Claire of the Sea Light

A divorced man who runs the local school, Max Senior is emotionally complex. He entertains various mistresses, none of whom seem aware of one another, yet seems genuinely affectionate toward them. He offers to pay for his son’s illegitimate child, but he does so for the sake of his own reputation as well as a moral obligation. He runs a school and awards scholarships to those poor students most in need, yet can treat the adults in his life like misbehaving schoolchildren to the point of patronizing them. As a towering figure of social importance in Ville Rose, it is Max Senior—rather than Max Junior—who best exemplifies the moral contradictions in the town.

In many ways, Max Senior is the counterpart to Nozias. Whereas Nozias has practically zero economic power, yet struggles every day with complicated moral choices, Max Senior is a wealthy individual who can make huge decisions in a matter of minutes. While Nozias is torn between finding a better life for his daughter and keeping her close, Max Senior hardly hesitates when he discovers what his son’s rape. As such, two men demonstrate how much economic status can affect those from the same town.

Max is also a punitive man. Though he has a strict policy against corporal punishment, he has little trouble punishing people in an emotional manner. For instance, his decision to invite Louise to a meeting with Odile allows him to punish her through another person. Though he does not touch Louise himself, she has little doubt that Odile’s slap to Louise’s cheek has his total permission. Likewise, he sends away his son as a punishment for raping Flore, separating the boy from any responsibility he might have toward his victim. In doing so, he punishes Max Junior, Flore, and their unborn child. Louise and Flore work their revenge. They broadcast the story of what happened, punishing Max Senior in the best way their know: damaging his social status. Ultimately, Max Senior is hoisted by his own petard. 

Like Max Senior, Gaëlle is an important counterpart to Nozias and an essential figure in her own right. In an economic sense, she is closer to Max Ardin (her husband owning a successful fabric shop). In an emotional sense, she can match Nozias tragedy for tragedy. She has not only lost her own child, but her husband died in an attack on his radio station. She loses both of the loves in her life and spends the rest of her days listlessly trying to fill the emotional cavity left behind by their deaths.

The deaths of Rose and Lavaud hit Gaëlle equally hard, though they are many years apart. The death of her husband comes first, arriving with an unfortunate coincidence on the night that Rose is born (she, like Nozias, marks the arrival of a child with the death of a spouse). Gaëlle goes into a deep depression, and it is only her infant daughter which helps her to pull through. When her daughter dies in a car accident several years later, Gaëlle feels as though she is cursed. Whenever she loves a person, they die. It is no surprise that, after this second death, she closes herself off emotionally from the world.

Gaëlle gives to the community, feeding the spirit of Ville Rose just as everyone else does. When Nozias’s wife dies, for instance, Gaëlle nurses the newborn baby. She notices how lost Nozias is without his wife and—eventually—the two bond over their shared tragedies. For a long time, both have searched for ways they can fill the emotional voids in their lives. Nozias searches for someone who can take care of his daughter, as he is terrified by the idea that he is not giving her the best possible life. Gaëlle, on the other hand, needs someone who can truly understand her grief. The men she knows from Pauline’s bar, for example, struggle to provide that; Max Senior is only a divorcee, while Yves Moulin (though emotionally destroyed himself) is a man she can never forgive for causing the accident which killed her daughter. Though both of these men know pain, they cannot quite understand her in the way Nozias can. Perhaps this is what brings them together. Their shared pain takes the form of Claire and the abstract idea of her guardianship. In the moments before Claire’s disappearance, Gaëlle kisses Nozias tenderly. In the shack, they are no longer alone. They have one another. As Claire runs back to them at the novel’s end, there is the sense that there is hope for Gaëlle.