The Lighthouse: A Novel by Michael D. O’Brien, Post #2

This is the second post on Michael D. O’Brien’s novel, The Lighthouse: A Novel.

You can find Post #1 here.  

 

Summary

Chapters 3 & 4

Chapter 3: The Family

After finishing the Puffin wooden headpiece for the boat, Ethan still had half a log from which he could carve something else.  The sense of loneliness in his life led him to the idea of carving a woman from the log.  He carved a modestly dressed woman and when complete he called her his ”wife.”  He was so happy with carving the wife that he then decided to carve a “baby” to go with the mother.  And then that led to a “big brother” and a “big sister” for the baby.  He had created a family.  That spring, Ethan took his annual walking tour vacation, this year walking around Cape Breton Highlands National Park.  On his journey he met a farmer, Roger, and was invited to lunch with Roger’s family, Clare, Roger’s wife and their five children.  When he departed, he broke down into tears.  When he returned he learned that while he was away the Catholic Church in town had been burned down deliberately.  Ethan then carved a father for wooden family.  Then he carved another father, with a boy on the father’s shoulders.

 

Chapter 4: Tidal Wash

One summer, the year after the church had been rebuilt, a number of intrusions in a span of six weeks came to Ethan’s island.  The first intrusion was a local boat who was hired to show an elderly married couple from Japan, and their somewhat radical granddaughter who served as an interpreter.  The second intrusion was a dozen visitors from a luxury yacht who decided to conduct a hedonistic picnic on Ethan’s island.  Ethan asked them to leave and a conflict ensued, and Ethan’s threat to call the Mounties was enough to chase them off.  The third intrusion was of two boys who moored their boat on Ethan’s island and couldn’t get their boat back into the water.  Ethan helped them push the boat out and suggested they go to a small island where there was an old sailing ship that had fallen apart but made for an adventurous pilgrimage.  The fourth and final intrusion came while he was bathing in the sea.  A young woman, Catherine MacInnis, came by while hiking the coastal road.  She wanted to see the lighthouse, and Ethan accommodated her.  He felt love for her, served her tea, and spent an afternoon with her, but their encounter was not fruitful, and she moved on.

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My Comment:

We're at about 40% of the book here. I'll put together some general thoughts, but I can't say I'm overwhelmed. It's not bad but nowhere am I seeing greatness here. I'm wondering what other people think.

Kerstin Reply:

Some of it falls flat for me too. It is an easy read, but I can’t say I’m captivated, especially after the odd carving of the family.

Ellie Reply:

I am glad I am not the only one. The book is not bad, but I found Ethan's actions a bit strange, like Kerstin said. I understand the longing, but then why did Ethan willingly separate himself from the rest of the world?

 

But I am curious to see where the book is going to lead, especially with the carving.

My Reply to Ellie:

Yeah, I think we are experiencing the novel's contradictions and flaws. See my thoughts on Chapter 3. 

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Thoughts and observations on Chapter 3, “The Family:”

This was the weird chapter.  There are three parts to this chapter: the carving of the wooden family, the dinner with the real family while hiking, and the story about the burning of the Catholic church in town, but the carving of the wooden family was so salient that I had to remind myself what else was contained in the chapter.  Ethan had a wooden log and something compelled him to sculpt a woman out of it.

 

  The forlorn atmosphere in the room pressed upon him, a feeling that something, or someone, was missing. Gazing at his carving tools, folded neatly in their pouch on the countertop, he reminded himself to put them away in the workbench drawer in the other room. As he rose to do just that, his eye was caught by the pine log that tilted against a corner wall. After he had cut off a portion for the puffin carving, he had not taken the unused section out to the shed for storage but had kept it here in the kitchen for the aroma it gave.

So the inspiration comes from a feeling, and my first thought was that it came from a remnant of the psychological trauma of being abandoned as a child.  Perhaps it’s from the “mother wound” he had as a child.  Some psychologists might call his dysfunction as having received a mother wound.  It’s probable that this is what O’Brien is suggesting.  However, the “forlorn atmosphere” that presses upon him could suggest a spiritual communication.  And I think we will learn he has such locutions.  Perhaps it’s both.  However Ethan goes beyond just carving statues.

 

And so he made the woman. Months of labor she demanded of him. Love she asked of him, though gently, without pressure, and like all men he was certain that he was courting beguiling though sometimes he would ruefully smile as he realized it was the other way around. He kept her clothed, though her body was womanly beneath the folds of her dress. He made mistakes with the chisel. Learned from them. Corrected them. How to cooperate with the grain to make a flow of line simulating cloth, implying fertile shapes. How to carve the small feet pressed together. Then the finer details of toes, collarbones, ears, the threads of hair, the definition of human eyelids, more complex than a puffin’s. Splinters festered, were expelled or extracted with a pin. Blood was spilled and soaked into the wood.

 

   Abiding love. It always costs, if it would endure.

 

   And finally, when she was completed, or nearly so:

 

   My wife.

If I’m not mistaken, that’s the second time he bleeds on wood.  Blood while working wood would suggest the crucifixion.  Ethan has certainly suffered from his childhood trauma, so I think that is adequately earned.  It does again put the carving of the sculptures into a religious context.  But talking to the sculpture, calling her his wife, compelled to sculpt a baby, who calls him “papa,” sculpting siblings, and a father to make this a family is just downright creepy.  What I’m not sure is whether O’Brien wants us to think this is just psychological depth of the character or he wants the reader to think creepy.  Is it just poor execution from O’Brien or does he intend this strangeness?  I would like to know other’s thoughts on this. 

If he is just trying to show psychological depth that is very poor characterization.  If he intends, on the other hand, for us to take it as creepy, then how does that fit into the rest of the novel?  Ethan is supposed to be a balanced person in a crazy world, and yet Ethan is crazier than the world?  The story seems to be working against itself.  Second, whether it’s supposed to be psychological depth or a result of severe trauma, the novel could be fatally flawed, and I won’t know for sure that until I get a little further.  Such a trauma in a character has to be narrated.  All O’Brien does is tell us in the most cursory way that his mother abandoned him.  Such an event in the central character’s life that causes him to be abnormal requires dramatic narration. Take for example William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.  There are three characters with their own section in that novel, all with childhood traumatic wounds.  Each character parallels Ethan in dysfunctionality.  Faulkner has flashbacks to the trauma so that the reader experiences it, knows it, and feels it.  I am halfway through the novel and where is this flashback to Ethan’s childhood?  It’s absent.  We are left with no tangible pity for Ethan, and so we start losing interest in him.

Following this creepy section is a section where Ethan meets up with an ideal family of a mother, father, and five children.  Ethan admires them, and when he leaves he cries, supposedly because he longs for the same.  What am I supposed to think about Ethan’s mental state?  We can tell he’s wounded but he seems normal here.  But just a few pages back he sculpted a family where the wooden child called him papa.  The ideal family wish coming after the creepy family section just falls flat.  Is he normal or isn’t he?  To me this is just confusion.

Finally the burning of the church will have implications later in the story. 

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Ellie’s Reply to My Thoughts on Chapter 3:

I agree with you on all points Manny and I love what you said, especially the lack of flashbacks to Ethan's childhood and with having no real pity to hold onto, because we don't know about his hardships. To me, his character seems so incredibly underdeveloped and to me he felt a bit... stereotypical: the lighthouse keeper, the loner, the seemingly aloof, the traumatized (but by what exactly?)... I admit the novel is not as long as, let's say, War and Peace, but I've read shorter books where the characters seemed more tangible.

 

I think the scene with the family was just poor execution of a real longing that was in Ethan's heart. I understood the longing as something that came from beyond, I would even go so far as to say it came from God, but then again, there is no notion that Ethan was ever religious or believes in God except for one conversation, maybe. It all felt a bit strange to me, to say the least. 

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Thoughts and observations on Chapter 4, “Tidal Wash:”

In the fourth chapter, O’Brien gives us four vignettes, none of which still establish a story line except possibly for the fourth one which could potentially develop into a story.  O’Brien, though, does situate the time—“the year after the church was rebuilt.”  When exactly is that?  I think it would have to be the furthest in time that we have reached.  The boat has been refurbished when Ethan is around forty years old.  He had the leftover log, so he sculpted the wooden family.  He went on the hiking trip where he met the ideal family, and then spent the night at Elsie’s house where he learned about the church being burnt down.  So if the church has been rebuilt it must be roughly a couple of years later.  Ethan is now in his early to mid-forties.

Why have these vignettes?  For one thing it allows O’Brien to show life at the lighthouse.  It also allows us to see Ethan interact with the world at large.  More importantly I think is that it allows O’Brien to develop several themes.  The vignettes are little cadenzas, to use a musical term, where O’Brien can highlight themes in parallel variations.

The first vignette highlights what I think is one of O’Brien’s themes of generational decay.  The Japanese tourist are an elderly married couple and their freakish granddaughter, with the blue spiked hair, nose ring, and startling clothes is a forward generation.  After trying to explain why her grandmother got cancer—apparently from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster which would situate the time after March of 2011—Ethan reacts to the granddaughter’s rude explanation.

 

“Oh,” said Ethan, still not understanding, and rattled by the girl’s apparent hostility. He had a vague sense that Japanese culture was based on respect and reverence for family ties. He was confused by how starkly her manner seemed at odds with this. Then he recalled a few young people he had seen in Halifax, dressed like her, behaving like her, so perhaps it was some kind of universal break with the past. But why so much anger? So much disdain?

That universal break from the past is a theme in the novel.

The second vignette is of a group of wealthy people off a yacht that stop at his island to picnic but without permission and with boorish manners.  The women casually remove their tops to sunbathe.  This again suggests the generational decay of modern morals, but frankly there have been boorish, wealthy people in all generations.

The third vignette is a couple of boys, brothers, the oldest thirteen, the other around three years younger, moor a boat on Ethan’s island.  Ethan helps them push their boat out and directs them on a safer adventure.  Are the boys projections of Ethan and his brother if he had lived a normal childhood?  Could be.

The fourth vignette is of a young lady who while hiking stops by the island to look over the lighthouse.  Ethan is infatuated with her, and even sees her as a soul mate. 

 

They stopped and faced each other. They shook hands. She looked him in the eyes. His habit of dropping his eyes was discarded. He tried to say something but did not. He could not. He had no pattern in his mind for this kind of thing, no memory or model or language.

 

 She seemed to understand.

 

She smiled at him and then turned and walked away. He stood on the road looking after her until she was no more than a brushstroke on the horizon. She went over a hillock between grassy dunes and was gone.

 

He nearly ran after her. Instead, looking back at the causeway, he saw it rapidly disappearing, and decided to run to the island. He made it home, wet to his knees.

“He had no pattern in his mind for this kind of thing, no memory or model or language.”  I think that is the takeaway of this vignette.  His childhood experienced lacked a good relationship with his mother, which I think O’Brien wants to suggest has formed his adulthood.  I think this scene could be part of a larger story if she returns and the relationship develops.  I have not gone far enough to see whether that is so. 

The first two scenes highlighting the generational decay strike me as coming close to today’s polemics of the antimodernist reaction in conservative Catholic circles.  I don’t care for polemics in novels, even if I agree with them.  The problem with polemics is that the ideas can be superficial because they are stock political discourse.  If an author wanted to use the polemics of his day in his work, he really has to derive something deeper from them than the common discourse and present them richly.  I’m afraid O’Brien doesn’t even come close here.  Both scenes are flat, two dimensional, and of stock quality. 

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Celia’s Thoughts on Chapter 3, The Family:

In “The Family,” Ethan carves a set of figures: a wife, a baby, two older children, himself, and finally another Ethan carrying a boy on his shoulders. This striking act of creativity reveals his longing for family and perhaps a form of healing through imagination. The presence of “two Ethans” suggests the man he is now contrasted with the man he wishes to be — one surrounded by joy, relationship, and legacy.

Ethan later steps away from the island and meets Elsie, a widow whose husband Norbert was lost in a storm. Her grief embodies the cost of the sea — the very danger Ethan’s light is meant to guard against. She also mourns the destruction of St. Brendan’s Catholic Church by arson, underscoring themes of faith, community, and loss. Through Elsie, Ethan encounters real human sorrow, reminding him that his hidden service connects directly to lives like hers.

________________________________________

Symbolism in Chapter 3

• Symbolic Creativity: The carved family reflects Ethan’s inner ache for connection — something he can only create in art, not in life.

• Foreshadowing through Elsie: Her story of loss ties Ethan’s vocation to real human need, showing that his quiet light is part of the struggle against the sea’s dangers.

• Faith Thread: The burning of St. Brendan’s church functions like a parable — even institutions of faith can be destroyed, yet individuals like Ethan, faithful in hidden service, keep the flame alive.

Celia’s Thoughts on Chapter 4, Tidal Wash:

“Tidal Wash” is a jarring chapter — an invasion after the quiet, reflective mood of earlier sections. Ethan first encounters a group of uninvited Japanese visitors who arrive to view the lighthouse as if it were a tourist attraction. Their presence is intrusive — not hostile exactly, but disruptive. The granddaughter, acting as translator, comes across as a parody of the sullen teenager, casting a pall over the scene. This intrusion is followed by a group of wealthy yacht owners who spread out arrogantly across the island, treating it as a backdrop for their pleasure. Their loud, careless behavior stands in stark contrast to Ethan’s reverent relationship with the place. Where Ethan’s lighthouse and island have functioned like a monastery, these intrusions feel like sacrilege — like tourists wandering into a sanctuary mid-Mass with beer coolers.

 

This clash highlights a contrast of values: Ethan stands for simplicity, humility, and service, while the visitors embody consumerism, arrogance, and thoughtlessness. O’Brien uses these episodes to show that even remote sanctuaries are not immune from disturbance. The outside world will intrude — and Ethan must decide how to respond. At first, the Japanese group and the yacht party seem like villains, but more deeply they serve as symbols of intrusion. The discomfort we feel as readers mirrors Ethan’s sense of desecration, reminding us of a Christian paradox: the light shines for all — even those who mock, misuse, or ignore it.

 

The second half of the chapter shifts tone dramatically, almost like a cleansing after the ugliness of intrusion. Two young brothers, vacationing with their family, run aground on a sandbar. Ethan quietly helps them to safety, performing an unheralded act of service. This reversal underscores his vocation: to help, to rescue, quietly and without recognition. Later, Ethan meets Catherine MacInnes, whose presence is calm, respectful, and resonant. Unlike the others, she does not trample on his solitude. Catherine’s encounter feels like the first glimmer of a meaningful relationship — a bridge between his isolation and the community beyond the island.

 

By the chapter’s end, serenity is restored. O’Brien shows that not all intrusions are desecrations; some bring grace, humility, or friendship. The sea keeps sending people: some exploit, some need saving, and some offer connection. Ethan’s task is to discern which is which. The artistry of “Tidal Wash” lies in its structure: chaos → rescue → encounter. It reminds us that Ethan’s life is not static — people will continue to arrive, each revealing something about his vocation and his capacity for grace.

My Reply to Celia:

Good summaries Celia. My impression was that Elsie was a friend before chapter 3. One thing that I haven't mentioned in my comments is that in germ in these early chapters we see Catholicism. Ethan is completely ignorant of Catholicism, and every so often he comes across it and learns something. Elsie is that Catholic connection for Ethan.

 

I do like how you see the structure of "Tidal Wash." Chaos → rescue → encounter

Frances’s Reply to Celia:

Very nice, Celia. ‘’The sea keeps sending people. . . ‘’ Beautiful insight." 

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Retrospective Thoughts Post Reading of the Novel

Two major criticisms of the novel came to the fore here.  First, Ethan’s character is severely underdeveloped.  Here we are nearly halfway through and it seems he’s just a stick figure of a character.  O’Brien has told us in the most cursory of exposition of Ethan’s childhood trauma.  There needed to be more than exposition for such a critical element to the novel.  There needed to be more character development than just he wishes to seek seclusion.  This isn’t a parable.  A novel requires verisimilitude.  There was still time at this point to back fill such narrative but O’Brien doesn’t ever get to it.  In the end, Ethan is just an idea and not a real person. 

Second, the conversations with his carving figures come across as just creepy.  Is Ethan supposed to be creepy?  No, I don’t think so.  This was just poor execution.  There is a disconnect between this attempt at psychological depth and Ethan functioning in the real world.  Yes, we understand that O’Brien wanted to show a hole in Ethan’s heart from being abandoned and not growing up in a functional family.  But he either needed to provide seeds for such a strange detail of talking to carvings or needed to show that hole in some other way.  Meeting the farmer family with five children was an attempt at that.  Perhaps O’Brien should have developed that more.

I liked Celia’s characterization of the intrusions to the island as a sacrilege.  The characters in these vignettes are also two dimensional, but I think that’s okay for vignettes.  Problem is that all characters (except for Skillsaw) are two dimensional.

The blood on wood imagery is stark in chapter three.  I wish O’Brien had developed that further.  Did I miss it later in the novel?

Sunday Meditation: Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

Last week we were deprived of the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time in lieu of All Souls Day.  This week we are deprived of the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C for the Feast of the Basilica of Rome, that is, St. John Lateran.  When the Feast of St. John Lateran  (Nov 9^th) falls on a Sunday, just as with All Souls Day last week, it supersedes the regular Sunday readings.

Why are we celebrating a church and why St. John’s Lateran Basilica.  You will have to wait for the excellent homilies.  The Gospel reading is of Jesus cleansing the temple, and the supporting readings also speak of temples. 

 

 

 

Here is the Gospel passage.

 

Since the Passover of the Jews was near,

Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves,

as well as the money-changers seated there.

He made a whip out of cords

and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,

and spilled the coins of the money-changers

and overturned their tables,

and to those who sold doves he said,

"Take these out of here,

and stop making my Father's house a marketplace."

His disciples recalled the words of Scripture,

Zeal for your house will consume me.

At this the Jews answered and said to him,

"What sign can you show us for doing this?"

Jesus answered and said to them,

"Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up."

The Jews said,

"This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,

and you will raise it up in three days?"

But he was speaking about the temple of his Body.

Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,

his disciples remembered that he had said this,

and they came to believe the Scripture

and the word Jesus had spoken.

~Jn 2:13-22

 

Fr. Geoffrey Plant gives a superb explanation of the significance of St. John’s Lateran basilica, the Biblical implications, and ties it to the readings of Ezekiel and St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. 

 

That was Fr. Geoffrey at his best.  Do not fail to watch the entire 32 minutes of the homily.  It was perfection.

The pastoral homily is again here embedded from Archbishop Edward Weisenberger from the Archdiocese of Detroit, who provides most excellent photos of the Basilica to go along with his excellent homily,

 

“We celebrate, I would even say crave sacred space.  Building upon that foundation our churches, chapels, cathedrals, and other places of worship are further made sacred by prayer, sacrament, and faith life that we witness there.  We don’t walk into a building where our grandchildren were baptized, where our parents married, or we celebrated funerals of our loved ones the same way we walk into a grocery store.” 

That says it all!

 

 

All Saints Day Meditation: "Take these out of here, and stop making my Father's house a marketplace."

 

I will not post a hymn for a second week in a row.  Last year when this reading came up during Lent, I posted the Cleansing of the Temple scene from the movie Jesus of Nazareth.  Today I will post the Cleansing of the Temple from the series, The Chosen.

 

Both renditions are well done but with some differences.  Which one did you think best?

The Lighthouse: A Novel by Michael D. O’Brien, Post #1

We recently read Michael D. O’Brien’s The Lighthouse: A Novel as part of a group read at my Goodreads book club, Catholic Thought.  I am going to post my summaries, my detailed thoughts as we made our way through each chapter, and any pertinent discussion that was stimulated as part of my comments.  This is the first of what I think will take about five or six posts here on the blog.

 

This is my first Michael D. O’Brien novel read, and frankly I did not know what to expect.  I had heard of him and had wanted to read one of his novels.  Afterall he may be the most distinguished Catholic writer of fiction writing today.  But his more well known works can run anywhere from 500 to 1000 pages, and I never had the time to commit to such a long read. 

Here are some facts about O’Brien that you can easily find on the internet.  He is Canadian, born and raised, and still living there.  He was an agnostic youth but had a conversion to Catholicism when he was twenty-one years old.  He began drawing and painting as a young man but started writing fiction at the age of forty-six in 1994.  His first published novel was Father Elijah in 1996.  He writes, paints, and speaks on Catholic themes. 

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Summary

Chapters 1 & 2

Chapter 1: The Island

We meet Ethan McQuarry, a young man in charge of taking care of a lighthouse off the coast of Cape Breton Island in Canada.  Ethan was apprenticed to an old man who used to care for the lighthouse but the old man died and Ethan was left to run it.  Ethan is a quiet man, finds solace in solitude of lighthouse life.  The lighthouse is situated on a smaller island that in low tide the water allows for a sandy connection to the mainland.  Ethan spends months isolated in the lighthouse but will go to the mainland to get supplies.  He has been on the island now for many years.  There is a deep hurt in Ethan’s past, a wound from his family that has shaped his life and personality. 

Chapter 2: The Boat

A storm had washed up a boat from the sea onto the lighthouse island, wedging it between sea rocks. It was damaged but reparable, and Ethan saw the possibility of returning it to its splendor. Little by little he got the boat free and got it into a shed beside the house. Working in his spare time, he restored the boat, bit by bit, over the course of ten years. He called the boat Puffin after the seabirds that frequented the island. Then he carved a wooden puffin as a figure piece for the boat. Throughout the chapter we get bits of exposition of his story. He had been abandoned by his father before he was born, and his mother was a dysfunctional alcoholic who also abandoned him when he had reached an age of maturity. He was short and lived in streets and woods and though of smaller size he was a feisty fighter. He met a girl and loved her, but she too left him. His solace came in books, and he read voraciously. In books he found learning and knowledge and a better way to live. 

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My Comment:

Before I give any of my thoughts, let me just say that I come to this novel not having read anything by Michael O’Brien, and I have not read this novel before. My insights may not be as sharp or on target in some of our other fiction reads. Just a disclaimer. 😉

 

One thought I’ve had as I have read the first two chapters is that the situation owes a little something to Ernest Hemingway, especially his short story “A Big Two-Hearted River.” Hemingway’s story and The Lighthouse share a central character who seeks solitude after experiencing a traumatic event, and both find solace in a physical work activity within nature. In “A Big Two-Hearted River” Nick Adams has come back from WWI and I can’t remember if he was injured or shell shocked but his mental state is withdrawn into himself. The whole story is about Nick fishing by himself. Ethan too lives and works by himself. His trauma is less acute than a war experience but given the abandonment of his parents it might be deeper and more life altering. Ethan too finds solace in reading, performing the tasks of a lighthouse keeper, and rebuilding the wooden boat and crafting the wooden puffin that will be the boat’s head piece. Both characters keep down the emotions of their trauma with their isolation and the working of their hands.

 

You can read  “A BigTwo-Hearted River” here, though I don’t know if it has typos and mistakes not in the published story. Nick’s trauma is not mentioned in the story, but he is a character in a series of stories, so we know of his trauma elsewhere.

 

I found the narrative technique The Lighthouse interesting. Some people have said the story is slow. We don’t really have a story yet in two chapters. We have a character and a setting, and there is a lot of exposition but a story requires that the character overcome an obstacle or come in conflict with something or have some goal to accomplish. We don’t really have that here yet. Compare this with Lord of the Rings. Frodo has a quest to take the ring across the world to destroy it, and he comes in conflict with all sorts of obstacles and characters who wish to stop him. We don’t have that here at all, though I admit it’s just two chapters.

 

Still it is not pure exposition. There is a passage of time, and I’m fascinated by how O’Brien narrates that passage of time. In the first chapter, the expository focus is the island on which the lighthouse is situated, and O’Brien describes the physical characteristics of the island, the lighthouse, and the town nearby, but he also tells us how Ethan came there and became the lighthouse keeper, and by the end of the chapter O’Brien has summed up quite a number of years.

 

The focus of the second chapter is the boat, and O’Brien brings us back in time to tell us how a boat one day washed up on the island, and then traverses the same time as in the first chapter telling us how Ethan over ten years refurbished the boat. The years were the same for both chapters, but there was no mention of the boat in the first chapter. O’Brien has circled back to fill in what didn’t fit into the first chapter. What you have is this circling narrative that gives power to the central image of each chapter, that is the island and lighthouse in the first and the boat in the second. The images are symbolic, yes, but they also become icons.

 

I have more thoughts on the narrative style, but I’ll leave it here for now. I want to see if O’Brien continues in this way or whether he gives us that obstacle for Ethan to overcome.

 

Ellie Comment:

I am reading this book faster than I should, I hope you will forgive me for it. The story just... sucks you in and I love how meditative, slow but also fast the passage of time seems. The writing feels... simple; more simple than I'm used to, but I like it. I like that O'Brien doesn't use more words than is necessary (I know I am guilty of this when writing). I can't wait to hear others' thoughts!

Kerstin Comment:

The name ‘Ethan’ is Hebrew in origin and means firm, enduring, and long-lived, like a rocky island. And his last name, McQuarry, as in rock quarry, underscore this sense of permanence.

My Reply to Kerstin:

Oh I didn't realize that about the name Ethan. I thought it was Irish Gaelic. But you are right. 

 

Interesting about the rock roots in his last name. There are the sea rocks that protect the shore from the waves. The boat in chapter 2 is washed up and wedged between the sea rocks.

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Some observations from chapter 1, “The Island”

There is a lot of symbolism in the novel.  The fact that the island is connected by a strip of land that is walkable only when the tide is low symbolizes Ethan and his isolated, though connected, state.

 

The island was visibly connected to the mainland only at certain ebb tides, which revealed a narrow bar of packed sand and sea-rounded stones of various colors, a natural causeway extending for just under a mile. It was wide enough for three men to walk abreast upon, and perhaps at its driest it might have supported a motor vehicle with good tires, though in its long history this had never occurred, as no man had been willing to risk it, not even in the days of horse and cart, for the ebb was short and the sands unreliable.

Is that really possible?  Even if there is a strip exposed when the tide goes down, wouldn’t the sand be so soggy it would be not be walkable?  I don’t know.  I’ve never seen such a strip of land.

Ethan has this thought when the librarian saves a book that she thought would interest him.  This comes after she strongly admonished him for bringing a book late.

This is the way people are, he thought. These are habits of speech, of manners and disposition. These are wounds and tempers. These are frail breakwaters that guard the harbor of the soul.

Is that the central theme of the novel?  It strikes me as a thematic statement.

By the way, that pdf link of the book I provided Ellie has a lot of typos in it.  I had to fill in what it left out from that quote.

There seems to be a theme of longing for the opposite sex.

 

In those days, too, he would glance at the young women he passed on the street, yearn for them, and then turn his gaze in another direction. He had a general sense that he was good-looking, with a nice face that drew eyes to him, and a sturdy frame, balanced and taut with muscle. But he also knew that no one would wish to live with him on the island, not even in the bond of marriage, and that love would inevitably founder on the rocks and he would be left desolate. Moreover, his deepest passion was for the lighthouse, which had become life for him. Many of the young women had thickened and greyed over the years, and though they still nodded at him in recognition, they did not initiate conversation, nor did he.

 

I would have loved you forever, he would think as he passed them with a lift of his cap, though we would have broken each other’s hearts.

This is quite normal for a young man, but in chapter three Ethan takes this to a very strange place.

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Some observations on Chapter 2, “The Boat”

1. Time is amorphous in this novel.  It is awfully hard to tell, at least so far, where in time certain events occur in Ethan’s life.  In a stream of conscious, Ethan himself locates the moment the boat washed up.

 

How old was he then? Maybe late twenties? He looked a fair bit younger and regretted the fact, for age and experience seemed to him a more desirable state than that of youth.

In the first chapter we are told that Ethan was eighteen years old when he first came to the island.  So the boat washes ashore about ten years after he began.  We should also note that the old lighthouse keeper died in Ethan’s first year there.  He started his job at eighteen. 

2. We should note that, despite his lack of education, Ethan is a voluminous reader.  

 

His mind was hungry for it all. He had not persisted in high school beyond grade ten, for he had been forced by abandonment and other circumstances to take to the bush, sweating and freezing in logging camps during two long winters, feeding the pulp and paper mills of mainland Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

He is not just a voluminous reader, but one who absorbs much and is able to quote Shakespeare from memory.  To some degree this pushes credibility for me.  I don’t think I have actually met people who dropped out of high school in their second year and had such an intellectual nature as a young man, especially since the time in between was spent on the streets and “bush.”  I know that Michael O’Brien himself did not go to college.  It seems he modeling Ethan on himself to some degree.  I wish I knew more about O’Brien’s life so that I can see what he uses from personal experience and what he doesn’t.

Throughout it all, one of the things that motivates Ethan is a drive to learn.

Now, all these years later, he continued to stock his mind with interesting tales, with practical knowledge, and with vocabulary, learning and remembering. To learn is to survive. To learn is to come closer to finding the key. To learn is to feel the immensity of life, and its sweetness, even in its awe and sadness.

Learning seems to be associated with the transcendence.

3. The refurbishing of the boat brings out the theme of craft.  Again this harkens back to Hemingway who used craft as a theme in a great deal of his works.  Ethan’s handiwork with wood echoes St. Joseph the carpenter and perhaps Jesus Himself.

 

Year after year, his daylight hours were preoccupied with the boat. He was in no hurry, and he wanted the job to be done right. Working in the shed that linked the tower and the cottage, its double doors open wide for light, he was restoring its former glory by degrees. During the winters he eased off, but always with the return of spring he ached to get back into the shed. One whole summer was spent steaming and bending the planks he had shipped in as replacements for the broken strakes. Another summer, he built a forward deckhouse, so small that no more than a single man, or maybe a man and a half, could fit inside it. The following year he scraped the hull and repainted it white. The next winter brought too much snow, and due to staring at white-on-white for countless hours, he had learned that a stroke of color made anything greater than the sum of its parts. So when the warm weather returned again, he painted the hull’s gunwales and the cabin’s trim a brilliant red.

One can’t help thinking that these amorphous years in Ethan’s life mirror the so called missing years of Jesus’s life when all we know is that he worked as a tektōn , which is the Greek word for artisan or craftsman.  Wikipedia has a good explanation of tektōn, especially as it pertains to Joseph and Jesus.  

4. In addition to working as a craftsman, Ethan also strives for artistry.  His slow but deliberate generation of a puffin figure piece out of wood is artistry.  He is recreating nature into a fine art piece. 

 

Day after day, he sat in a corner of the kitchen that he had cleared for the purpose, examining the lines and grain of the log, the log cut down to three feet high, braced temporarily by a square of timber he had bolted into its base. Tentatively at first, with uncertainty of hand, he tapped with wooden mallet and steel chisels, learning the art by trial and error. Though he suffered cuts and splinters, he saw that his droplets of blood absorbed by the wood were part of his investment in the boat, in the figurehead which represented it, for instinctively he knew that any abiding love would have a cost.

 

In short order there was a good smell in the room, replacing its customary atmosphere of rarely washed clothes, rarely washed man. The curl of a wood shaving doing what it should do as it parted from the main form, fulfilling hopes and estimations, gave Ethan joy—sometimes a laugh of pleasure.

 

Oh, now I see how you will be, what you will become. You will be beautiful, and I will love you

 

The shavings drifted onto the floor and were often left there for the night or a few days. Now and then he swept them up and saved them in an old burlap bag for the spring, when he would have his first bonfire of the season, and he would call to the puffins sporting in the surf and tell them about the great Puffin.

 

   These are its feathers. These are the losses that make it what it will become.

The “day after day” beginning of the paragraph echoes the “year after year” of the paragraph on his work refurbishing the boat.  But here it is not functionality that is Etan’s prime concern, but beauty.

5. All these elements—reading, learning, craftsmanship, artistry—seem to aim for another central theme, that of a life lived simply is a life lived well.  He refrains from joining regular society because it is too complicated. 

 

The traffic [on the shortwave] he listened to was mainly marine, though he also spoke with land-bound ham operators, exchanging information about the places where they lived. Now and then, one or another would call him to ask about coastal weather, usually during bad storms. The calls were never long, just checking in, distant people collecting entries for their logbooks. The simplicity of Ethan’s life and his dearth of opinions was not conducive to dialogues.

The simplicity of life is in stark contrast to the outer world.  Ethan stands apart like a lighthouse, and in his simplicity provides society a sturdy foundation from its ever evolving flotsam. 

6. At the end of the chapter, Ethan reflects he is “almost forty.”  He has given the boat ten years.  So we can now piece together that his first ten years were spent learning to be a lighthouse keeper and the second ten working on restoring the boat.

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Kerstin Replied to My Comment:

Manny wrote: "Is that really possible? Even if there is a strip exposed when the tide goes down, wouldn’t the sand be so soggy it would be not be walkable? I don’t know. I’ve never seen such a strip of land.

It is. In the North Sea, the Channel, and other places in the North Atlantic you have plenty of islands that are connected to the main land at low tide and cut off at high tide. The sea is so shallow the distance and land exposed between low and high tides is huge. It is also quite dangerous if you’re not aware of the tide schedules should you get caught too far out from the shore.
The most famous of these islands is Mont Saint Michel in France. The causeway was raised at some point to have access at all times, though I’ve also heard they are considering reversing it. I don’t know where it stands now. We visited many years ago, but the tourist masses were so enormous we turned around and left. If you ever go, go in the off season.
Some islands in the North Sea belonging to Germany and the Netherlands have farms on them and are completely isolated during high tides.

 

 Mont Saint Michel at high tides

 

 Mont Saint Michel at low tide

 

Celia Comment:

Manny, I am so thankful that you described Chapters 1 and 2 so well. Through your description, I see that Chapter 1 is like an overview. We see Ethan over many years, kind of at a high level. Then we start digging into his past. First there is the boat he found and restored. It takes him 10 years. We also learn of his love of books. We learn of the people who have abandoned him. I now see Ethan as a man very glad to be alone because so many people have betrayed him. At 5 foot 4 inches, he is small of stature but feisty. But he would never use his talents to hurt any one. I was intrigued by his journal entries: Why do people hurt each other was one of his items. Very interesting and thought provoking book so far.

Kerstin Comment:

In the first chapter we get a sense how isolated Ethan sees himself from the people who live nearby on the mainland. He truly is an island to himself. He is not bothered by his isolation but rather welcomes it. He doesn’t think his life touches anyone else, so being sequestered away and manning the lighthouse is the perfect occupation for him.

 

The second chapter gives us insights into his broken childhood and we get a better sense why he prefers his isolation. He works on his boat for 10 years and still has to launch it. What is the purpose of this boat? In the first chapter we get the sense that given the rocky nature of the island a boat could be more of a liability than an asset.

Celia Comment:

Chapter 1 Summary: “The Island” is both a setting and a soul chapter. The island itself becomes a character, mirroring Ethan’s interior life—rugged, isolated, sometimes bleak, sometimes startlingly alive. Ethan approaches his lighthouse duties with method and reverence, every action careful and disciplined. These routines reflect both his strength and his loneliness, raising a central question: is his life one of chosen solitude, or imposed isolation? In this opening chapter, we glimpse Ethan’s whole life at a high level—like a sketch waiting to be filled in. We sense that he is a troubled man, though the reasons remain hidden. As the story unfolds, O’Brien will begin to drill down into the details of Ethan’s past—his family, his relationships, the events that shaped him.

 

Chapter 2 “The Boat” marks the first intrusion of the outside world into Ethan’s solitary life. Finding the boat is more than an event—it interrupts the self-contained world we saw in Chapter 1. In literature, boats often symbolize passage, transition, or messages from beyond the horizon. For Ethan, restoring the abandoned lifeboat becomes a metaphor for his own long journey of healing from childhood wounds, including abandonment by both father and mother. He invests twenty years in making the boat seaworthy, carving a puffin as its masthead and naming the vessel Puffin. He even considers buying a motor to make it easier to navigate. By the time the restoration is complete, Ethan is forty years old—a man who has poured decades of discipline and longing into transforming something broken into something capable of carrying him forward.

My Reply to Celia:

Celia wrote: "Chapter 1 Summary: “The Island” is both a setting and a soul chapter. The island itself becomes a character, mirroring Ethan’s interior life—rugged, isolated, sometimes bleak, sometimes startlingly..."

Yes, the island mirrors Ethan's interior life. I called it symbolic but I think mirroring is a better description. Your central question is interesting: "is his life one of chosen solitude, or imposed isolation?" It seems chosen to me, but who or what did you have in mind that it was imposed?

 

Celia wrote: "Chapter 2 “The Boat” marks the first intrusion of the outside world into Ethan’s solitary life. Finding the boat is more than an event—it interrupts the self-contained world we saw in Chapter 1. In..."

The refurbishing of the boat does seem like a process of healing from his childhood trauma. But after he finishes, I don't see any sign of being healed. The most I can see is a certain satisfaction and consolation from the work. But I think healed goes a bit too far, if I may disagree with you. How do you see any healing?

My Reply to Kerstin:

Kerstin wrote: "Manny wrote: "But he also knew that no one would wish to live with him on the island, not even in the bond of marriage, and that love would inevitably founder on the rocks and he would be left deso..."

This childhood trauma has definitely shaped his person. We will see a longing for a proper mother and family in the coming chapters, and his satisfaction with isolation comes from the trauma, perhaps escaping the trauma. Though I will say that from what is dramatized he seems to handle human relationships well. Is there a relationship he doesn't handle well? We will see him interact more in the next two chapters.

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Retrospective Thoughts Post Reading of the Novel

I think we all liked the setting, situation, and premise initiated in the novel.  We were intrigued by the symbolism of Ethan setting himself off either because of his childhood trauma or because he sought a simplicity of life or of both.  The two can and are probably related.  Ethan seeks the simplicity of life because of the trauma.  The lighthouse on a loosely connected island is a symbol for isolation from society but still tethered to society, and yet it is also a symbol of deliverance.  We will see the selfless act of deliverance at the climax, but if such a suggestion was in the early chapters we did not pick up on it. 

Finding the boat will have implications for the climax of the novel and of Ethan’s fate.  We can see in retrospect O’Brien setting up seeds from providence that will providentially develop to fate.