The Lighthouse: A Novel by Michael D. O’Brien, Post #5

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

You can find Post #1 here.  

Post #2 here.  

Post #3 here.  

Post #4 here. 

 

Summary

Chapter 9: A Place Where We All Can Live

The last item of the work room to complete was to varnish the wooden floor, and with that done they moved in Ethan’s tools and carvings.  Ethan was so taken by Ross’s generosity that he left a thank you note upstairs.  After dinner they sat around and talked and Ross asked Ethan about his background.  With hesitation and sadness, Ethan finally revealed about his upbringing by a single mother who later left him.  Finally it was time for goodbye, and the two had grown so close that it was difficult parting.  As a parting gift, Ethan gave Ross the carving of the boy on the dolphin.  As Ross departed in his boat, Ethan had the insight that the girl he had made love to when he was sixteen was Ross’s mother, and that Ross was his biological son.  As Ethan pieced together clues, the puzzle seemed to fit.  After debating if he should let Ross know, Ethan decided against it.  In October while in town Ethan stopped at Biggs’s store and gave him the bell that had been on the wrecked boat his ancestor had survived.

Chapter 10: The Storm

A week later, Ethan found out that his lighthouse was going to be closed down by the government and an automated beacon was going to replace it.  Ethan, if he wanted, could be transferred to another lighthouse.  Ethan debated within himself as to what to choose.  By winter he decided to quit, receive his pension, and use most of his personal savings to buy the lighthouse from the government.  In the heart of the winter, isolated in the lighthouse carving more statues of his “family” Ethan also wrote in his journal a note to Ross explaining their biological relationship.  While writing he heard on his radio a call for help by a boat in the midst of a storm sinking in the winter cold Atlantic.  After coordinating how to find them, Ethan jumped into his Puffin and raced to the catastrophe.  There were twelve people clinging for life in the sinking boat.  The Puffin was able to carry ten without sinking.  Ethan told the other two he would come back for them, and noticing that one did not have a life vest, he gave him his.  After dropping off the ten, Ethan raced back for the other two.  When he got back to the disabled boat, he watched it sink into the ocean but he heard on his radio that the stranded two had been picked up by a nearby ship.  Ethan then dashed home into the heart of the storm, but the Puffin capsized and Ethan drowned.

Chapter 11: The Sentinel

After a brief statement noting that Ethan’s body and wreckage was never found, the final chapter consists of a series of six brief scenes.  The first is of Ross Campbell hearing the news of Ethan’s death on the radio at his mother’s house.  The second is of Catherine McGinnis hearing the news of Ethan’s death on TV in Toronto just before playing a piano concerto from Rachmaninoff.  The third is of Elsie meeting the man who Ethan gave the life vest to. The fourth, eight months after the deadly storm, was of an old man and his granddaughter in Brazil finding washed up on the beach the wooden Puffin statue from Ethan’s boat.  The fifth scene, in the spring of a year later, is of Ross, his newly married wife Rachel, and their infant son Ethan coming to the lighthouse which they inherited from Ethan’s will.  The sixth scene is of Ross, Rachel, and the infant checking out the puffin nests 

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Thoughts and observations on Chapter 9, “A Place Where We All Can Live”

The two men complete the construction project creating a place for Ethan’s “wooden family.”  I still find the “wooden family” the most absurd part of the story, the only absurd part of the story.  It’s not that he carves the wooden family that’s absurd; it’s that he has some sort of relationship with them.  If O’Brien had just left it as carvings and let the reader make an inference to Ethan’s psychology, that would have been fine.  It’s weird to talk to wooden statues as if they’re your family, even if you carved them yourself.  That O’Brien pursues the relationship shows he doesn’t think it weird.  He is trying to project a hole in Ethan’s psychology, a hole Ethan is trying to fill with the wood carvings.  A good psychological novel is way more subtle than this.

What Ethan writes on the back of the chart is a natural prayer for Ross’s well being and his gratitude for all of Ross’s work performed in kindness.  It’s something a father would write to his son.

The blue whale watching Ross on his dive seems to suggest the symbolism of God watching.  But it may be more than that.  Ross shortly after recounting the blue whale story discusses his absent father and says he prayed for him.  The missing father in Ross’s life haunts him to where he has a sense of a “Father” watching him.  I think the whale does double duty here in representing God and Ross’s biological father.  This is actually good representation of psychology and good symbolism.  I think there should have been more of this for both Ross and Ethan, especially Ethan.  It is talk of the blue whale that leads to the discussion of Ethan’s missing father and then to Ross’s missing father.

That Ross prays opens up the religion question in the novel.  O’Brien is overtly Catholic, and Catholicism is clearly part of the undertones of the narrative.  This is one of the best scenes in the novel and deserves an extended quote.  It’s the departing scene where Ross packs up his boat to go.

 

After breakfast, they carried tools and scientific equipment down to the Lund. The tent and other gear came next, carefully stowed by Ross. The boat looked considerably emptier than when she had first arrived.

 

   “Well,” said Ethan.

 

   “Yup, well.”

 

   They shook hands.

 

   But neither of the two seemed to know how to bring the departure to a tidy conclusion.

 

   “You never told me much about your life,” said Ross.

 

   “You haven’t asked me.”

 

   “Okay, I’m asking.”

 

   “What do you want to know?”

 

   “Where’s your family? Parents, siblings?”

 

   “I’m like you were,” said Ethan hesitantly. “I had a single mother.”

 

   Ross straightened and inspected Ethan’s face.

 

   “Well, it happens,” Ross said. “There are a lot of people like us now.”

 

   “Yes, a lot.”

 

   “How’s your mother doing?”

 

   “I haven’t seen her in many years. I’ve tried to find her, but. . .”

 

   “Oh. I’m sorry. And your birth father?”

 

   “He went away when I was in the womb. I don’t know who he was.”

 

   Ross looked genuinely grieved by this.

 

   “That’s pretty brutal,” he said. “I know how it feels. My own birth father just disappeared into thin air—like he never existed.”

 

   “But your mother kept you, loved you.”

 

   “Yes, she did. I love her too. And as I told you before, my stepdad’s a great guy. Couldn’t have asked for a better father. Still, I wonder about the guy who’s my biological father—whatever happened to him, is he still around somewhere, that kind of thing.”

 

   “Is it painful for you to think about?”

 

   “No, not anymore. Now I just wonder who he was. I was angry at him when I was a teenager—you know, the Invisible Man—but that passed. I feel sorry for him more than anything. Maybe pity’s a better word. And you?”

 

   “I’ve felt angry in the past. Now it’s only sadness.”

 

   “Yeah, Ethan, I can see you’re sad. You look sad just about all the time.”

 

   Ethan struggled to find words to deflect the probe. He had opened up far too much, and now it was time to shut down.

 

   “You know how I got over my teenage gloom?” Ross said. “Whenever I drifted into thinking about my origins, the old feelings rising up, analyzing myself to death, feeling abandoned, I just started praying for that guy. When I prayed for him, the mood went away, the sun started shining again. Of course, it takes practice. My dad taught me this.”

 

   “Your adoptive father?”

 

   “That’s right. And my mum still prays for my biological father all the time, whoever he was; she can’t even remember his name after all these years.”

 

   Ethan averted his eyes and started looking around the beach for anything the boy might have neglected to pack.

 

   They stood on the quay and shook hands a second time.

 

   “Well, it’s time t’ sail beyond the sunset and the baths,” said the boy with his wry grin.

 

   “Thank you for your help, Ross. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

 

   “I’d really like to come back someday, if that’s okay.”

 

   “That would be fine.”

 

   “Thanks for all the great experiences.”

 

   Ethan dipped his head in acknowledgment.

 

   “Right,” said Ross, suddenly all business. “Time to go.”

 

   “Wait,” said Ethan. He knelt and opened a gunny sack he had ported down to the shore. “This is for you.”

 

   It was the dolphin carving. Unpainted. Oiled, glowing with natural tones. The boy received it into his hands, and cradled it, pondering its every detail.

 

   “A gift,” said Ethan.

 

   Ross looked up, unable to speak. His mouth tried to form words of thanks, but failed. Somber of face, blinking rapidly, he stepped into the boat and carefully laid the carving in the folds of his sleeping bag, snugged against a thwart.

 

   “And this,” said Ethan, handing over the nautical chart on which he had penned his parting message. Ross slipped it under the carving, unread.

 

   As Ethan untied the bowline and pushed him off, Ross fired the motor. He wheeled his boat on the water, leaving an arc of spume on the deep beyond the cove. Then he straightened out and headed directly south to the headland and Brendan’s Harbour, to his future, to other people and other tasks.

 

   Then came a final wave of his hand, his red wind-breaker like a splash of paint on the kingfisher blue and the dome of cerulean above it, almost a quaint folk painting, the forms containing all that was essential, man suspended above the abyss, the water and sky elegant, the points of color making the whole greater than the sum of its parts, as a work of art should do.

 

   As he watched the little boat diminish, Ethan felt anew all the losses he had known in his life. Yet he also pondered the truth that this boy, this stranger, had also suffered loss and had risen above it, like a dolphin leaping, a soul riding the waves.

 

   Out of the fog of his past he remembered that the girl he had loved when he was sixteen had borne the same surname as this boy. And then, without knowing why, he felt the world turning, the universe revolving around the polestar, the stars leaving a thousand wakes of light. And when it had completed its round, when his heart ceased hammering and his thoughts steadied, he knew. He knew who this Ross was.

This is the heart of the novel, perhaps the climax of the psychological element to the story.  I think this is more powerful than the physical climax in the next chapter.   That Ross mentions he and his mother have prayed for his biological father is ironic in that his biological father is standing there right before him unbeknownst to all. 

[Side note.  As some of you may know my son is adopted and since the day we brought him home at one years old I have included his biological mother in my prayers.  All I have is a name and that she was seventeen years old when she had Matthew.  I need to suggest to Matthew that he should pray for her.]

The scene is infused with spirituality.  Ethan “kneels” down to take out the dolphin carving, suggesting a prayerful stance and submission, a sort of unconscious apology to having abandoned the boy and mother.  What does the dolphin symbolize?  I think this is a direct allusion to William Butler Yeat’s poem, “Byzantium.”  Here is the closing stanza of that poem, lines 33-40:

 

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,

Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,

The golden smithies of the Emperor!

Marbles of the dancing floor

Break bitter furies of complexity,

Those images that yet

Fresh images beget,

That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

“Byzantium” is Yeats’s follow on poem to his earlier “Sailing to Byzantium,” and I think you should read the two poems together.  I’m not going to explicate the two poems—that’s almost a book in itself—but simply Yeats’s theme is the tension between the physical and the metaphysical worlds and an artist’s attempt to capture both.  The dolphin’s physical “mire and blood” (which for the first time after decades of reading that poem could suggest Christ’s flesh and blood—it never occurred to me before) is endowed with spirit captured by the smithies in the marble floor.  The hero in the poem, perhaps the poet himself, caught in the physical flesh and blood world, rides the dolphin beyond this world.  The dolphin is the passage way to the spiritual world, connecting both worlds.  As Ethan watches Ross motor away, he has a vision of Ross overcoming the physical hardships of life “like a dolphin leaping, a soul riding the waves.” 

This brings me to an interesting question: why does O’Brien make Ethan lack a religion?  He clearly is naturally religious, and we see his innate spirituality throughout the book.  I thought the novel was projecting to some sort of conversion and acceptance of Catholicism.  More on that with my thoughts on the next chapter.

The next section of the chapter is Ethan piecing together the clues that confirm his insight that Ross is his biological son.  The revelation that Ross is Ethan’s son is a wonderful twist to the plot.  Some might say it wasn’t prepared.  While I think I would have preferred Ross coming into the narrative earlier in the plot, I think the discovery of Ross being his son is a natural development and completely justified.  We see them as father and son as they work together, though the son here tends to have more skill than the father.  But the relationship is true.  Where I might criticize is that all the construction working together is just filler as an excuse to bring the two together.  As we see in the next chapter, all that construction work is wasted and never put to use.  So much of the narrative went into that construction project and in the very next chapter Ethan dies.  The construction feels pointless.  Nonetheless, the father/son connection was a huge plus for the novel. 

Ethan debating with himself whether to let Ross know he was his biological father provides a nice tension.  I can’t help but feel that a better story could have been constructed with the characters of Ethan, Skillsaw, and Ross integrated the length of the novel.

Ethan going to Biggs to hand him the bell from the wreck Biggs’ ancestor survived provides a parallel story of a boy without a father making his way in the world.  It also connects generations of fathers down to Ross, which we will see as a father in the epilogue.  It brings a sense of closure to the Biggs character and the history of the wreck from a hundred years before.  I guess it foreshadows Ethan’s coming wreck.

I think this chapter and the Skillsaw chapter are the two best chapters in the book.

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Kerstin Comment:

Manny wrote: "What does the dolphin symbolize?"

According to the interwebs,

In Christian symbolism, the dolphin is a multifaceted emblem representing Christ, salvation, and spiritual guidance. Early Christians associated the dolphin with Christ, viewing it as a symbol of the Savior who guides and protects believers, much like the dolphin was believed to rescue sailors from peril.
This connection arose from the dolphin's reputation for saving drowning individuals, paralleling Christ's role as humanity's savior.
The dolphin is often depicted in early Christian art, particularly in the catacombs, where it appears alongside the anchor, forming a powerful symbol of hope and steadfast faith.

Ellie Comment:

I genuinely enjoyed the "construction sequence", maybe because me and my dad are big on woodworking and hobbies but I thought of it as... bonding experience for the two men, especially seeing as the relationship between them. But I agree that it should have been done completely differently, their entire relationship actually. I feel like O'Brien should have based their relationship on meaningful conversations rather than some detached building scenes that did nothing to deepen the reader's relationship with the characters.

 

I also feel like the revelation of Ross being Ethan's son was really predictable for me. It was the only character that was recurring and stayed for prolonged periods of time.

 

But I totally don't understand how this novel is Catholic at its core. I know that some of the themes are there, but it just doesn't feel enough, even with the symbolism.

Kerstin Reply to Ellie:

Ellie wrote: "But I totally don't understand how this novel is Catholic at its core. I know that some of the themes are there, but it just doesn't feel enough, even with the symbolism."

You're not the only one, lol! And I think you pointed to something significant, there wasn't enough meaningful conversation or introspection on Ethan's part. This is why he is so one-dimensional to me. This whole novel felt rather secular to me. The reader is not really informed when or where the presence of Christ is there, even if the character is unaware of it. We just have one activity followed by another.

Ellie Reply to Kerstin:

Kerstin wrote: "This whole novel felt rather secular to me. The reader is not really informed when or where the presence of Christ is there, even if the character is unaware of it. We just have one activity followed by another."

If I remember correctly, at the very end, when Ethan was drowning, he saw Christ reaching out towards him (or something to the effect) and I feel like this might be Ethan truly accepting God into his heart, and letting him guide Ethan to the next part of his journey, but it just fell flat. Because we don't see Ethan even thinking about faith that much! There were maybe two scenes? Again I might not remember it correctly, but the question of his faith (or his doubt) was never really discussed in depth.

Whereas if the novel was centered around him searching for God, doubting God, searching for the meaning of his troubled life in the sea, in the people that visited his island briefly, in everything that happened in town- well it would be a different novel altogether. But unfortunately those encounters told me nothing.

I feel like I'm criticizing this book so much, but I genuinely think it had great potential.

My Reply to Kerstin and Ellie:

I do think this is a Catholic novel. It runs along the logic of via negativa, what God is not but here a world absent from the Catholicism the world should have. Ethan's heart is portrayed as having natural religion, but given his upbringing and the apparent overwhelming secularization of Canada (but we could insert any of the first world countries here, but it is my impression that Canada is even more secular than the US) he has not had any Christianity revealed to him, let alone Catholicism. Side note, I did find it implausible he had so little knowledge of Catholicism and Christianity in general given he was supposedly so well read. You would think he would have read about some of it. Nonetheless, Ethan is an example of a modern person who has good in his heart but lacks knowledge of the transcendent, has a hole in his heart but is looking to fill it. God and Christian values are an undercurrent in the novel and almost just a reach and grasp away.

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Thoughts and observations on Chapter 10, “The Storm”

The disruption to Ethan’s life with his lighthouse being shut down and replaced with an automated beacon brings back the theme of anti-modernism.  I think we saw the theme of anti-modernist in a couple of places.  We saw it in the satirical portrayal of the young Japanese girl who came with her grandparents the chapter “Tidal Wash.”  We saw it with the rude behavior of the group who came to the island for a picnic also in “Tidal Wash.”  We saw it with child abuse Skillsaw Hurly experienced in childhood (priest abuse is associated with the modern church in some Catholic circles) and in Skillsaw’s modernist angst which leads to despair.  We saw in the critique of mothers needing a husband to function in the world.  We see it of course in the fatherless children in the novel, a state of the modern world.  These may seem somewhat disparate motifs or ideas but they are interconnected in the Catholic traditionalist worldview.  This anti-modernist theme has been an undercurrent throughout the novel.  It comes to the fore with the replacing of the lighthouse with a beacon. 

I don’t mind the imaginary conversation with Ross as his little son, but the imaginary conversation with Catherine MacInnis is trite as writing and weird as narrative.  Here it is in the novel.

Dialogues with Catherine were of a different order, consoling in a way, but leaving him lonelier than ever, wondering why she had not returned.

There is not much within me, Catherine, that a woman would want to spend a lifetime with. I am a boring

Two souls become as one, Ethan, she replied. How could that ever be boring?

Do you make music now, out there in the world? he asked.

 

 

Yes, I’m making music now. But we two could make music here, playing it for the puffins and for the listeningness, the awakeness in existence.

Would it be enough for you?

Yes, it would be enough for me, she said, taking his hand, looking him in the eyes. Don’t be afraid, Ethan.

I’ve been afraid all my life, Catherine.

And you’ve overcome fear all your life. I see you protecting children from the violence of the blind and cruel. I see you as a boy in a forest, felling trees. I see you pulling people from the sea when it is angry.

You are the first to look inside me, and you still wish to know me.

Yes, I still wish to know you. It is called love, Ethan.

Glancing across the room at his artificial wife, he felt a momentary guilt of infidelity, but she gazed at him as fondly as ever. He shook himself, forced a laugh, and turned his thoughts back to real work.

“Glancing across the room at his artificial wife, he felt a momentary guilt of infidelity”?  That’s just silly and awful.  Why does imaginary dialogue with Ross seem acceptable while with Catherine come across as weird?  Because we spent a quarter of the book watching Ross and we learned he is Ethan’s biological son.  He only met Catherine once for about an hour a couple of years before this moment.  Can she mean that much in his mind and heart?  If O’Brien was after some sort of psychological epiphany to Ethan’s character, this is just poorly done.  Yes, there is a way to get into Ethan’s psychology, but this is just flat.  He feels infidelity to a wood carving in an imaginary conversation with a woman he barely knows?  There are things to like about this novel but the attempt at psychological exposé of characters is definitely not one of them. 

The scene where Ethan meditates in the church is nicely done.  His natural religion embraces his intuitive grasp of the holy.

There was a listeningness here, not unlike that of the sea and sky, or perhaps the awakeness of the universe, the bigger ocean. Timelessness too. At one point he sensed the presence of someone with him in the church, and so strong was the feeling that he quickly looked all around him, thinking that Elsie had come to find him. But there was no one there. Strangely, he continued to feel that he was not alone. Simultaneously, without reason, he wanted to let tears flow, but couldn’t at first. When they came, they were silent. It had been so long since this kind of thing had happened, maybe twenty years or more. Were these the overflow of solace or the release of sorrow? He didn’t know.

I will come here again. I will rest here from time to time. I will listen to the listening.

This is excellent for a short passage.  The creation of a new word, “listeningness,” to capture the transcendence is inspired.  And O’Brien lays out an expectation I have been anticipating for the entire novel, a religious conversion.  “I will come here again.”  “I will rest here from time to time.”  “I will listen to the listening.”  Doesn’t this seem like the progression of the story is leading to a religious conversion?  It would seem so.  And then he destroys my anticipation by killing Ethan off.

I could not believe this is how he brought the story to a conclusion.  By having Ethan die in a happenstance storm?  There are so many unfulfilled lines of narrative.  What about Catherine MacInnis, or some other woman to be his wife?  What about that hole in his heart for a spouse and children?  What about his carvings and artistry?  What about that work room he and Ross spent a quarter of the novel constructing?  What about his life in the purchased lighthouse that he spent his life savings on and now has ownership?  What about his relationship to his biological son that he discovered and now loves?  What about Ethan’s nascent Catholicism?  All of these threads could have been tied together by his religious conversion and perhaps wedding.  All his internal demons brought about by that childhood trauma that governed the length of the story could have been brought to rest. 

It was so startling an ending that I am wondering if there is some philosophic idea behind it.  What am I missing that O’Brien implies?  Just as Catholicism is unmentioned in the novel to capture the modern world, could such an ending have some meaning I am missing?  Unfortunately, while I can come up for a reason with the unmentioned Catholicism, I cannot come up with a rationale for this sudden ending.

This ending had nothing to do with the story of the novel.  It is simply a Deus ex machina ending where the author by shear plot device brings the novel to a conclusion.  In addition, it is purely a Hollywood movie type ending, packed with schmaltzy heroic action and a self-sacrificing final act that makes the hero into a Christ figure.  Ethan unintentionally even leaves behind a note that Ross will one day read and learn the secret of their relationship.  This is Hollywood sentimentality. 

I’m not saying that the drowning was unprepared.  We saw Ethan as self-sacrificing hero rescuing Skillsaw.  But repetition is not a natural conclusion to a story.  The concluding events, especially the climax, has to develop from the conflicts and tensions of the story.  The climactic scene is artificially contrived and not a natural development.  It is something right out of a movie.  Ethan’s final moment of seeing Christ and the Blessed Mother could have been a nice touch if what led to it was not so artificially contrived.  It comes across as just a sentimental embellishment.

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My Comment:

I was just re-reading the imaginary dialogue with Catherine with Ethan’s feeling of infidelity. Here’s that sentence again, only this time the whole sentence: “Glancing across the room at his artificial wife, he felt a momentary guilt of infidelity, but she gazed at him as fondly as ever.” I guess I so grimaced at the first part of that sentence that never noticed the second clause, “but she gazed at him as fondly as ever.” Hahaha, I had to burst out laughing. Isn’t there a Twilight Zone episode that runs along those lines?

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Thoughts and observations of chapter 11, “The Sentinel.”

Having Ross, wife, and baby at the end is a natural coda to the story.  As I looked back, Ross came into the story almost exactly mid-way into the novel in chapter six of the eleven chapters.  He is the story’s Sancho Panza to Ethan’s Don Quixote for four of the eleven chapters, chapters six through nine.  I think Sancho Panza and Don Quixote are reasonable, though imperfect, analogies.  The character who is best adjusted to real life lives on.

The vignettes in the closing chapter were good and provided the novel a certain freedom it lacked.  In this very manner O’Brien could have had vignettes throughout the novel of Ethan’s childhood trauma, perhaps vignettes of Skillsaw as we watch his nihilism grow and become cynical with his Catholic faith, and vignettes of Ross and his mother adjusting to life and growing in their Catholic faith.  Such vignettes would have added to character development and created a richer theme.

I’m sorry about me trying to rewrite this novel.  I don’t usually do that, but I don’t usually read poorly formed novels.  The last one I read was here on Catholic Thought, Brian More’s Catholics.

We find out that the man Ethan saved by giving him his life vest is a priest from Nigeria.  Those are striking details.  Again we have the undercurrent of Catholicism and perhaps a look toward the future of the Church.  In Western countries the Church has diminished and is being infused with African priests.  And Ethan’s sacrifice in saving the priest contributes to the future of the Church.  I think these are very good details.

I wasn’t a fan of the image of Elsie’s white hands over the priest’s black ones.  It was presented rather starkly.  I wasn’t a fan not because it wasn’t warranted (it was) but because the image of white and black hands as a symbol for unity has become a cliché, at least here in the United States.  It’s been around for a long time.  It’s a striking image but because it’s been around it’s become somewhat hackneyed.  O’Brien could have strove for a more original image, but it’s ok.

What was the point of the Brazilian old man and his great granddaughter finding the wooden carving of the puffin on the shore in Brazil eight months after Ethan drowned?  It doesn’t say where in Brazil but it’s roughly 5000 miles (8000 kilometers) away. For some reason I had the inkling that the old man was going to be identified as Ethan’s biological father.  The old man is similarly named as Esteban, but Esteban translates into Stephan, not Ethan.  O’Brien doesn’t connect the characters in any way.  Brazil is the most populous Catholic country in the world.  Perhaps there is a connection with that?  The narrative never says.  It is left as a connection between divergent and distant parts of the earth.

The image of Ross and his son closing the novel provides a nice generational continuity and resolves the disorder of Ethan’s childhood trauma.

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Frances Comment:

In connection with our reading, I came upon a review in today’s WSJ which underscored the novel’s issues. From the book Why Brains Need Friends: “Backed by research, endorsed by doctors, the basics of healthy living have become part of a canon. . . An essential tenet: engage with other people. Social connection improves health and well-being, reducing the risk of conditions ranging from cardiovascular disease and dementia to depression and anxiety. . . We are meant to be together. . .Social interactions prompt the brain to release rewarding chemicals, which is why engaging with others feels intrinsically pleasurable rather than burdensome. Deprivation cuts the other way: isolation is agonizing, one of the worst fates a human can experience.” (Why Brains Need Friends, by Ben Rein, PhD)

 

The article raised in my mind the question: what would a sixty, a seventy-year-old Ethan have been like, had he lived? Perhaps dementia would have claimed him. We’ll never know, of course, but it is one of those elements that lives in the background of the narrative.

My Reply to Frances:

Human connections are so important. Thanks for that Frances. I don't think he would have remained isolated for the rest of his life. I think the right ending would have been Ethan's conversion to Catholicism, perhaps married Catherine or someone like her, continued his relationship with his son, and perhaps found his birth mother and repaired that relationship. That would have brought order to the disordered world. That would have restored what had been damaged. That would have been the Catholic worldview and story.

Ellie Comment:

I will also say that I thought most of the characters felt like stock characters: the lonely lighthouse keeper, the young Japanese girl who was just incredibly rude and seemed to me a portrayal of modern teenagers, as Manny said (as I was thinking about this more, this just made me mad: her character needed so much more nuance), the people who came to have a picnic depicted as those that disturb Ethan's peace (again: rude and unwilling to have a conversation; while I admit there are people like that, this was just unnecessary antagonism thrown into the story) the long lost fatherless son, the kind and compassionate woman, the wise elderly catholic woman, the mad sailor... I could go on. I don't know, it just all felt one-dimensional, however good the intentions were.

 

I would have gladly read a 600 page book if there was at least some development. But this felt static and the ending just cut off all hope at redeeming the story for me.

Frances’s Reply to Ellie:

It wouldn’t have to be 600 pages, Ellie. I’m thinking of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.’’ It has the uniqueness and nuance your intellect craved.

My Reply to Ellie:

You know what is a good little Catholic novel that hardly anyone knows about, try Not All of Me is Dust. At the risk of embarrassing the author, I loved this novel.

Kerstin Comment:

I do agree, Ethan's drowning was jarring. It is as if the wrong ending was slapped on the story. After all the effort to build something for the present and future there needs to follow some reward for the main protagonist borne from these labors. Instead we get an ending more fitting for a tragedy or a modernist, nihilistic story.

 

To be honest, I don't think I would have finished the novel if it hadn't been for the group. It is somewhat painful to point out the holes. Whatever the initial ideas for this story were, it needed more percolating.

Kerstin Comment:

In the beginning Ethan feels disconnected from anyone and anything, and in the end we have a number of people proving him wrong, he did touch them in his lifetime. He even has a son and his legacy will go on. Is that it? It doesn’t even satisfy on an emotional level as the story arc is a bunch of snippets gathered over decades where the character stays rather one-dimensional.

 

The book has a rather high rating here on goodreads, and I can only assume O’Brien must be writing for a different audience.

Frances Reply to Kerstin:

Kerstin, if you thought of it as a novella instead of a novel, would that make a difference? I couldn’t put it alongside A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls, for example, for the reasons you mention. But I can appreciate it as a novella. Otherwise, I think O’Brien would have to take about 60–80 pages more to add depth. What do you think?

Kerstin Reply:

That is not a bad idea, Frances, especially if you take out all the redundant filler.

 

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Retrospective Thoughts Post Reading of the Novel

Chapter 9, “A Place Where We All Can Live,” was the core of the novel.  Everything before this was establishing the context and projecting to this interchange between Ethan and Ross.  The central theme of the novel is the ramifications on the lives of fatherless men in contemporary society as a result of society’s secularization.

Ellie’s comment on the characters being stock characters is pretty accurate.  My hunch is that O’Brien started with the idea of his central theme and then tried to create characters from it.  When you generate a story in that fashion, you run the risk of stock characters. 

O’Brien is known for long novels.  I have not read them.  Perhaps he felt compelled to make this novel brief.  Stock characters overcoming their “stockiness” with length of story.  The more we engage characters in varying and complex events, the more real they become.  There are actually a very limited set of conditions we see Ethan engaged.  We see him in and about town in a cursory way, we see him with Elsie who is a mother figure, we see him refurbish the boat that washes up and carve the wooden family, we see him dealing with the intruders of the island, we see him save and interact with Skillsaw, and we see him work with Ross.  Only with Ross is there any extended interaction, and I can’t say it enlightens Ethan’s character much.  What we know of Ethan’s character at the beginning of the novel, we know after Ross.  We gain extra knowledge, but does Ethan grow in any way?  I don’t think so.

The path for growth was laid down in the story.  There was this budding of interest in Catholicism instilled.  This is perhaps the only growth we see in Ethan.  But then O’Brien kills him as I point out.  The ending of the novel is an unforgivable flaw.