The Light Between Oceans

“The other side of the island looked back, fretful, toward the Australian mainland nearly a hundred miles away, not quite belonging to the land, yet not quite free of it, the highest of a string of under-sea mountains that rose from the ocean floor like teeth along a jagged jaw bone, waiting to devour any innocent ships in their final dash for harbor.” 

In this passage, Janus Rock is personified as a being who is “fretful” of danger, suggesting that the island is a dangerous place that will destroy the innocent. While Tom feels a kinship to the island because he also looks back fretfully at his memories of war, this quotation also foreshadows the dangerous emotional territory that Tom unknowingly enters when he seeks refuge on the island. 

“Then he wakes and he’s in a place where there’s just wind and waves and light, and the intricate machinery that keeps the flame burning and the lantern turning. Always turning, always looking over its shoulder. If he can only get far enough away—from people, from memory—time will do its job.” 

Tom is haunted by his memories of the war. He has survived the war that took so many lives, and his survivor’s guilt combines with his existential angst to make for an uncomfortable life. The rotating light of the lighthouse symbolizes Tom’s fretfulness and his inability to resolve his grief and his guilt.

“Of course, the losing of children had always been a thing that had to be gone through. There had never been a guarantee that conception would lead to a live birth, or that birth would lead to a life of any great length […] Like the wheat fields where more grain is sown than can ripen, God seemed to sprinkle extra children about, and harvest them according to some indecipherable, divine calendar.” 

The people of Partageuse have become resigned to loss and grief; they are victims of fate who lack control of their own lives. The war took so many lives, and other forces beyond their control loom, inspiring dark resignation and a casual but self-protective attitude towards life.