they keep Lucy and tell visitors that she is the child they had lost weeks before. Isabel suggests that they not report the dead man either, to avoid questions. She reasons that the mother of the baby must be dead, and that they would be saving a life by preventing the baby from being sent to an orphanage.
Tom resists Isabel’s subterfuge, and Isabel accuses Tom of cold-heartedness.
Chapter 11 Summary
Tom digs a grave for the dead man, awakening memories of the daily burials he became coldly accustomed to during the war. He asks God for forgiveness for himself and for Isabel, finding compassion for her and believing her to be an essentially good person. Tom finds a silver rattle in the dinghy, and he resolves to join Isabel in believing the story she has created about the child; if Tom can believe that the baby is an orphan, he will be able to sleep at night. He sets the dinghy out to sea to be carried away by the current.
As Tom develops an attachment to the baby, Isabel continues to justify their decision not to report her. Tom sends a deceitful message to shore, recording their child’s birth. Isabel helps to compose the message and the lie comes easily to her; Tom feels heavy and guilt-ridden by the deception and the weight of their decision.
While Isabel blooms, Tom’s guilt rattles him. To Tom, rules are what stand between man and savagery; rules exist to protect men from becoming monsters. At the same time, he is unable to deprive Isabel of the baby and to deprive the baby of Isabel and leave the child to be orphaned.
Tom begins to have nightmares, but Isabel sleeps peacefully.
Chapter 12 Summary
Ralph and Bluey arrive in the store boat with supplies. They meet Lucy, while Tom and Isabel practice their lie for the first time. Bluey admires the fancy handiwork on the rattle, which makes it distinctive. Isabel explains that the rattle was left over from before. Tom realizes that he is starting to love the child, and he wishes that she belonged with them.
The remoteness of Janus enables Isabel to live according to the stories she tells herself; no other people exist to challenge her version of the truth. Lucy grows and thrives, and Isabel is a wonderful mother. She thanks God each night for her blessings.
Isabel begins to experience months of heavy and painful bleeding, headaches, and sweating through the night, followed by months of no bleeding at all. She promises to go see the doctor during their shore leave.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
As Part 2 begins, readers are returned to April 27, 1926, the day the dinghy washes ashore. The history of Isabel and Tom’s losses and the horrific account of the stillbirth of their third child, described in Part 1, illuminate the significance of the dinghy’s arrival. Isabel’s desperate and deep emotional connection to the baby becomes clear.
These chapters also return to the theme of fate and free will, exploring the existence of a natural force that gives and takes life without regard for human suffering. Isabel loses their third child: “A life had come and gone and nature had not paused a second for it” (111). Tom and Isabel are powerless victims to this force: “The machine of time and space grinds on, and people are fed through it like grist through the mill” (111). As Lucy grows, Isabel grows more comfortable with the lie they have crafted, and she actually begins to believe that this experience with Lucy is God’s will. She “floats further and further into her world of divine benevolence, where prayers are answered, where babies arrive by the will of God and the working of currents” (134). Isabel’s attempts to combat the forces of nature and impose her own will over her destiny cause Tom to feel guilt and tension; his respect for the forces of nature and fate conflict with Isabel’s stubborn insistence that they live according to their own rules.
Tom continues to be plagued by guilt. Isabel has managed to introduce a gray area into the black-and-white reality of the island that has saved Tom from the savagery that so many of soldiers were victim to, and his sense of grief and anxiety return. Tom is willing to make a concession because he loves Isabel and wants her to be happy and because he has begun to love Lucy. He is becoming entrenched in the lie, and the storm of his emotional turmoil is reflected in the changeable weather.
