payment page
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Abandonment
Isabelle’s fear of abandonment follows her throughout the novel, influencing her decisions and shaping her perspective. After the death of her mother, Isabelle and Vianne are abandoned by their father, who leaves them in the care of an unkind Madame. Isabelle continuously runs away from the various boarding schools she attends, hoping to return to Julien, but he invariably pushes her away, sending her to a new school. In addition, she feels abandoned by her sister, Vianne. While Isabelle struggles for years to overcome their mother’s death, Vianne quickly begins a new life with her childhood love, Antoine, and her best friend, Rachel. Already a wife and mother by her late teens, Vianne struggles to find a place in her household for Isabelle. Later, she feels a profound sense of guilt over her failure to find time or space for her younger sister.
At the beginning of the war, Isabelle hopes to join Gaëtan in the war effort, declaring her love for him after they spend a single night together in the garden of Le Jardin. Despite his promise, he too leaves her behind, as he fears that she is not yet ready for the hardships of war. Isabelle is left distraught by yet another abandonment. Later in the novel, Vianne and Gaëtan mutually accuse each other of abandoning Isabelle, but in fact, they both abandoned her in their own ways. This long history of being left behind deeply impacts Isabelle’s worldview. Because she has spent so much of her life alone, she feels unmoored from others, contributing to her reckless behavior and risk-taking. It is not until later in the novel, when she has finally enjoyed brief stability with Gaëtan after their reunion that she begins to feel that she has something to lose.
Sacrifice
Isabelle’s hero, British nurse Edith Cavell, was executed by the German army for her efforts in World War I. In The Nightingale, heroism is inextricably linked to sacrifice. Inspired by Cavell, Isabelle takes incredible risks to aid in the French Resistance. She knows that if she is caught, she will likely be tortured and killed, and Anouk reminds her that women are at additional risk of sexual violence. Like her hero, Isabelle ultimately sacrifices her life in the line of duty, dying because of her injuries and illness contracted during her imprisonment in a series of concentration camps.
Isabelle is not the only figure who represents sacrifice in the novel, and many other members of the Resistance suffer similar fates. Henri is hanged, his body publicly displayed in the town square of Carriveau, and others such as Anouk and Madame Babineau are, like Isabelle, held in camps for female political prisoners. Some forms of sacrifice are more personal. Isabelle’s father offers himself up as a sacrifice to the Nazis, falsely confessing to being the Nightingale to save his daughter’s life and make up for his years of neglect. The Nightingale depicts various forms and degrees of sacrifice, contrasting those who pay a great cost for their bravery to those who compromise their morals in receiving favors from the Germans or even collaborating with them for personal benefit.
Collaboration
Though The Nightingale focuses on stories of heroism during the war, it does not shy away from the difficult topic of wartime collaboration. In the novel, as in history, some individuals in France found it easier to collaborate with the Nazis than to resist them. Vianne’s story highlights the complexities of French collaboration with the occupying Germans. As rations are reduced and resources become scarce, Vianne relies increasingly on Beck, a German soldier billeted at her home, to supply her family with food and medicine. She justifies her actions to herself on the basis of survival, and admittedly, it would be very difficult if not impossible for her to find the medicine that her daughter, Sophie, requires without Beck’s assistance. Still, she feels guilty when she accepts favors for him, understanding that his gifts are also, in a sense, bribes that secure her cooperation. Hoping to send a letter to her husband, who is being held as a prisoner of war in a German camp, Vianne even agrees to Beck’s request that she draw up a list of Jewish teachers working at her school and includes her friend Rachel on it, a clear act of betrayal (even if she does tell herself that Rachel's religion is open knowledge).
Other characters collaborate more openly for personal profit. Paul, a local police officer in Carriveau, becomes a willing collaborator, helping the Gestapo to round up Jewish individuals and families in exchange for various privileges. Vianne observes that, while others in the village face starvation, Paul has grown increasingly large, suggesting that he is receiving extra food in exchange for his assistance to the Nazis. Throughout the novel, various social institutions in France, such as the police, willingly aid and abet German atrocities such as the Holocaust. In The Nightingale, the population of France is not monolithic, and some sympathize with the Germans’ actions while others betray their neighbors for profit.
