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 allow a Nazi, Beck, to stay in her home, knowing that to resist would put her life or Sophie’s life in danger. One day, Beck asks Vianne to make a list of all of the Jewish people who work at her school. Vianne doesn’t want to do what Beck says, but he promises her that he will send a care package to Antoine, who is trapped in a POW camp. Ultimately, Vianne complies with Beck’s demands to protect her family, even though she knows the Nazis will likely use the list for sinister purposes.
Later in the novel, Vianne’s choices become even more complicated as she witnesses the horrors of the Nazi regime firsthand and realizes what they are capable of. One day, she finds her sister Isabelle hiding a British pilot on her property. Vianne knows that if Beck finds the pilot, then she will be killed along with Sophie and Isabelle. Unfortunately for Vianne, Beck is specifically charged with searching for the pilot. When he later realizes that Vianne is hiding something, he searches the premises for the pilot. Beck is nearly successful; the only thing that stops him from finding the pilot is Vianne smashing the back of his heading with a shovel and killing him. In a split second, Vianne must make the impossible choice to kill Beck to prevent him from discovering the pilot and to protect herself and her family. Further complicating Vianne’s choice is the fact that she actually liked Beck and thought he was a good man, despite his position in the Nazi party. Throughout the novel, Vianne’s need to protect herself and her family pushes her to act in ways that harm others. In highlighting the impossible choices Vianne’s circumstances repeatedly force her to make, The Nightingale suggests that war often forces people to compromise their personal morals in order to protect themselves and their loved ones.
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Morality and Impossible Choices ThemeTracker
Morality and Impossible Choices Quotes in The Nightingale
If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.
If I had told him the truth long ago, or had danced and drunk and sung more, maybe he would have seen me instead of a dependable ordinary mother. He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.
“Ah. Consequences,” Madame said. “Perhaps now you will see that they should be considered.”
“Something like that. But like I said, a nice girl like you wouldn’t know anything about survival.”
“You’d be surprised the things I know, Gaëtan, There is more than one kind of prison.
The smell preceded them. Human sweat and filth and body odor. As they neared, the miasma of black separated, peeled into forms. She saw people on the road and in the fields, walking, limping, coming toward her. Some were pushing bicycles or prams or dragging wagons. Dogs barked, babies cried. There was coughing, throat clearing, whining. They came forward, through the field and up the road, relentlessly moving close, pushing one another aside, their voices rising.
She had no idea how to respond to this stranger who dressed like the enemy and looked like a young man she might have met at church. And what was the price for saying the wrong thing?
Vianne had been so helpless after Maman’s death. When Papa had sent them away, to live in this small town, beneath the cold, stern eyes of a woman who had shown the girls no love, Vianne had . . . wilted.
In another time, she might have shared with Isabelle what they had in common, how undone she’d been by Maman’s death, how Papa’s rejection had broken her heart.
She was certain suddenly that she shouldn’t have done this. But what choice did she have? He was in control of her home. What would happen if she defied him? Slowly, feeling sick to her stomach, she wrote the last name on the list.
Rachel de Champlain.
“Don’t think about who they are. Think about who you are and what sacrifices you can live with and what will break you [. . .] Isabelle will have her crisis of faith in this, too. As will we all. I have been here before, in the Great War. I know the hardships are just beginning. You must stay strong.”
How can I possibly go without remembering all of it—the terrible things I have done, the secret I kept, the man I killed . . . and the one I should have?
I don't know the right thing to do anymore. I want to protect Sophie and keep her safe, but what good is safety if she has to grow up in a world where people disappear without a trace because they pray to a different God?
“Ari,” she said quietly, taking his face in her hands. “Your maman is with the angels in Heaven. She won’t be coming back.”
“Forgive my manners, Madame. But we have shown you all our best behaviors, and this is what we get from many of you French. Lies and betrayal and sabotage.”
It was all Vianne could do not to say, I’m different now, Papa. I am helping to hide Jewish children. She wanted to see herself reflected in his gaze, wanted just once to make him proud of her.
Vianne heard the confession that lay beneath. He was telling her his own story in the only way he could, cloaked in Isabelle’s. He was saying that he had worried about his choice to join the army in the Great War, that he had agonized over what his fighting had done to his family. He knew how changed he’d been on his return, and instead of pain drawing him closer to his children and wife, it had separated them.
“One boy with no memory of who he has may seem a small thing to lose, but to us, he is the future. We cannot let you raise him in a religion that is not yours and take him to synagogue when you remember. Ari needs to be who he is, and to be with his people. Surely his mother would want that.”
“Did Dad know?” Julien asks.
“Your father . . .” I pause, draw in a breath. Your father. And there it is, the secret that made me bury it all.
I smile at them, my two boys who should have broken me, but somehow saved me, each in his own way. Because of them, I know now what matters, and it is not what I have lost. It is my memories. Wounds heal. Love lasts.
We remain.
