Notes on Chapter 1 - 9: The optician of Lampedusa

The force of that hold! My hand in a stranger's hand, in a bond stronger and more intimate than
an umbilical cord. And my whole body shaking with the force of the hold as I pulled upwards and
dragged the naked torso from the waves.

I still see them. Because it's still happening.

Chapter 1:

Running
The optician needs the sea
Nature has his own playground (6)
The Arab Spring + migrants (7)

The man wants to see nature and enjoy it as is, but it's clouded and full of suffering and
migrants who are trying to escape.

Tipped awkwardly onto their sides, their cracked hulls are blistered with cheerful turquoise and
ox-blood paint. (9)

Possible OCD? (16) (22)

A wind this warm and light could mean the treacherous Sirocco was on its way. It blew in
stealthily from the Sahara, picking up speed across Libya, roaring its way over the
Mediterranean until it burst open on Sicily and Lampedusa. (19)

October - the beginning of the end (20)

Chapter 3:
so much likeness to birth and water
"That swimming in the autumn was like a rebirth." (23)

"Changed your ideas, the sea did. Made you see things more clearly, more positively somehow
- all the calmness." (23)

"The ocean resonated with the primitive screaming, the terrible sound bouncing off and under
the water, gargling and rupturing. The optician recognized it as the music of the dying, the final
dirge of the drowning, played out right in front of their boat." (27)

"Even before he jumped down from the cabin and back onto the deck, the optician had
understood that he would have to choose who would live and who would die. (28)
Chapter 4:

"thrashing like fish in a net" (32)

feeling of adrenaline coursing through (32)

"She was wearing a turquoise T-shirt that was slicked with oil - and nothing else." (33)

Chapter 5:

"law above human lives" (36)

"they could see one of the fishing boats had begun to pluck the corpses that were littered across
the sea. Bodies, swollen with seawater, were slapped down rudely and heavily one by one like
cuts of meat. Somebody's wife, somebody's brother, somebody's son."
The imagery in the paragraph resembles humans as fish that were plucked out of the water and
dropped onto the boat.

"You can see very clearly that it isn't over for the optician. He's still searching, still scouring and
still desperate to save lives." (41)

Chapter 6:

"Her suffering seemed so vast..." as vast as the sea where her brother drowned. (42)

views on the sea change to hostility and ambiguity (43)

his soul splintered like the boat that sunk? "Now he felt that same unnerving splintered feeling
he'd sensed on the sad journey back to port" (46)

"He remembered switching off the radio last week when they'd talked about migrants drowning
off the coast of Sicily. He had turned away from them."(46) --> he is no longer an observer, but a
participant who is forever impacted by what he physically saw and felt.

"He checked his life against that bar. And now the line didn't seem straight or constant any
more. It was wavy and intermittent and he could no longer see his position in relation to it." -->
wavy just like the waves which seemed calm and peaceful but took many innocent lives and
became hostile.

Chapter 7:
"He remembered who she was then. She was the woman who'd come to the shop the other day
looking for cast-off clothing and shoes. The woman he had turned away." (50)

"I've failed. We've all failed. Us, Italy, Europe - all of us." (61)

Chapter 8:

"Italy's former colony, Eritrea." (62)

"They were all holding hands" (65)

running with a different meaning (66)

"The pity of those body bags! In life they had been robbed of a future and in death they'd been
robbed of an identity." (66)

Stories of lives that once were in the cemetery (67)

The gravedigger also showed 'pride' in his work. "I might not know his name," "But I remember
him. Believe me, I remember them all." (69)

"The wind had begun to amuse itself by picking up plastic watering cans and bouquets of dead
flowers, racing them along the narrow alleyways between the gravestones and then flinging
them to the ground." (69) --> just like a child does.

"The grand gesture of a guilty conscience." (71)

Chapter 9:

the airport and sea had changed from a place for relaxation and excitement to one of
somberness.

"It didn't matter they didn't share a language." "You gave me life, he was saying. You gave me
my life." (74)

"Right now it was so pathetic that he wanted to take off his own shoes and offer the man his
dignity." (75)

"Names not numbers! Names!" (75)

"How naive he'd been, thought the optician, how naive. Because there would always be greater
sorrow, deeper and more unfathomable than any of us could ever imagine." (83)
PERSONAL NOTE: We place the label "migrants" so casually and forget they are human too.

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Convergence points:

Theme prevalent: Life/hopes/dreams/Rebirth vs Death/Drowning = possible attention to issues

First person narrative Titanic=Rose and in book it's the Optician

“My hand in a stranger's hand, in a bond stronger and more intimate than an umbilical cord.”
- Umbilical cord is like a lifeline, Jack and Rose (Jack gave Rose the wooden plank, her
lifeline)

In Titanic, being able to put more people on the boat but the upper class not allowing since its
‘risky’
In the book, the boats hesitating to aid illegal immigrants because of the law and the risk it
would impose on them

“Having nature as his own playground” man over nature? Until nature slaps you in the face
The man who built the yacht thinking its the best and it could never break but then it breaks due
to the iceberg → natural disasters uncontrollable
Ends up dying in shame

The Arab Spring + migrants on their way to “paradise” only to end up dying in sea
Titanic bringing along people from all walks of life to “paradise” only for them to end up being
locked and left to drown
The Titanic carried some of the richest people in the world as well as hundreds of immigrants
from the British aisles, Scandinavia, and elsewhere in Europe who were seeking a new life in
the US and Canada

“The man wants to see nature and enjoy it as is, but it's clouded and full of suffering and
migrants who are trying to escape. “ Direct correlation with Titanic

"The ocean resonated with the primitive screaming, the terrible sound bouncing off and under
the water, gargling and rupturing. The optician recognized it as the music of the dying, the final
dirge of the drowning, played out right in front of their boat." (27)”
- In the Titanic, while everyone was screaming as they sunk, some band started playing
music and refused to stop playing even as the ship went down = music of the dying
"Even before he jumped down from the cabin and back onto the deck, the optician had
understood that he would have to choose who would live and who would die. (28)
- In Titanic, the guy who would choose who would hop on the boats and who would not

"You can see very clearly that it isn't over for the optician. He's still searching, still scouring and
still desperate to save lives." (41)
- The man on the boat at the end still searching for more people even though he was told
to turn back, ends up finding Rose

(I still see them. Because it's still happening. → Rohingya crisis ) = end note

“A wind this warm and light could mean the treacherous Sirocco was on its way. It blew in
stealthily from the Sahara, picking up speed across Libya, roaring its way over the
Mediterranean until it burst open on Sicily and Lampedusa.” Direct reading

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Chapter 10

- He could see migrants begging for help and he could see Francesco with his mouth stretched
wide, yelling something at him. But he couldn't hear what anyone was saying - he couldn't even
hear the sea -

- sadness likened to "the wispy October fog which crept in from the sea each morning, its damp
fingers chilling and pervasive."

- When some of the women had not been able to come up with the whole fare that was being
demanded from them, they'd been raped in part payment.

- The stretch of the Mediterranean between Lampedusa and Libya was turning into a graveyard

- They had been found in the depths of the sea, brought back into the light-but on land they had
been lost again.

- He had let their deaths wash over him and then retreat back out to sea and sink without a
trace

Chapter 11:

- Personifying the Galata --? "like them, she had left a job half-finished."
- Camps and numbers did not give him peace of mind

- "...he had opened his eyes wide and seen them for the first time: the black dots that were not
black dots, but men, women and children - flesh and bone and blood."

- He had stared into their eyes, which were rolling on the very cusp between life and death and
he had not seen strangers.

- The myopic world was a softer one, an indistinct jumble of shapes and forms with no edges.

Chapter 12:

- wind

- Operation Mare Nostrum --> closed because its so costly

- Today, he said, I am one year old. He pointed to the optician and then to the sea. In there, he
was trying to say, jabbing his finger at the water, I was dead. But here - he swept his arms
across Galata's deck - here, I was reborn.

- 'Just the eight of us,' said the optician. 'If the wind stays soft.'

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