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.
Symbols & Motifs
The Lighthouse
The lighthouse symbolizes the elusive nature of right and wrong. As the light rotates, it illuminates only one aspect while leaving the rest temporarily in darkness; the movement of the light demonstrates that what seems right in one moment could easily seem wrong in the next.
The lighthouse, at different points, symbolizes safety for some but danger for others. Tom sees the lighthouse as a safe place after the war, a place where he can be alone and his perceptions of right and wrong are clearly defined. This clarity is a relief to Tom after the moral ambiguity of war. Once he brings Isabel to Janus, however, the safety of lighthouse is less certain.
The lighthouse comes to symbolize danger, signaling ships to stay away, lest they be destroyed on the rocky shores of the island. The isolation of Janus’s lighthouse has created an opportunity for Tom and Isabel to pretend that right and wrong do not exist, that one can act without consequence; this escape from reality proves dangerous when Lucy appears on the shore of Janus Rock in the boat on that fateful day.
Janus Rock
The island symbolizes life outside the parameters of society, “not quite belonging to the land, yet not quite free of it” (13). Janus Rock offers an escape from society, but the island is not completely free of the rules that govern society. The island seems to provide Tom and Isabel an escape from moral obligation.
Tom, afraid of what the war had done to the men like him who lost parts of themselves during the fighting, brings with him a strong sense of right and wrong that the simplicity of life on Janus allows him to maintain. The isolation makes his life very clear-cut as his one responsibility is to take care of the lighthouse. The isolation of the island, however, also has the power to release people from accountability, from a sense of what is “solid.” Its “nothingness,” its lack of “edges,” has the potential to alter one’s perspective on humanity and society dangerously. For example, the isolation of Janus drove the former lighthouse keeper, Docherty, insane. This isolation also allows Isabel to concoct a story that permits her to keep Lucy, which never would have happened within the parameters of society. Isolation, as represented by Janus Rock, is dangerous because it allows one to make decisions without the moral compass that society imposes.
Storms
The weather is stormy at significant points in the story, such as moments that drive characters to make moral decisions. The turmoil of nature parallels the storm of emotions and thoughts that surround the most significant moments of Tom and Isabel’s life.
For example, a storm blows during the stillbirth that ends Isabel’s third pregnancy, and it is the death of this child that seems to irreparably alter Isabel’s state of mind. The turbulent weather outside their home reflects the emotional turbulence within Isabel that later allows her to create a narrative that justifies her decision to keep Lucy. The tragic outcome of Isabel’s third pregnancy lends a finality to Isabel’s dream of becoming a mother, and against the backdrop of this sorrow arrives a miracle that is Lucy.
As Tom and Isabel argue about whether to give Lucy back to her mother, who lives in Partageuse, Tom looks at the ocean, where “[t]he line between the ocean and the sky became harder to judge […] There would be a storm before morning” (166). Tom’s prediction foreshadows the emotional and psychological storms to come, such as the moment when the police come to Janus to question Tom and he confesses, which also takes place during a storm. As well, when Hannah comes to Isabel and challenges Isabel’s loyalty to Tom by saying Isabel can keep Lucy if she swears that Tom is to blame, a storm is raging. When Isabel goes to the police to either implicate or exonerate Tom, it is storming. The dangerous tension that exists between individuals in the novel is exacerbated by the violence of nature as the storms threaten to do physical damage that parallels the potential of emotional harm.
Tom and Isabel both find comfort in the fact that Lucy is not frightened by storms. They have taught her to respect, but not fear, the power of nature and to use the light to navigate safely through stormy times: “And it was dark but the lightkeeper wasn’t scared because he had the magic light” (367-68). From her child’s perspective, Lucy articulates the ability to use a moral code to navigate the storm of difficult choices, illustrating that sometimes, the difference between right and wrong is simple.
