39 pages • 1 hour read
Claire of the Sea Light
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Themes
The Difficulty of Parenthood
If there is one unifying theme which groups together the characters, it is the difficulty of parenthood. Whether it is Bernard, who cannot live up to the expectations placed upon him by his mother and father, or the young Claire, who discovers that her father is about to perform a huge sacrifice and decides to run away, the difficulty of the choices and actions concerning all aspects of parenthood define large swathes of the novel.
Bernard’s parents are not given a narrative point of view in the text, though their position seems one of the most complicated. Stuck in a slum, they face a moral dilemma: indulge the presence of their town’s nascent gangs, whose money allows them to give their son a better life, or refuse to be a part of the wider criminal problem but remain incredibly poor for the rest of their lives. At the heart of the decision is their son, Bernard. They make the decision to allow the gangs, essentially perpetuating the problem by giving men like Tiye somewhere to meet and relax. They take the gang-members’ money with a complete understanding of where it came from. They give their son a better life: they send him to good school in the hopes that he will not face the same problems that they once faced. Their decision costs them everything. Through his sheer proximity to the gangs, Bernard gets into trouble. First, someone frames him for a murder at a radio station, and then he is murdered in his bed. Following his death, the restaurant burns down. As a result, Bernard’s parents are left with nothing. The decision they made cost them the life of their son and their profitable business.
For Claire, parenting seems simple. She longs for her mother and any information about her. When Nozias decides to give her to Gaëlle, Claire panics. She cannot understand his decision, only able to define parenthood by what she does not have; a mother. Should she lose a father, too, she would be completely lost. She runs away, fearful of losing everything. Once she gains a different perspective, she sees that she may be gaining a new parent rather than losing her existing parent.
The Interconnected Nature of a Small Town
On arriving back in Ville Rose after 10 years away, Max Junior realizes that he no longer understands the intricate social mores of the town. The manner in which every part of life is interwoven and interconnected in the small town is demonstrable. Small decisions taken in one chapter have big repercussions in the next. As each story flows from one to another, the tightly-woven fabric of life in the small Haitian town becomes clear.
It is moments of tragedy which best demonstrate the tight social fabric of Ville Rose. When Caleb is lost at sea, many people search. When Claire goes missing, they do the same. When Max Junior tries to wander into the sea, people come together to save him. These large-scale demonstrations of social togetherness bookend the novel. Most notably, they are provided by those who have the least. The poor fishermen are self-sacrificing and dependent on one another. Nozias relies on Caleb to read and write for him; Caleb’s wife needs Nozias to interpret her sign language. Together, they are stronger than their constituent parts, even when they have nothing at all.
With so few institutions in the poor town, those which do exist become essential parts of the community. While literacy rates among the adults in the town are low (many of the fishermen can hardly sign their names), there is a concerted effort to educate the next generation. Max Senior’s school offers a number of scholarships to children in need. Claire is one of these students, as is Henri (whom Louise hits during a class). Louise meets Nozias when she teaches an adult class but already feels that she knows him through his daughter. In turn, he knows her as the voice on the radio. These unifying links bring together seemingly disparate characters, such as the poor fisherman and the radio personality, binding them together in unexpected ways: Louise is providing Nozias with a chance to write and better communicate and provide for his daughter; she is providing him with a better understanding of Claire, a child whom she very much admires and who informs her understanding of her radio audience. Each is essential to the other’s life, even if they do not realize it.
The Finality of Death and the Immortality of Memory
Plenty of characters experience the tragic loss of a loved one. The novel opens with a visit to the grave of a wife and mother, but uses this as a jumping off point for the discussion of memory: to Nozias, his wife lives on through the many memories he has of her. The same is true for Gaëlle, who lingers on the memory of her husband and daughter, keeping them alive in her thoughts. In this respect, memory becomes an important tool for processing grief.
The structure of the novel lends itself to this theme. In the opening chapter, for instance, Nozias focuses on each of Claire’s birthdays, remembering the ways it has affected his memory of his wife. As she grows up, Claire becomes the last vestige through which he can revisit her memory. The dresses the dead woman sewed for her daughter are steadily outgrown. With each visit to the graveyard, Nozias reflects on his wife. He thinks about what she meant to him and how he can possibly do justice to her memory. Though she may be gone, her presence appears in memories and the way these memories affect Nozias’s actions. His greatest doubts come when he wonders whether his wife would ever approve of his actions (such as giving up their daughter), while his most assured moments are when he knows she would approve. Claire lives on through her husband’s memory, defying death.
However, this is more complicated for the young Claire. The daughter never knew her mother, so she has no real memories to keep her alive. Instead, she feasts on the memories of others. Whether it is men in the market telling her that she and her mother are exactly alike, or Gaëlle sitting her down and telling her previously unheard stories, the young Claire devours all of these recollections, filling in the blanks in her knowledge of her dead mother. This kind of vicarious understanding of another person is enough to keep them alive and enough to introduce a daughter to a mother she never knew. Just as Nozias relies on his own memories to inform his existence, the young Claire relies on the memories of others to help her mother defy death.
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