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 2, Chapters 19-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapters 19-24 Summary
On board the Saghani, Franny admits to the whole crew that she spent four years in prison for double murder. Incensed, Basil leaves the cabin. Franny confesses to the remaining crew that she broke her parole to come to Greenland, fabricated her passport under the name Riley Loach, and lied about her occupation.
Ennis takes a vote from the crew on whether to turn around or to continue pursuing the remaining two tracked terns, who are heading South into unfamiliar waters. Everyone except Basil votes to go on. Later, Franny asks Ennis why they didn’t turn her in. Ennis responds, “you’re one of us” (164).
The Saghani makes its way to the equator, skirting the American coasts. Basil ices Franny out, but she grows closer to the rest of the crew. The backup generator goes down, and when the main power fails a few days later there is nothing to replace it. The crew begins to turn toward giving up the voyage. Ennis refuses and they sail on to Argentina, where they stop in Ushuaia to get supplies to fix the ship. Franny misses her grandmother, realizing that Edith loved her unconditionally but that she was “too intent on loneliness to see it” (196).
One morning, Franny wakes to the lights of a police boat. Basil has turned her in. When the policemen call for Riley Loach to turn herself in, Lèa walks down to the gangplank to the police boat. She slips and sustains a possibly fatal head injury. In the ensuing chaos, Ennis and Franny steal a yacht called the Sternea Paradisea and escape the port.
The narrative again shifts 12 years into the past. Franny visits Niall’s extravagant family home, where she falls under the critical eye of Niall’s mother Penny. Penny dismisses Franny as “fickle.” At night, Franny sleepwalks to Penny’s greenhouse and frees her exotic birds from their cages.
A year later, Franny and Niall celebrate their anniversary. They discuss having children. Niall wants to be a father, but Franny is afraid that “this restless thing” inside her will lead her to abandon a child just like her mother abandoned her (182). Niall promises to come find her every time she leaves. Later, he takes her out on a boat to see a flock of terns wheeling in the night sky.
As they return the boat to shore, Niall tells Franny that he has tracked down her mother’s whereabouts. He asks gently if she can remember what really happened. Franny flashes back to the day she returned to the house by the sea. She remembers the truth: Iris had taken her own life, and Franny found her body. She knows then that she cannot stay in Galway.
Part 2, Chapters 19-24 Analysis
The narratives—both past and present—attain dramatic tension in these chapters, driven by two climactic events: the police coming to get Franny and the revelation of what really happened to Iris Stone. The truth about Iris’s death contextualizes the shame Franny feels about her capricious, free-spirited nature. She blames herself for her mother’s death by suicide, believing it was a result of her inability to stay in one place. This early trauma likely contributed to Franny’s pattern of running away from people and places, seeking to leave her grief behind. Even though she is madly in love with Niall, she makes up her mind to leave Galway again after remembering her mother’s death. She has not realized that leaving a place does not mean leaving behind the attached memories.
Franny’s identification with wild animals heightens as she dreams of choking on feathers and beating her wings against glass. Her sleepwalking self acts out the freedom-seeking impulses she buries in waking life. The sight of the exotic birds in Penny’s cages upsets her because they show the way humans impose themselves on nature and because she identifies with the birds, who are meant to fly but are bound to a small and dull life. When Franny sets the birds free, its symbolic of the flight she wishes she could take from her domestic life.
McConaghy explores how Franny’s fear of herself affects her relationship with Niall. Despite craving the love of a family, she doesn’t want to have a child because she worries that she “truly [has] no control” over “this restless thing” inside her (182). Still, Niall remains a steady and loving partner.
Niall goes to great lengths to show Franny that he accepts her free-roaming nature, perhaps because he doesn’t understand the way humans can destroy what they love out of the desire for control. He does understand that her trauma has impacted the way she copes with life. When he shows her the flock of terns, he is implicitly telling her that it’s okay if she needs to leave and then return again, over and over. Niall’s compassion soothes Franny’s fears; she realizes for the first time that the “binding” of love doesn’t necessarily mean giving up her autonomy. The strength of their bond in Franny’s memory makes Niall’s absence from the narrative present notable, with Franny wondering, “why haven’t you come to find me?” (160). When learning of her mother’s suicide, the reader may wonder if Franny is not telling us the full story about Niall.
Franny finds a shaky sense of belonging aboard the Saghani, as the other crew members care for her without seeking to tie her down. She experiences personal growth in these chapters; for most of the narrative, she has characterized her grandmother Edith as a hard-hearted and unloving woman, but now she is able to self-reflect and accept that Edith did love her. She realizes that perhaps she has kept people who truly loved her at arms’ length for fear of hurting them.
Franny’s growth is reflected by the transition from the Saghani onto the Sternea Paradisea. Sternea Paradisea is the French name for the Arctic tern, the very bird Franny is following and the creature with which she has most closely identified throughout the novel. By stepping onto the Sternea Paradisea, Franny is symbolically coming into her own.
