Parting the Sea

The Light Between Oceans, written by M. L. Stedman, follows the life of a lighthouse keeper Tom and his wife, Isabel, as they reside on the tiny island of Janus. Isabel has many miscarriages, after which she finds a baby washed up on shore, whom they keep as their own. Through the language of nature and light, Stedman illustrates how motherhood and miscarriage have the power to tear people apart. While love can help to bridge that gap, ultimately, everyone is isolated with their own thoughts, and while love can protect us, no one is free from the impartiality of nature and truth. 

Isabel is a woman born to be a mother, just as Tom was born to be a soldier, and later, a lightkeeper. Isabel demonstrates the warmth and care of a mother, yet when disturbed, her emotions spiral out of control. To Tom, motherhood is “a mysterious business” which Isabel is “utterly single-minded about” (66). In Isabel’s eyes, motherhood is simply a part of nature: when women become pregnant, their hormones shift, which makes them more sensitive and prepares them to bond with their child. However, Tom doesn’t have the same feelings: men often don’t feel the fatherly rush of love and care until they bond with their children after birth. Following her miscarriages, Isabel is utterly crushed by the loss of a child whom she loved, while Tom is mainly concerned about Isabel’s well-being. Tom, being a military man, is logical and honest, and doesn’t experience grief the same way. This initiates the disconnect between Tom and Isabel. While Tom and Isabel will always love each other, they can never fully comprehend the other’s point of view.

To highlight the separation between the two, Stedman utilizes descriptions of their setting. Tom and Isabel live on the tiny island of Janus, named for a god with “two faces, back to back.” He’s the god of doorways, and is “always looking both ways, torn between two ways of seeing things,” just as “the island looks in the direction of two different oceans” (65). The one thing connecting these two oceans is the island Janus, and more importantly, the lighthouse. This light keeps people safe; as Isabel says, it “can reach ahead in time to save the ship before it knows it needs help” (56). This light is the same as the love that Tom has for Isabel, and that Isabel has for their adopted child, Lucy. While this love can’t actually connect everyone or keep them safe forever, it can offer some protection and a sense of security. 

Two weeks after Isabel’s last miscarriage, a boat washes up on shore containing a baby and a man’s body. Isabel, who is still awash with motherly-love chemicals, insists that they keep the baby, and Tom complies out of love for Isabel. As Isabel took care of the child, she “knew instinctively how to hold the child,” and “the moment seemed to merge into one with another bathing, another face--a single act that had merely been interrupted” (86). For Isabel, this child fills the emptiness of losing a child: she’s able to transfer her feelings for her lost unborn child onto this stranger. Just as the lighthouse’s “lens doesn’t care which light it magnifies,” Isabel’s motherly love and hormones don’t care which child they’re directed at (57). From Isabel’s perspective, she sees this as an act of God, impossible to occur by chance. This viewpoint doesn’t align with Tom’s rigid view of the world, where he feels that he doesn’t deserve the life of a child after witnessing hundreds of deaths in the war. Tom sees things mathematically, balancing out life and death, and he feels obligated to fulfill his duties as lightkeeper. He believes in truth and justice more than the subjective views of “right” or “wrong.” As the baby, Lucy, grows older, Isabel feels like the mother of the child as she has raised Lucy and kept her safe, whereas Tom feels that Lucy’s biological mother, Hannah, deserves the child out of justice and honesty. 

In order to further augment the sense of separation between Tom and Isabel, Stedman highlights the enormity of the ocean and other entities, as well as their isolation on the island. The ocean was described as “only vastness, all the way to Africa…[it] stretched like an edgeless carpet below the cliffs” (3). Regarding the body of Isabel’s miscarried child, she notes “the vastness, the tiny body, eternity.” This vastness also brings about reverence and a sense of helplessness: humans are at the mercy of nature. Tom witnessed many deaths caused by humans throughout the war, but “the quietness of this one” was too much for him: “to see a child torn away from his mother at the very moment of birth...was a more dreadful kind of pain” (93). Nature doesn’t care for love or hope: it is evenhanded, bringing death and causing pain for those who may not deserve it. In the same way, the truth is impartial to care and emotions. The truth merely provides the fact that Lucy is Hannah’s child; it doesn’t offer a “right” or a “wrong” solution to whether or not Tom and Isabel should keep Lucy. Truth has no sense of the love that Isabel has for Lucy, the unfairness of her miscarriages, the grief that Hannah feels when she fears Lucy is lost forever, and Isabel’s grief when she must return Lucy. 

While Tom and Isabel have very different opinions, their love for Lucy eventually bring them together and helps them cope with the loss of Lucy, just as their lighthouse saves ships from crashing into the rocks of Janus. Isabel’s role as a mother, and the cycle of hope and grief created by miscarriages, leads her to value her relationship with Lucy above all else. Tom, on the other hand, is molded by his experiences in the war, and instead views honesty and justice as most important. To enhance this feeling of separation, Stedman forces each character to struggle with the impartial forces of nature and truth. Nature takes Isabel’s children away, yet sends Lucy to her, and truth forces Tom to give Lucy back to Hannah, yet fixes Hannah’s broken family. Through these two forces, Stedman advances the idea that there is no “right” or “wrong:” both Tom and Isabel's feelings and opinions are equally valid.

Growing Up Grief

As a young girl, Grief lived in a fantasy world. She painted her room bubblegum pink and collected china dolls. Her favorite toy, however, was a grinning theater mask that she wore to cover the drooping corners of her lips, pale moon-grey skin, and bloodshot eyes. After school, she loved having tea parties with her imaginary friend, Denial. Denial and Grief played outside, as well, and skipped around in dandelion summer dresses even on blustery winter days.

As Grief grew older, her imagination grew dimmer, and Denial faded away. The new girl in town, Anger, barged into Grief’s room, shouting at her to stop moping over Denial’s departure and break something. Grief’s room grew cluttered with the torn-off heads of her once beloved china dolls, whom she blamed for Denial’s disappearance. When Anger came to play, Grief’s parents tiptoed around her room. Grief kicked her dog and spilled milk on the floor. She screamed bloody murder, dyed her hair black, and got four tattoos of her new favorite expletives. Her parents breathed a sigh of relief when Anger was sent to juvy.

Soon, Bargaining knocked on her door. Lonely from Anger’s departure, Grief was easily drawn into a cheap sale. She didn’t notice the stains on his thrift-store suit or his untrimmed mustache as she gazed longingly into his suitcase of wares. He promised her the world, offering to help her bring back Denial and Anger for the small price of babysitting his child, Depression. Grief agreed, of course. She invited Bargaining in to wait for Depression to arrive. He walked in, leaving his moth-eaten shoes on as he limped through her living room. He faced Grief, and lay down the truth: he couldn’t bring her friends back. It was all Grief’s fault, he said, and had she just imagined harder, had she sheltered Anger, they would be here with her now. The news crushed Grief, and Bargaining packed up his suitcase. As Bargaining opened up the door, a small, broken child walked in.

Depression ignored Grief, and hobbled up to Grief’s room. She stripped the sheets from Grief’s bed and lay curled on the unforgiving spring mattress, sobbing. Grief, horrified at the loss of her friends and saddened that Bargaining didn’t exactly keep up his end of the deal, laid down, as well. After that day, Grief and Depression spent many years as friends, locked away in Grief’s blacked-out room. Depression slowly whittled away Grief’s life, encouraging her to drop out of school and give away what was left of her china dolls. Together, they wrote poetry and listened to sad songs. They stopped eating. Their bones grew prominent, their nails brittle, their hair sparse. One morning, Grief woke up to silence: Depression’s sobbing had ended. Her body was stone cold. Grief tried to move, and realized that she, too, was freezing cold, her body limp.

As their last breaths mingled together in the stale air, Grief’s curtains flung open to reveal the bright sun outside. A glowy yellow being, the angel Acceptance, floated into her room. As Acceptance collected the scrawny body of Grief in her arms, Grief felt her bones radiating with warmth and light. Her friends were all gone, but she felt filled with the peaceful stillness of the universe. Most importantly, she knew she’d soon join her friends in heaven, and this gave her hope.

Pray For Me

(also on google docs) 

Dearest Diary

My dearest diary,

The most beautiful darling girl washed up on our shore today. I’ve named her Lucy. In my heart, I know she’s meant for me. It’s only been two weeks since I lost my child...how could God intend for anything else? He answered my prayers. I have a child, and Lucy has a family.

I feel the same love for her that I felt for the others, only now everything is more real. I can hold her in my arms, feed her, clothe her, bathe her. She’s already taken a liking to the Lights: watching the beams dance on the ocean makes her smile. Oh, her smile is just gorgeous. It fills me with love and hope. Her smile makes everything alright: how can I be wrong if my child is so happy?
Tom seems to think we should send Lucy to shore, but I just can't bear to give her up. We found a sweater in the boat that brought her to us--it was probably her mother's, and she drowned at sea. The chances of Lucy surviving the harsh waters and arriving on Janus without a scratch are so slim that I can't believe it was meant to be any other way. Tom is so worried about following the Lightkeeper's rules and recording everything in his logbook, but it's all for no reason. If we send her back, she'll just get put into foster care. Isn't it better for her to be here with us, even if it is illegal? Isn't this truly the "right" way of doing things, with love and care?

I’ve got to go now, Lucy’s getting hungry.

Isabel

Lightkeeper's Logbook [Or, some of Tom's lies]

Lightkeeper’s Logbook [Or, some of Tom's lies]

April 27th, 1926

Janus Rock

Manchester Queen bound for Cape Town [There was another boat, too, with a child, Lucy, her father, and a sweater. Isabel says it’s Lucy’s mother’s, says she’s dead by now.]

63 degrees Fahrenheit [My heart is slowly warming to Lucy, but I shiver at the thought that her mother might still be alive.]

wind: 3, fairly calm [The calm waters brought Lucy safely to us, but my stomach churns at the pace of 12, a hurricane brewing inside.]

Light on at 5:41 today. [The light in Isabel’s eyes is on, as well. Lucy gives her hope, I can tell.]

Isabel gave birth to our child, Lucy. [Her name means light. How can I take her away from Isabel? She’s brought us together, and Isabel loves her like her own.]

Premature birth, no other complications. [Except that she’s not ours.]

7 lbs, 1 oz. [Her father’s body was a heavy 170 when I dragged him ashore and threw him in a grave. The sound of his corpse hitting the bottom resounds in my mind. My lies will torture me.]

Radioed to shore to tell family. [But no one will radio Lucy's mother, if she has one. No one will tell their family that Lucy is alive, her father dead.]

We’ll visit grandparents on our shore break in June. [But who will find her mother? Who will mourn her father’s death?]

We love her. [Her real family loves her, too.]

Dear Reader

Dear Reader,

With this multigenre blog, I attempted to explore the relationship between Tom and Isabel throughout the novel, The Light Between Oceans. I mainly focused on how Isabel copes with grief after losing her children, and how this affects her interactions with Lucy. Isabel's motherly hormones and her love for Isabel contrasted with Tom's logical and honest nature create a rift in their marriage. I researched miscarriage, motherhood, and grief to help me compose my essay and genres. Throughout my pieces, I wove in the golden thread of the lighthouse. In the novel, the lighthouse stands as a physical symbol for hope, love, and safety in the face of danger. Stedman's eloquent descriptions of the Lights enhance the story, and I hoped to include some of that in my writing, as well.

The qualities piece on grief, entitled "Growing Up Grief," I explore the various stages of grief through personification. Isabel experiences profound grief after each miscarriage, as well as after Lucy is returned to her real mother, Hannah. In the same way, Hannah experiences grief at the loss of Lucy and her husband, and her grief is worsened, as she is uncertain of their fate for many years. I tied in the idea of the Lights at the end with the character Acceptance, as the Lights bring hope and peace for the future even after all of Isabel's and Hannah's grief. This is reflective of how the book ends, as well: I don't want to spoil it, but there is a happy and hopeful ending.

In my poem, "Pray for Me," I juxtapose Tom's and Isabel's feelings about Lucy to highlight their separation, as well as the love and care they share for Lucy and each other. I feel like this genre worked really well for expressing my focus of human separation and connection. In this poem, the Lights function as a symbol of hope: the hope that Isabel feels upon adopting Lucy is contained on their island, and Hannah is left hopeless until Tom reaches out to her.

Isabel's diary entry and Tom's logbook also helped to explore the two characters' differences. This provided a more artistic expression of their personalities. Isabel's diary entry is full of love and happiness, and she writes her feelings explicitly, whereas Tom's is very logical and worried, and his true thoughts remain in his mind, unwritten, as he has a very closed-off personality. Tom isn't usually a reflective person: the most that he writes is a few meticulous notes in his logbook out of obligation, but his thoughts (as shown in brackets) are a jumble of emotions. The Lights here show Isabel's hope and love for Lucy, as well as their net of safety and isolation from the reality of their situation.

I hope you enjoy my blog!
Erin

Works Cited

Axelrod, Julie. "The 5 Stages of Loss and Grief." PsychCentral. Psych Central: 2006. Web. 10 May
2014.

Evans, Kate. "Miscarriage: The Loneliest Grief of All." The Independent. The Independent, 27 January 2009. Web. 10 May 2014. 

Kripke, Kate. "13 Things You Should Know About Grief After Miscarriage or Baby Loss." Postpartum Progress. n.p., 16 May 2013. Web. 10 May 2014

Stedman, M. L. The Light Between Oceans. New York: Scribner, 2012. Print. 

Parts of a Whole

First, some plot clarification on my novel, The Light Between Oceans, by M. L. Stedman. It was Isabel's idea to keep the baby, Lucy, as her own. Tom was a very meticulous, hardworking man and hated having to lie in his lighthouse keeper's books about finding the baby and the baby's father's body, but he did so out of love for Isabel. When people find out that Lucy actually belongs to a woman named Hannah, Tom pretends that he forced Isabel to keep Lucy, effectively protecting Isabel. Tom ends up in jail, and Isabel returns to live with her parents, and refuses to forgive Tom for quite a long time. Lucy is also horrified at the prospect of living with her biological mother, who she treats like a stranger. Eventually, Tom and Isabel reconnect, and Lucy grows up with Hannah, and still maintains a passion for the ocean that she discovered while with Tom and Isabel.

The setting of the island, Janus, is crucial to the story. Tom and Isabel are isolated from the rest of the world, and rules seem insignificant with no one to enforce them. The island is entirely different fro the mainland, and when the two first marry, Tom frets: "would Isabel love Janus as much as he did? Would she understand his world?" (55). This isolated, natural setting allows Stedman to incorporate beautiful, poetic descriptions of the island, the ocean, and the lighthouse which parallel some of the character struggles. Stedman illustrates how "the light reaches over the curve of the earth-beyond the horizon," and Isabel notes that "it's like seeing into the future...you can reach ahead in time to save a ship before it knows it needs help" (56). This light is something Tom needed: while he thought they should return Lucy immediately, he eventually grew comfortable with the idea, and was unaware that they would ever be caught. His love for Isabel and his Lucy is the light that saves him: he cares enough for the two of them to spend time in jail and attempt to protect his family by lying.

Janus also has a significant name: the island bears the name of the god of doorways, who has "two faces, bac to back" and is "always looking both ways, torn between two ways of seeing things." This is similar to the separation between Tom and Isabel discussed in the previous blog post. Additionally, this mirrors Tom's hesitation about Lucy. Just as "the island looks in the direction of two different oceans," Tom both wants to keep and care for Lucy, and return her to her real family (65). He is torn between love and justice, his family and another's, loyalty and honesty.

Another description that stood out to me follows Isabel's mapping out the island. Tom feels saddened at how she dissects the island, the splitting off into the good and the bad, the safe and the dangerous. He preferred to think of it whole" (62). This parallels some of the interactions between Tom and Isabel following her miscarriages and the loss of Lucy. When Tom does something wrong, such as hinting to Hannah at the safety of her daughter, Isabel immediately labels him as disloyal and evil. Others encourage her, suggesting that Tom murdered Lucy's father instead of finding him washed up dead on the island. However, Tom always stays loyal and in love with Isabel. Even when she blames him for everything, he sends her a message from jail, telling her "I understand" (253). He considers Isabel's whole person, forgiving her for her mistakes and loving her nonetheless.

The Mystery of Miscarriage

For my quarter 4 independent reading, I chose The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman. The story follows the lighthouse keeper, Tom, and his wife, Isabel, the sole residents of the island Janus. Stedman describes how, after three failed pregnancies, they find a baby washed up on shore and pretend it is their biological child, naming her Lucy. Eventually, the truth about Lucy is revealed, and she is forcefully returned to her biological mother, Hannah. Stedman illustrates this story with nautical and light language to illuminate the hope and limitlessness of humanity, as well as the vast and disheartening disconnect among individuals. I chose to research the psychological changes that occur during pregnancy, as well the grief that accompanies miscarriage, to shed light on Isabel's motivations to "adopt" the child they find.  

During her pregnancies, Isabel feels very attached to her babies. Biologically, a woman's body is flooded with hormones during pregnancy, which makes them more sensitive and prepares them for motherly bonding with their child. Isabel is determined to be a mother; Tom describes her as "utterly single-minded about it" (66). However, Tom doesn't get the same feelings of fatherhood: he is "nervous and excited and worried" at the prospect of becoming a father, and ponders whether or not it was fair to raise children on such an isolated island (72). While Isabel looks ahead to her new child, Tom looks back on his past in the war: "he'd been on death's books for so long, it seemed impossible that life was making an entry in his favor" (70). This begins the disconnect between the couple: their feelings regarding parenthood are too vast in different ways for either of them to understand, just as the two oceans are separated around their lighthouse.

Isabel has three miscarriages, and following each she experiences profound grief and depression. Following a miscarriage, women experience an abrupt hormonal change which leaves them susceptible to postpartum depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders, so she's very emotionally unstable. This is clear in her irritability with Tom when he sends for a piano tuner, whom she mistakes for a doctor, and accuses him: "you went behind my back...you should be ashamed of yourself!" (77). The hormones produced during Isabel's pregnancies also create intense feelings of motherhood that have no direction after her miscarriage. Biologically, her quick attachment to Lucy, whom they find washed up on their island one day with her dead father, is logical. Because Tom hasn't experienced as great of a change, his rational side still encourages him to send Lucy back to the mainland. While Isabel and Tom remain emotionally connected and very in love throughout the rest of their relationship, there's a clear disjoint in their thought patterns surrounding Lucy.

Additionally, it is much harder to grieve for an untraditional loss. After her miscarriages, Isabel tries to substitute by planting driftwood crosses on the cliff, but she still suffers tremendous sadness. Miscarriages are surrounded by an immense amount of stigma, and those who haven't experienced a similar loss may not fully understand the pain of losing someone who hasn't even been born yet. After Lucy is taken from Isabel, she feels a similar grief: "everyone I've lost—they've just been ripped away—into nothing. Maybe a funeral would have made...a difference" (263).This grief is something that connects Isabel to Lucy's biological mother, Hannah. Hannah loses both her child (renamed Lucy) and husband when they take a rowboat out to sea. She has no clarity on their fate for many years: she is left grieving for people who may still be alive, and has no bodies or funeral to give her a sense of closure.