What the Wind Knows

“But don’t let the history distract you from the people who lived it.”

Eoin’s warning to Annie about her writing plays into the novel’s historical themes. Romanticizing the past means forgetting about the real people who went through historical events. Thus, history often becomes flat myth and legend, not three-dimensional narrative. Annie can only imagine Irish history from an intellectual distance, which irritates Eoin, who lived through the events Annie romanticizes.

“I loved churches the way I loved cemeteries and books. All three were markers of humanity, of time, of life.”

Annie is passionate about history. Cemeteries, books, and churches represent a past that she can only imagine. She appreciates the way these human monuments testify to the lives and beliefs of people who came before her. Annie’s passion for history is in part a way to replace her own lack of family history.

“It was as though the ash became a wall of white fog, billowing and collecting, and suddenly I could not see beyond the end of my boat. There was no shoreline, no sky—even the water was gone.”

As Eoin’s ashes turn into a billowing fog that somehow transports Annie back in time, the imagery evokes Eoin’s earlier lesson that the winds know everything, that nature bears witness to everyone’s histories. It is fitting that a natural phenomenon whisks Annie into her time-warp.

“I didn’t like this development in the story. They had never found Eoin’s mother. They’d never found her body. They had assumed she was dead, alongside her husband, lost in an insurrection that had ended very badly. And now I was here, raising questions that were long since buried. This was bad.”

By traveling back in time, Annie has robbed the Gallagher family of discovering what really happened to Anne, believing as they do now that Anne has returned. The phrase “development in the story” is also notable, signifying that Annie perceives the world around her as a story that she is observing. Now that Annie’s story is a part of history, what is the difference between history and story, between story and lived experiences?

“Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes…not even that.”

Annie’s existential crisis is important to Harmon’s themes of storytelling and history. True to her grandfather’s wisdom, human memory pales in comparison to nature’s memory. The Earth remembers far more than a human can. Instead of finding comfort in this, Annie finds it difficult to come to terms with losing Thomas Smith’s life and history. She grapples with how to keep people more alive than history itself.

“Her anger was a physical thing, her hurt and resentment as present and real as the wound in my side. I would have to keep reminding myself that her anger, though directed at me, was not my burden.”

Brigid’s anger towards Annie is heartfelt, but Annie rationalizes herself out of responsibility for Brigid’s resentments because, as stated here, “her anger…was not my burden.” This emphasizes the complicated ethical dilemma Annie faces now that she’s been transported to the 1920s: Annie’s presence has ramifications on the Gallagher family history, but she doesn’t feel culpable because she still feels like a voyeur.

“I had always been married to my work, in love with my stories, and committed to my characters, and I’d never wanted anyone or anything else. Eoin had been my island in a very lonely sea. A sea I’d chosen. A sea I’d loved. But Eoin was gone, and I found I had no desire to cross the waters if he wasn’t waiting for me on the other side.”

Annie wants to stay in Ireland with Thomas because her life in New York is successful but hollow, and without Eoin, meaningless. Annie, an orphan, faces the reality of utter loneliness devoid of family if she returns to her previous life. With Thomas, she finds the family life she’s always wanted. But this quote also demonstrates how much Annie still sees herself as an outside observer, more focused on her own happiness than the potential historical ramifications of staying in Ireland.

“Maybe the difference between the ‘real’ Anne Gallagher and me was that Brigid was her mother-in-law and Brigid was my great-great-grandmother. Brigid’s blood ran in my veins. She was part of me—how big a part, only my DNA would tell, but she belonged to me, and I wanted to know her. The first Anne might not have felt the same sense of belonging.”

In Ireland, Annie as Anne is an outsider or an interloper. Although Annie is one of the Gallagher clan by blood, her strange time-traveling background means that Declan’s mother and brothers will never know this. They push her away from the family she so desires.

“She complained mightily, cursing the English and the IRA, grumbling about truces that weren’t truces, doctors who weren’t ever home, and women who kept dangerous secrets.”

Brigid has seen some of the worst atrocities Ireland has experienced, and she has lost her children to revolution and migration. She has been failed by the English and the Irish, and shoulders the burden of being a matriarch of a fractured family. As an older woman, Brigid has little power, but much influence. Still, she is kept out of the loop and is forced into a marginal position.

“I didn’t know if I’d saved lives or simply incriminated myself. I didn’t know if I’d changed history or just modified it by sounding the alarm. For all I knew, I’d been part of the history all along. Regardless, I’d planted myself firmly in the middle of it. And, however innocent, my foreknowledge of the fire was still impossible to explain.”

The paradoxes of time travel make Annie’s presence in Ireland confusing and problematic. Because the family history she learned from Eoin is replicated in her own personal experiences (Anne and Thomas’s relationship, for example), it is difficult to know if history would always have unfolded the way it did or if Annie’s presence fundamentally changed history. This ties into one of the novel’s major questions: How is history made, and how are its effects felt?

“I had a teacher who told me fiction is the future. Nonfiction is the past. ‘One can be shaped and created. One cannot,’ she said.”

Annie Gallagher is a professional writer. Her meditations on the nature of nonfiction versus fiction are important to Harmon’s themes. Fiction is malleable—authors can “shape” their characters however they wish—but nonfiction, or history, cannot be “created” except through some otherworldly means, like time travel. The question of whether Annie is influencing historical events in Ireland is crucial, but she doesn’t believe she has this power. This quote is also important metafictionally: Harmon has written a historical novel that is about a writer who learns that writing novels is not enough to capture history in all its complexity and humanity.

“I had always loved two things above everything else, and from those two things, I had formed my identity. One identity grew from what my grandfather had taught me. It was wrapped around his love for me, our love for each other, and the life we’d had together. My other identity was formed from my love of storytelling. I became an author, obsessed with earning money, making bestseller lists, and coming up with the next novel. I had lost one identity when I’d lost my grandfather, and now I’d lost the other.”

Annie undergoes an identity crisis as Anne. Her grandfather was the only parent figure she had, and his passing on of Irish history led to Annie’s passion for writing. She owes her strong work ethic to the lessons she learned from Eoin. But in her new life in Ireland, these two sources of her identity are no longer useful. If she stays with Thomas, she’ll have to get used to seeing Eoin not as her grandfather but as her child. She will also have to give up her writing career. Can finding love with Thomas be enough?

“You say you can’t forget what you never knew. But you are Irish, Anne. You have Anne Gallagher’s laugh. You have her courage. You have her dark curly hair and her green eyes. You speak the language of Ireland and know the legends and stories of her people. So you can tell me you are someone else, but I know who you are.”

Being Irish is not about being born in or raised in the country of Ireland. Rather, being Irish is a commitment to history, a linguistic heritage, and an appreciation of centuries of storytelling. This marker of Irish identity is meaningful for all descendants of immigrants who have long lost their connection with the country itself. It also emphasizes the power of storytelling and memory. As long as stories keep memories alive, people can pass down their culture to future generations.

“His heart pounded beneath my hands where they pressed against his chest, and something within me crystallized, as though in that moment a choice was made, and I stepped into a past that would be my future.”

Annie’s love for Thomas complicates her decision to stay in 1921 Ireland. Annie is more powerful than the magic of Lough Gill—she stays in the past by making the choice to do so rather than through a lack of agency.

“It was a beautiful little book, full of Irish whimsy and hopeful pining, with two Irish lads, one big and one small, traipsing across the Emerald Isle. I knew that Ireland wouldn’t know the peace found in the pages of our book for a long, long time. But peace would come. It would come in layers, in pieces, in chapters, just like in a story. And Ireland—the Ireland of the green hills and abundant stone, of the rocky history and the turbulent emotions—would endure.”

Annie knows that Ireland will become what her 1921 family and friends hope for, though it will take many years of violence and hardship. In helping child Eoin keep his dreams of a free Ireland alive, she helps to ensure that Irish liberation happens. Harmon draws a parallel between chapters in books and history, again portraying history as powerful storytelling. But here, chapters imply a unified whole—a book keeping national hope alive.

“Something changed in Ireland around the turn of the century. There was a cultural revival of sorts. We sang the old songs and heard the old stories—things we’d heard many times before—but they were taught with an intensity that was new. We looked at ourselves and at each other, and there was a sense of anticipation. There was pride, even reverence, for who we were, what we could aspire to, and those we had descended from.”

Thomas’s observation about the new energy in Ireland is a testament to the importance of 1921. The end of colonial rule is in sight. People are no longer as scared to celebrate Irish history, culture, and language. The reclamation of a uniquely Irish identity is a driving force to Irish independence. While Annie looks to the past, Thomas is looking forward to the future.

“Someday, years from now, when you are grown, a woman from America, a woman named Anne, just like me, will come to Dromahair, looking for her family. She’ll come to your house for tea, and you will help her. I thought you might need a tea service of your own for when that day finally comes.”

Maeve’s tea set is another in a long list of time-travel loops Harmon creates in the novel, echoing cycles in history. An older Maeve will offer tea to Annie Gallagher in 2001 from the same tea set that Annie Gallagher had gifted to Maeve when Maeve was a teenager in 1921. These circular events pose important questions about the relationship between past and future, and the immediacy of their influence on each other.

"Anne produced the two rings I’d given her Christmas morning, and Father Darby blessed the bands. I was struck again by the symbol of the circle. Faith, fidelity, forever. If time was an eternal round, then it never had to end. With cold hands and hopeful defiance, Anne slid the ring on my finger, and I claimed her in return."

The wedding ring is another circular symbol, representing Annie and Thomas's love and the permeability of past, future, and present. Because the wedding ring will be included in Eoin's family memorabilia, the ring is also a tangible artifact that connects disparate time periods—the kind of historical object that Annie has always treasured.

“I clung to every word, desperate to savor the ceremony, to miss nothing. Yet in the years to come, it will be the memory of Anne, her gaze steady, her back straight, her promises sure, that I will cherish most. She was as solemn and serene as the stained-glass Madonna looking down on us as the rites were performed.”

Thomas’s journal entry from his wedding day foreshadows inevitable separation. Still, Thomas’s love for Anne keeps him from thinking about the possibility that the magic of the Lough will take her back to 2001. Thomas’s characterization of Annie as “solemn,” “serene,” and “steady” is important: Thomas lives in a chaotic world, but in Annie he finds steadfast peace.

“If all men loved their wives the way I love Anne, we would be a useless lot. Or maybe the world would know peace. Maybe the wars would end, and the strife would cease as we centered our lives on loving and being loved.”

Though Thomas fantasizes of a world in which people love so dearly that wars cease, it is precisely love for family and community that propels war. Whereas before, Thomas had only himself to worry about, in marrying Annie he inherits the responsibility of family. Far from giving him peace, this will only give him something to fight for.

“I’d often wondered, absorbed in piles of research, if the magic of history would be lost if we could go back and live it. Did we varnish the past and make heroes of average men and imagine beauty and valor where there was only dirge and desperation? Or like the old man looking back on his youth, remembering only the things he’d seen, did the angle of our gaze sometimes cause us to miss the bigger picture?”

Annie reflects on the double-edged sword of history. History canonizes important people who changed life for the better, but canonizing them takes away their humanity. This raises the question of which is more important: immediate experience or the bigger picture? Annie used to romanticize history from a remove. Now, Annie learns that history is composed of real people with concerns and lives that can’t be captured by legend. Which view is more accurate?

“I’d been wrong about one thing. These were not average men and women. Time had not given them a gloss they had not earned. Even those I wanted to loathe, based on my own research and conclusions, conducted themselves with fervor and honest conviction. These weren’t posing politicians.”

Annie’s love for legendary Irish historical figures remains even after she is forced to interact with and understand them as people with many layers. Harmon pays homage to those who advocated for change and faced enormous challenges and violence to make the future better. History may dehumanize individuals, but it does not diminish the story of progress.

“‘Mass. Confession. Communion. He goes to Mass more than any murderous traitor I know,’ he whispered. ‘It comforts him. Clears his head. They mock him for that too. It’s an Irish trait. We refuse a man communion while berating him for his sins. Some say he’s too pious; others say he’s a hypocrite for even setting foot in a church.’”

In the novel, Michael Collins emerges as a far more complex and emotional person than his revolutionary tough-guy image. The conflict described between Collins’s revolutionary zeal and his faith references Ireland’s historically fraught relationship with the Catholic Church. Ireland is both a fervently Catholic country and a modern nation intent on not being a theocracy. Notably, Collins’s rival Eamon de Valera is very publicly Catholic.