Last Twilight in Paris

“To distract herself, Helaine tried to picture the route they were taking outside the windowless truck, down the boulevards she had just days earlier walked freely, past the cafés and shops. The familiar locations should have been some small comfort.”

As she’s being driven in the truck to Lévitan, Helaine tries to figure out where in Paris they are based on the turns the truck makes. She thinks of how she walked these streets and saw these bustling places just a few days earlier, believing her memories of them ought to comfort her now, when so much else is uncertain. Instead, she is reminded of the way the city, and her own situation, has changed so dramatically recently. This highlights The Transformation of Civilian Spaces into Sites of Oppression.

“My mind reels back to the other day when the children had been playing hospital. They were using an old gauze bandage, wrapping it around a doll. Seeing this, Joe, usually so even-tempered, had become distraught […] His eyes had been wide with horror as he surely remembered men bleeding out when there hadn’t been bandages to save them.”

Louise recalls watching her children playing and the way Joe’s personality seems to change before her eyes. Instead of retaining his typically logical and serene disposition, he becomes quite distressed when he sees the old piece of gauze. He appears to conflate the past with the present, forgetting that there is no shortage of bandages now, that there aren’t friends of his bleeding to death in tents nearby. This moment, and Joe’s evident pain, highlights The Enduring Effects of Trauma and Loss.

“Why can’t I be content with this life?”

Louise struggles to reconcile a past version of herself with the present one. She used to feel so independent and capable, full of purpose and living meaningfully. Now, however, she feels rather discontented with her current life, which consists mostly of being a wife and mother. She had such freedom in her youth during wartime, but now she is responsible for the care of her family. This doesn’t give her the same sense of ability and purpose, demonstrating the complexity of The Interplay Between One’s Past and Identity.

“Helaine closed her journal and picked up Little Women, which she was reading for the third time. Normally, she preferred more adventurous books, like The Three Musketeers. But she identified with Beth’s confinement and the way that Jo felt torn between home and seeing the world.”

Helaine’s love of Little Women and The Three Musketeers helps to illuminate how her character feels and the things for which she wishes. The first allusion connects her to Beth, the March sister who experiences a serious childhood illness and a subsequently circumscribed life. Beth is kind and imaginative but physically limited, and she dies young after being weakened by multiple illnesses. The second allusion makes it clear that Helaine craves adventure and excitement, even though it might affect her health negatively. Her desire shows how important it is to possess The Freedom to Control One’s Narrative.

“[Helaine and Annette] had been one another’s only companions for a long time now and had always gotten on well, moving like two appendages of the same body in their shared space.”

The narrator compares Helaine and her mother, via simile, to the two arms or two legs belonging to one, shared body. They live alone for so long, cut off from the rest of the world, that they begin to function without having to communicate their motions to one another. It is as though they are controlled by one brain. This helps to explain how significant it is when Helaine decides to act independently and why her choice is so upsetting to Annette.

“[Helaine] followed [Gabriel] to a clearing off the main path where a thick canopy of trees created a kind of shelter.”

This idyllic and romantic setting foreshadows Helaine’s future with Gabriel. He will try to “shelter” and protect her, though in a manner that allows her to retain a great deal more personal freedom than her parents’ efforts ever did. The natural shelter created by the trees is, literally and connotatively, much more expansive because it lacks the walls of her family’s home. It protects without confining, suggesting Gabriel’s intentions and future love for her.

“But the old, frugal Louise, who had never quite left me, rises stronger now that I am back in the city. I tuck my chin and set off down the escalator to the Tube. At the bottom, I shudder in the deep cavernous space, assaulted by memories.”

Louise’s postwar experience in London reminds her quite strongly of the woman she used to be. She is resolute and self-regulating, reminded of the contradictions and The Interplay Between One’s Past and Identity in the present. This description also personifies her memories as being capable of “assault[ing]” her, as though they choose to attack and wound. This suggests the complexity of Louise’s feelings regarding the past and her negative recollections of wartime.

“For the first time in her life, Helaine felt like a real person with skin and blood and breath. And desire. A longing she had never felt yet somehow understood welled up inside her.”

The narrator’s description of Helaine’s feelings for Gabriel draws attention to the new sensations she experiences in a body she used to see as weak and incapable. The use of polysyndeton emphasizes the compounding effect of Helaine’s newly awakened physical and emotional sensations. Further, the varied syntax of these sentences adds to her mounting perceptions, drawing special attention to Helaine’s “desire” and “longing,” which are grammatically isolated by fragmented sentence structures.

“Watching her mother’s eyes flicker with fear, Helaine felt guilty at the trouble she had caused for her. Helaine knew then that fear had kept her mother every bit as much of a prisoner as the walls of her childhood home had kept Helaine herself.”

This moment constitutes Helaine’s first awareness of The Moral Complexities of Resistance. She longs to resist her parents’ control, but she also recognizes that her mother sought to protect her out of love, not pride or ego. Helaine recognizes Annette’s fear of Otto, as well as her fear of being alone, but she must make a choice between freeing herself and supporting her mother; it is like the choice she’s faced with later when Miriam becomes trapped on the bus. While Annette would wish for Helaine to stay, despite her unhappiness, Miriam will urge Helaine to save herself, a more loving and selfless choice.

“Only, then I was young and brave. Now I am timid, shackled by my life and the wounds of the past.”

Louise uses a metaphor to compare her life to a kind of physical imprisonment, one that might include the use of shackles and restraints. In her youth, she felt “brave,” though now she feels “timid” and weak, almost the reverse of Helaine’s experience. These contrasts highlight the complexity of The Interplay Between One’s Past and Identity.

“Neither of them had spoken more about impending war since that night, but it hung over them like a storm cloud.”

Helaine and Gabriel sense the war coming, and the narrator uses a simile to compare that awareness to a storm cloud. This foreshadows the terrifying future ahead of them, though they cannot guess how bad that “storm” is going to get.

“Suddenly, it seemed to Helaine that the Germans were erasing her life, one memory at a time.”

This word choice calls attention to Helaine’s perception that her life is like a story, or something that one might physically “eras[e].” It is as though the story of her life has been written, just as she writes of Anna in her journal; the Germans’ takeover of her home and the slow elimination of the activities that give her life meaning are akin to someone erasing one of the stories Helaine has written. This demonstrates the importance of having The Freedom to Control One’s Narrative.

“This is the first time I’ve had real time to myself in nearly a decade and it is like getting to know someone I’ve never met.”

In addition to highlighting The Freedom to Control One’s Narrative, Louise’s feelings upon revisiting London demonstrate The Interplay Between One’s Past and Identity. Before her trip, she feels a significant disconnect between who she once was and who she now is, largely the result her shifting responsibilities: She is now bound to husband and children whereas, before, her only duty was to herself. Louise will not be able to reconcile her past and present selves, or find contentment in her current life, until she finds a way to balance obligation to others with responsibility to self.

“Though they were worn and likely not the ones the musicians had played before coming here, they still looked like treasures, fragments of light in this dank and hopeless world.”

Louise uses a simile to compare the POWs’ musical instruments, relatively mundane objects in the prewar era, to small points of light in an otherwise dark world. The instruments seem synonymous with a life of art and freedom and happiness, reminders of joy in a place characterized by brutality and fear. Such a description enhances the text’s mood and Louise’s character. She may be horrified by what she sees at the camps, but she is also capable of identifying bright spots in the relative darkness.

“It was only her second night in the department store, and it already felt like an eternity.”

Helaine’s perception of time in Lévitan draws attention to the effects of The Transformation of Civilian Spaces into Sites of Oppression. Though she has only been imprisoned in the store for two days, its altered purpose makes every moment feel much longer than it ought. She uses a hyperbole, emphasizing the severity of her feelings in this familiar, but dramatically changed, space. This perception also hints at The Enduring Effects of Trauma and Loss, and why those effects can last so long and feel so interminable.

“I peel back the skin of the orange and bite into it. The taste is youth and freedom, something just for me that I am not obliged to share or give to anyone else.”

Louise’s sensual description of her experience with the orange Ian gives to her highlights her reawakened sense of self as well as her sexual attraction to him, someone she believes understands things about her that Joe simply does not. This description of her action—which is rather primal—grounds her in her body and desires, which have become somewhat foreign to her since the time she knew Ian. Such a line highlights The Interplay Between One’s Past and Identity and the potential dangers of neglecting oneself as one’s responsibilities change.

“Each entry was not just a story. They read now like a precious chronicle of all that she had lost […] Then she opened the front cover once more and added Gabriel’s surname after her own. Helaine Weil Lemarque. It made her somehow feel more connected to him, more whole.”

Helaine ascribes symbolic meaning to her journal beyond what it literally is. To her, it is not just a book in which she writes the stories she creates, it also comes to signify everything that she has lost: Her grandmother, her childhood, Gabriel, and her freedom. This highlights how important it is to possess The Freedom to Control One’s Narrative. Adding Gabriel’s last name to her own, even if only in this book, helps Helaine to feel that she still has some control over her life story, even when her body is imprisoned in Lévitan.

“Their clothes seemed to fall off of their own accord and their bodies met in a fiery crescendo unlike anything Helaine had ever experienced.”

The narrator uses a sort of double metaphor to emphasize the passion Gabriel and Helaine share. The “fiery crescendo” of their lovemaking compares it both to an inferno and to a piece of music that builds in intensity and feeling, highlighting the couple’s heightened emotional states: They love one another and cannot know if they will ever see each other again.

“I am prepared to put the past behind me and live my life. I only hope it will still be there waiting for me now that I am ready to take it.”

As Louise begins to suspect that she will never learn the whole truth about Franny’s death and its connection to the necklace, she decides to return to the life she left in Oxfordshire and be grateful for it. However, when Joe joins her in Paris and encourages her to continue her search for answers, she realizes that she cannot simply pretend her past didn’t happen or that it doesn’t matter. Her contradictory experiences and feelings showcase how complex The Interplay Between One’s Past and Identity can be.

“Surely there would be repercussions when it was discovered that they were gone. But there was no other choice—they could not take everyone and they could not stay here.”

The prisoners at Lévitan tend to live by a shared code of ethics: Most of them avoid behavior that results in others being punished. However, if Miriam and Helaine are going to escape, they must disregard that code and the possibility that other prisoners will suffer for their actions. Normally, neither woman would do anything that could endanger others, but they know they have to save themselves if they are to survive. This dilemma demonstrates The Moral Complexities of Resistance.

“How could Helaine abandon her now, when Miriam had risked so much for her? There was nothing she could do, though, and if she tried, Helaine would surely be rearrested. The whole escape attempt would have been for nothing. No, she owed it to Gabriel, to her mother, to Miriam herself to keep going and do everything she could to survive.”

When Helaine escapes the bus transporting the prisoners away from Lévitan, she faces her most significant proof of The Moral Complexities of Resistance. She sees that Miriam has been prevented from escaping, and she considers going back to help her friend. However, Helaine realizes that, if she doesn’t run, she and Miriam will both be punished or killed. Although failing to assist her friend avoid death might normally be morally reprehensible, Helaine knows that their circumstances alter her responsibility: She recognizes that she “owe[s]” it to everyone she loves, everyone who loves her, to survive if she can.

“[T]he Joint Distribution Committee offering Helaine a space in a displaced persons camp […] She did not have to go […] She was free now and going was an offer of aid, a choice. But it was recommended until everyone could be checked for disease and fed. Helaine didn’t want to accept, ‘Camp’ was the very thing she had dreaded and avoided while at the department store.”

Helaine’s response to the Allies’ offer of aid at a displaced persons camp hints at The Enduring Effects of Trauma and Loss. Even though she knows it’s her choice to go or not, that she will be treated for any illnesses she may have contracted and fed nutritious food for the first time in many months, her associations with the word “camp” terrify her. Logically, she knows that she will be safe in this camp, but her trauma nearly overrides that logic.

“The stories about Anna that she had written before the war came back to her anew. She reconstructed them, wishing she had the journal she left behind in the department store. There were new stories, too, and she began to see that the things she had once only dreamed about doing through her fiction, travels and adventures, might be possible once the war was over.”

The return of Helaine’s creativity and her desire to write again demonstrate how strongly one wishes for The Freedom to Control One’s Narrative. The link between her stories and her freedom becomes even clearer as she understands that she will actually have the opportunity to do the things she’s only written about before now.