“Calamity shaped a life when, long ago, chance was so cruel.”
The characters in the narrative do not catch a break once the chain of events begin following the confrontation between young arsonists and the Gault family. With the IRA conflict in the background of the story, the political strife forces the Gault family to relocate from Ireland and leave everything behind. Unfortunately, they leave Lucy behind thinking she drowned. They escape the looming threat but face another tragedy of losing a child in the process and they move on while grieving the loss. Whereas Lucy left behind harboring a lot of guilt for the turn of events that haunt her into her later years. Thus, the statement encompasses the spirit of the narrative in the sense that with the cruel chances, calamity is there is to shape a life.
“All this occupied his thoughts when he revisited the places of his war. Tramping over soil fed by the blood of men he had led and whose faces now stirred in his memory”
Memories can be a source of joy or sorrow depending on how they impact our currents lives. In the narrative memories seem to cripple the main characters primarily stemming from their guilt. As a leader Captain Gault is caught on one side of a raging conflict therefore surviving the conflict by fleeing fosters survivor’s guilt. As a parent, he failed to explain to his daughter the critical nature of their situation and therefore she made poor choices. In the same way, Lucy harbor guilt for her choices when her family was fleeing her father also feels guilty for the turn of events. He goes through a journey of seeking absolution for his ‘sins’ however memory holds him to his past.
“Only the debris of wreckage, and not much of that, was left behind by the sharks who fed on tragedy: the fishermen, too, mourned the death of a living child.”
The main conflict in the story occurs when the Gault family are fleeing their home and leave more than their property but also a child. Both act as the allegory of leaving a piece of you, heritage, and sense of community because of occurrences beyond our control. Akin to most political conflicts, the IRA conflict caused broken homes as some fled abandoning all they knew and scattered in new territories. The statement alludes to the conclusion that Lucy might be dead as the family grieves thus expresses the loss suffered by war victims even though in the abstract.
