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.
###
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.
###
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.
###
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.
###
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.
###
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.
###
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.
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