61 pages • 2 hours read
About Grace
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Themes
Parental Bonds
The novel explores parental bonds in several different circumstances. The first is the relationship Winkler shares with his mother. An immigrant from Finland who had to survive entirely on her own after arriving in Alaska, Winkler’s mother is soft and gentle. She teaches him to love snow, fostering his fascination with snow crystals, and offers caring support when she discovers his ability to dream events that come true. Winkler’s mother sets a standard by which he compares many of the relationships in his life, including his relationship with Sandy. The bond between Winkler and his mother is clearly strong and benevolent.
Another parental bond that the novel explores is that between Naaliyah and her parents. This bond is close when Naaliyah is young but is tested when she becomes a teenager and is influenced by a political climate that leads her to judge her parents for leaving Chile when they did. This strains her relationship with them, but the bond isn’t broken. After Naaliyah’s near drowning, she and her parents rebuild their relationship and remain close up to and after Felix’s death.
Herman’s parental bond with Grace is strong, although he never suggests that he’s her father or takes on the role of stepfather. However, as Sandy’s ex-husband and friend, Herman took on the role that Winkler left open when he abandoned his family. Winkler recognizes this bond and respects it when he returns to Alaska, endangering it only in an attempt to build a relationship with his grandson, Christopher. Herman, however, is complicit in this scheme, putting his own bond with Grace at risk. Nevertheless, he and Grace clearly survive the test because their relationship continues forward as before despite her anger at Winkler for interfering with Christopher. Grace’s bond with Christopher is similar to the one she shared with Sandy. As a single parent, Grace makes Christopher a priority in her life but shares that responsibility with several others. With Christopher as young as he is, though, the bond will continue to build and change over time.
It’s Winkler’s parental bond with Grace that’s truly tested throughout the novel. Winkler falls in love with Grace the moment she’s born, but their relationship lasts only five months before the flood comes. Winkler proves the depth of his love for Grace when he abandons his family rather than take the risk that he might be responsible for Grace’s death. However, the bond remains for Winkler, and he thinks about Grace constantly, leaving St. Vincent as quickly as he can once he concludes that she could be alive. While the bond is strained and Grace initially resists allowing it to grow once more, with the gentle support of Naaliyah and Herman, Winkler and Grace eventually find common ground and rebuild their relationship.
Love and Loss
Love can be defined in many ways. For Winkler, his only experience with love was the relationship he shared with his mother when he was a boy. At 33, he’s not thinking about romance or dating, but when he has a dream about a woman in a grocery store, he’s excited to see where the relationship might go. Winkler falls in love with Sandy quickly and lives for her visits to his apartment on Wednesday evenings. Therefore, when she becomes pregnant, it never occurs to him to walk away. The birth of his daughter, however, shows him a whole new level of love he didn’t know existed. The idea of losing Grace pushes him to extremes. It’s love that makes Winkler leave when he dreams of Grace’s death and can’t find a way to avoid it.
As the novel progresses, love comes into Winkler’s life in other ways. He develops a sort of surrogate parental relationship with Naaliyah when she’s young. His feelings for Naaliyah inspire him to try to stop the inevitability of her drowning as he sees in his dreams and allow him to change the event so that Naaliyah survives. This love gives Winkler hope for the life of his daughter, Grace. When Naaliyah is an adult, Winkler’s love for her changes, becoming more of a friendship as they relate to each other as adults. At one point, Winkler imagines that he has sexual feelings for Naaliyah, but they quickly diminish with the perspective of time and distance. Love is part of Winkler’s relationship with Felix and Soma as well. While he envies their family dynamics, he cares deeply for the couple who rescued him on St. Vincent and gave him a place to live and work. This relationship continues after Winkler leaves St. Vincent, particularly with Soma, and proves a friendship of great fondness.
Loss is important in the novel as it relates to Winkler and his relationship with Grace and Sandy. The fear of losing Grace inspires Winkler to leave his wife and child, hoping to give Grace a chance to live a full life without him in it. While leaving is a loss of its own, Winkler believes that protecting Grace from sure death is worth the sacrifice. Later, when Winkler begins to hope that Grace survived the flood, he returns, only to learn Sandy has died of an illness. This is another loss that touches him deeply, changing his expectations for the future. Love and loss are deeply intertwined. Without love, Winkler wouldn’t have feared loss, and without loss, he would have stayed in Ohio and lived a much different life. Uncomplicated love sparks inevitable loss in Winkler’s life, which leads to transformed and nuanced feelings of love.
Human Versus Nature
Doerr, a lover of science, fills his stories and novels with beautiful prose that is often interlaced with wonderful metaphors of nature. In this novel, Doerr focuses on water, snow, and insects. As part of this, his main character, Winkler, is a hydrologist who is fascinated by snow and snow crystals. Winkler often uses water and snow as a way to understand human nature, the passing of time, and his own motivations.
Throughout his life, Winkler pits himself against nature four times at moments of despair, daring nature to take his life. The first time is just after Winkler arrives in St. Vincent and he becomes despondent after Sandy refuses to tell him whether Grace is alive. He sleeps on the beach and drinks too much rum, lying down to allow nature to take its course. On this occasion, Winkler is rescued by Felix when Soma sends him to bring Winkler to their home. The second time Winkler battles nature is after he receives a box from Sandy returning all his letters and telling him that he’s no longer welcome in her home. Winkler rows a dinghy out into the coral reef, and it capsizes, leaving him floating in the water all night. He thinks he’ll drown, but he’s rescued after he grabs a piece of the dinghy and floats into the beach.
The third time Winkler faces off with nature is when he learns that the last of the nine Graces on his list isn’t his daughter. Despite having an injured foot, he walks across the Idaho desert alone, loses his glasses, and becomes lost for days, surviving on cans of soup and making campfires. He’s rescued only when he stumbles blindly across a road and is picked up by a truck driver. His final battle with nature isn’t as dramatic but is just as dangerous. Winkler spends the winter with Naaliyah at Camp Nowhere in the Yukon, facing temperatures as low as 20 degrees below zero. He spends far too much time outdoors, collecting snow to examine and photograph snow crystals. In addition, he initially insists on sleeping in the shed, which lacks heating. While this last battle is cushioned by a warm place to sleep and food in Naaliyah’s cabin, it allows Winkler to hide from his life and to contemplate his place in human existence.
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By Anthony Doerr
