Morality and Impossible Choices
The Nightingale takes place during World War II, when the horrific circumstances of war caused many people to betray their moral sensibilities. Vianne Mauriac, one the two novel’s two protagonists, is a mother who must constantly sacrifice her sense of what is right in order to protect her daughter, Sophie, and her husband, Antoine. Toward the beginning of the novel, after German soldiers take control of her town, Vianne is forced to…
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Antisemitism and Active Resistance
The Nightingale is a novel set during World War II. A central feature of World War II was the Holocaust, a genocide that the Nazi regime carried out against Jewish people. In order to justify their actions, Hitler’s Nazi party spread antisemitism to demonize the millions of Jewish people whom they ruthlessly slaughtered. At the start of the novel, characters like Vianne are unwilling to acknowledge the problem that is growing all around them. Vianne…
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Gender Roles
The Nightingale focuses on the role women played in the resistance effort during World War II. One of the novel’s protagonists, Isabelle, is a young woman who is frustrated with the role society has given to her because of her gender. She is constantly told to act like a lady, but she has no interest in doing so. When the war begins, she immediately wants to run off and fight with the men. Her…
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Love and War
Love and war are a timeless pairing, precisely because of the complexity that one engenders in the other. In The Nightingale, both main characters are in love. Isabelle loves her fellow resistance fighter, Gaëtan, and Vianne loves her husband, Antoine. However, the war complicates both romances. For the majority of the novel, Antoine is in a prisoner-of-war camp, meaning that Vianne can only love him from afar. Nonetheless, Vianne loves Antoine and…
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