37 pages • 1 hour read
Charlotte McConaghyMigrations
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 8-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapters 8-13 Summary
Content Warning: This section depicts suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt
Franny finds herself inexorably drawn to Niall after his declaration. One day she follows him to his stately family home and watches him enter a massive cage to feed the exotic birds within. Spellbound, she steps into the cage herself. He kisses her and suggests that they marry. Franny thinks that “this must finally be it: the end of loneliness” (85). Franny and Niall marry that same day, in the spot where she heard the story about a woman who turned into a blackbird.
Aboard the Saghani, Franny bonds with most of the crew but worries that Ennis dislikes her. The dots of the three tracked terns diverge, and the crew decides to follow the westward-flying tern. After several days, the Saghani catches up to a flock of terns in the waters of the North Atlantic. Franny is delighted and catalogs the details of their flight in letters to Niall, hoping that he will “be filled with the courage of the birds just as the wind fills their feathers” (58). Save for Ennis, the entire crew is moved by the sight of the flock. Franny privately grieves the day when the last of the animals die out. The terns lead the Saghani to a large school of fish. The crew captures a full net, but as they haul it up they notice a sea turtle entangled in the netting. Ennis orders the entire catch to be released to free the turtle. At the end of the day, the terns fly away from the ship.
Franny has a talk with Basil. She kisses him despite disliking his character. That night, she ties herself to her bed so she won’t sleepwalk. She is awoken by a violent storm tossing the boat. She unties herself and risks her life by running across the deck to Ennis’s office. She asks why he doesn’t like her. He says that she is a “greenie” and accuses her of looking down on the fishermen for their profession. When Franny begins to talk about her love for the ocean, Ennis softens. He tells her about Point Nemo, the remotest place in the world, and promises to take her there. Her life has been “migration without a destination […] [leaving] for no reason” (89). The thought of death as a permanent destination comforts her. Franny mysteriously says that her daughter will be waiting for her there.
Franny briefly falls asleep in the office. She wakes to Ennis shouting that there are fish below them. As they haul up the catch, the overfull nets cause one of the cables to break, striking Samuel dead. Franny revives him with the ship’s defibrillator. She returns to the cabin to find that the tracker light on her favorite tern has gone out, meaning the bird has drowned in the storm. Franny loses hope in her quest, remarking that she is “no longer the thing with feathers” (98).
Over dinner, the crew plans to change course and sail to Newfoundland to get Samuel medical care and repair the boat. Though the tern they were following has drowned, there are still others they can follow. Anik and Franny discuss the afterlife. Anik believes in the spirit world, a “weightless, and very beautiful” place where everyone goes (104). Franny says that her daughter will be waiting for her there.
The Saghani docks in Newfoundland, where conservation protestors immediately attack the crew. The crew goes to Samuel’s home, where they meet his wife, Gammy, and their six daughters. Grammy alludes to the fact that Ennis has jeopardized and even lost crew members in pursuit of his “Golden Catch.” Franny asks Ennis why he continues to fish; he says that he can’t stop without achieving something great. Franny realizes that she and Ennis share a “destructive compulsion” that hurts the ones who love them (114).
When returning to land, Franny is surrounded by Gammy and Samuel’s happy family. Over dinner, Franny bonds with the children, especially the youngest, Ferd. Ferd is six, the same age Franny’s daughter would have been. When the girls sing an Irish song, Franny viscerally reacts, recalling the moment that her daughter was stillborn. This is the first time the reader definitively leanrs about her stillborn daughter. Franny can no longer suppress her loneliness, missing “my mother’s cottage […] my husband […] my daughter” (119). She strips off her clothes and plunges into the nearby sea, feeling guilty that she “longs for the things [she] has always been so desperate to leave” (119). She floats in the water until Lea, Hally, and Gammy come to rescue her.
In another narrative interlude from 12 years ago, Franny is shackled to a hospital bed. A detective enters the room, calling Franny a killer and saying that she is “bound for bars” (93). After her release from the hospital, Franny is sent to a women’s’ prison.
Part 1, Chapters 8-13 Analysis
The implosion of Franny’s life is a microcosm of the world’s impending destruction. Upsetting news about new extinctions trickles into the narrative, painting a picture of a doomed world and lending desperation to Franny’s mission.
Despite her mounting mental unrest, Franny feels mostly well at sea. A picture of Franny is forming as someone who sacrifices personal relationships to be untethered. Several of the Saghani’s crew are similarly displaced, allowing Franny to feel at ease around them. Her voyage takes her far from most other people. She feels a special connection to the ocean and enjoys being unmoored, far from the responsibilities of life on land. When talking with Ennis she thinks: “I never figured out how to be relied upon and also be free” (119).
As more of her memories surface, McConaghy explores how Franny’s refusal to be tied down to one place functions as a coping mechanism for suppressed grief and trauma. Franny likes being at sea not only because she feels connected to the water, but because the dangers and physical demands of the voyage distract her from painful memories. This is evinced in the way a traumatic memory surfaces soon after Franny returns to land. She is suddenly assailed by the memory of giving birth to a stillborn daughter, which she has repressed until this point in the narrative. Her only strategy for dealing with her resurfaced grief is to throw herself into the water once more, seeking oblivion.
As much as Franny tells herself that she can’t have stability and love, she still wants them. Her desire to belong is evident in the heartfelt letters she writes—but never sends—to Niall, as well as in her emotional reaction to Samuel’s domestic life. She envies Gammy, assuming that the privilege of a loving family life is only afforded to those who can stay in one place for long enough to set down roots. Here, she might take a lesson from the terns: Though almost constantly in flight, they are always with a flock of other birds who can understand them. Franny’s memory interludes indicate that in the past, she found a sense of belonging and true love with Niall, but he has yet to appear in the narrative present. What the reader doesn't know about Niall—and the daughter Franny mentions briefly but darkly—creates a sense of mystery.
Franny’s affinity to animals continues to present itself. Her parallel with the taxidermized gull is heightened by her wish to be an animal. She is disillusioned with humanity’s treatment of the natural world, and feels that the lives of animals are more meaningful than those of humans. She also wishes for an animal’s freedom, to wander wherever she pleases without hurting others.
Ironically, though Franny despises being tied down, she ties herself up, binding her wrists to her bed on the Saghani so she can’t sleepwalk. Her attempt to control her sleeping self symbolizes how she feels out of control in her waking life, unable to suppress her darker impulses. She continues to make risky choices like kissing Basil, and repeatedly puts herself in physical danger. Her self-destructive decisions, combined with the brief narrative interludes from jail, continue to hint at suppressed memories of past trauma.
Bad fortune seems to accompany each attempt to interfere with the ocean’s ecosystem. asee this when Ennis’s attempts to haul up a full net of fish are thwarted, with the second attempt almost killing Samuel. This echoes Moby Dick’s lesson about respecting the sovereignty of nature.
