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.
Themes
Sea Voyage as Self-Discovery
This is a common trope in literature, from The Old Man and the Sea to Moby Dick. Sea journeys are grueling, and authors can use characters’ tribulations to bring out latent traits and catalyze growth. In Migrations, the voyage of the Saghani—and later the Sterna Paradisaea—symbolizes and facilitates Franny’s self-actualization.
Franny is a deeply traumatized person. She grows up in a fractured family and loses several loved ones prematurely, including her mother, husband, and infant daughter. She blames herself for these losses and deals with her trauma by suppressing negative memories. She carries shame about the “wilderness” within her which causes her to shun close relationships. Additionally, Franny feels that she doesn’t belong anywhere except among the wildest parts of nature. She characterizes herself as someone who “is able to love but unable to stay” (199), believing that her nature is incompatible with lasting love.
Aboard the Saghani, Franny loses herself in the backbreaking work of maintaining the ship. She fears no physical danger but still can’t confront her memories. She writes countless unsent letters to Niall and hides the past from her crewmates. Her repressed trauma manifests in violent nightmares and sleepwalking bouts, as well as flashes of memory which slowly piece together the truth about her past.
The tight quarters of the Saghani mean that Franny can’t put physical distance between herself and the rest of the crew; she begins to bond with them despite herself. The Saghani crew is not put off by her flighty nature. They can understand it, each having chosen the sea over the stability of life on land. The strength of their bond is evinced when the crew put themselves in danger for Franny’s sake.
As the journey continues, Franny slowly peels back the layers of her memory to expose the truth. Even after she admits her crimes, the crew continue to support her. Ennis tells her, “you’re one of us” (164). On the Saghani, Franny finds the sense of community she’s longed for since childhood.
As she comes to terms with her past, Franny is able process the trauma she’s repressed for most of her life. The transition onto the Sternea Paradisea symbolizes a large step in her self-discovery. Aboard the Paradisea, she gives up her long-held hope that the terns will survive, symbolically accepting Niall’s death. It is a breakthrough moment for her character—for the first time, she moves from suppressing her grief to acknowledging its true extent.
It is on this final leg of the journey to Antarctica that Franny realizes “the wilderness within” is not inherently destructive (239). While her wildness prevents her from living a traditional life, it also makes her exceedingly brave. It fosters a rare connection with nature which guides her through a harrowing world. With the right people, she doesn’t have to change who she is in order to love and be loved. As she submerges herself in the thriving Weddell Sea, Franny finally lets go of her “drowning” shame and accepts all aspects of herself.
Love and Destruction
The first time Franny sees Niall lecture, he quotes a passage from Margaret Atwood’s collection The Tent. The quote outlines a fictional scenario in which humans loved and envied birds so much that “[w]e speared them, we clubbed them, we tangled their feet in glue, we netted them […] all for love, because we loved them” (40). The message is one that echoes throughout the narrative and mirrors Franny’s fear: Humans can’t help but destroy what they love.
The personal relationships of Migrations’ characters experience destructive love. John Torpey, Franny’s grandfather, abandons his wife and daughter out of insecurity. Iris dies by suicide because she can’t bear the loss of her beloved daughter, traumatizing young Franny and influencing Franny’s mental and emotional health for the rest of her life. Ennis leaves behind his dying wife and their two children for a life at sea.
Destructive love also plays out in the way humans relate to Earth and its creatures. The well-meaning conservationists at MER imprison the last gray wolf, depriving the creature of its freedom. Penny loves the exotic birds she keeps caged in her greenhouse but admits that her love is “a contradiction.” The birds would be happier winging their way across the sky. Ennis loves the sea but engages in destructive commercial fishing to fund his life.
Migrations doesn’t frame love as inherently destructive. In fact love—between humans, animals, and the world at large—is at the novel’s heart. The destructive side of love arises from a desire to control the beloved person, animal, or object. Niall and Franny’s relationship is an example of a bond built on unselfish love; Niall is willing to let Franny go because he loves her.
In his treatment of Franny, Niall models love without control. He accepts everything about her, even the parts he can’t fully understand. Though her absences wear on him, he doesn’t try to change her behavior. As an environmentalist, Niall has witnessed enough destruction in the name of love. He knows that “all our touching does is destroy,” (250) and he refuses to subject Franny to the same fate as the caged animals at MER. When he can no longer tolerate her coming and going, he frees her from their relationship rather than asking her to change for him. Franny, however, can’t accept Niall’s choice to leave her. She unintentionally destroys him in a moment of unbridled emotion.
After Niall’s death, Franny learns the wisdom of loving through acceptance. She applies this lesson to her beloved terns. Having let go of them and accepted their deaths at the hands of humanity, she is shocked and delighted to find them alive at the end of her voyage. The terns survive because they were left to their own devices. Their survival highlights that the healthiest way humans can love one another and the Earth is through compassion and acceptance.
The Decentering of Humanity from Climate Preservation
As a work of climate fiction, Migrations uses many of the genre’s common tropes, such as being set in a near-future world where the consequences of climate change have become intolerable. Many animal species have died out, and more are going extinct every day. Migrations doesn’t propose a plan to save the world. Rather, it posits that the lens through which humanity views its impact on nature is wrong. Politicians and corporations have assigned themselves inordinate importance in the natural order, deciding that “the extinction crisis is an acceptable trade for their greed” (165). They have devalued the lives of the animals whose tenure on this planet long exceeds ours. Instead of encouraging conservation, Migrations suggests a radical reevaluation of perspective. To continue living on the planet, humans must reconnect with the natural world and practice humility.
The Earth of Migrations is on the brink of collapse. Unchecked hubris and disconnection from nature has allowed the unthinkable to happen, and it continues to happen as the narrative unfolds. Even in the face of unthinkable consequences there is no halting human greed. As fishermen fish near-barren seas, poachers breach into a sanctuary and kill the last surviving elephant for its tusks. McConaghy punctuates the novel with the extinction of several beloved animal species, driving home the devastation.
Conservationists earnestly try to preserve the Earth’s remaining animals. Yet even these impassioned people work from a human-centric perspective. At MER, conservationists prioritize saving pollinating species whose survival will aid humanity’s continuation. To up their odds of survival, endangered animals are imprisoned in cages and conditioned out of the instinctual behavior they’ve known for millions of years. Franny and Niall recognize the unfairness of forcing animals to adapt to a world rendered uninhabitable by human greed. Franny feels that it’s better to let animals die out than to burden them with the responsibility of “surviving what they shouldn’t have to” (221).
Migrations posits that the answer to the climate crisis lies beyond ordinary conservation efforts and pro-climate legislation. A drastic shift in mindset is needed: Humans must reconnect with nature and remember their small place in the natural order. As Niall says, “we are no more important than [the animals] are, no more worthy of life than any living creature” (195). Saving humanity should not be the end goal of conservation; rather, humans should seek to peacefully coexist with all the animals on the planet. Ennis undergoes this shift in mindset. He begins the novel as an obsessed fisherman carrying on generations of family tradition; by the end he is happy just to know “that the ocean is still alive” (248).
In the final act of Migrations, Franny and Ennis discover an untouched corner of the sea thriving with wildlife. It’s a hopeful ending, one that drives home the message that all attempts to interfere with the Earth will ultimately prove futile. The only path forward is acceptance of, and coexistence with, the natural world.
