43 pages • 1 hour read
Lauren WolkBeyond the Bright Sea
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Crow/Morgan
Like those of the other main characters in the novel, Crow’s background is a mystery. Found by Osh just hours after her birth, Crow spends the novel discovering and understanding her origins, and then coming to terms with the fact that she was born on Penikese Island’s leper colony. Raised by her adoptive father Osh and adoptive mother Maggie, and shunned by the residents of neighboring Cuttyhunk out of fears that she may have leprosy, Crow struggles to find a sense of belonging and identity.
Crow’s curiosity and courage help her make sense of scant clues about her background, connecting details like the Cuttyhunk residents shunning her “as if they were afraid” (6) with Maggie’s stories that the leper colony was racially diverse—as Crow reframes it to Osh, her ancestors on Penikese came “[f]rom Islands off Africa. Off South America. Where people have skin more like mine than yours” (128). Ultimately, her curiosity steers her in the right direction: She digs up both details about her biological family and literal buried treasure.
A good heart and sense of justice guide Crow’s actions. She is consistently mindful of Osh’s and Maggie’s feelings, and, more broadly, her empathy for the former inhabitants of the leper colony grows even before she has all of the details about her connection to it. Crow’s charity also drives her decision to give most of her share of the treasure away to orphanages and hospitals.
By the end of the novel, Crow has developed the emotional maturity to accept her past, have hopes of reuniting with her brother Jason, and appreciate all the more her life with her found family of Osh and Maggie.
Osh/Daniel
Osh’s background is shrouded—in some ways, he only emerged as a fully formed person when he found the infant Crow and decided to care for her. Osh comes from an unnamed place, speaks English with an accent, and “sometimes spoke in a language I didn’t know, his voice like music, especially when he prayed” (4). He fled vaguely dangerous circumstances: His hands “were covered with scars from all his work and whatever had happened before me” (52), he escaped “terrible fighting” (7), and had to abandon his old life unwillingly (“I left everything I hated, I also left everything I loved” (87)). Even Crow never learns his real name. At the same time, when Osh first landed on his island he refused to speak. He only began communicating with other people and fostering relationships with his neighbors—in particular, with Maggie—when he adopted Crow.
The key difference between Osh and Crow is a matter of agency. Crow doesn’t know her origins because she was sent off at birth. Osh intentionally left his place of origin, and chooses to withhold information about his past. His resourcefulness about founding a new life and his ability to create a makeshift family are underscored by his role as an artist who makes beautiful things out of discarded detritus and the rugged natural world.
Osh is his adopted daughter’s moral compass and support. Throughout the novel, he compliments Crow, supports her quest, and buttresses her innate wisdom. At the same time, Osh provides a healthy dose of skepticism, grounding her flights of curiosity—for example, warning her not to get carried away believing the rescued sailor is Jason.
During Crow’s quest, Osh overcomes his resistance to discussing his past—she learns more about herself and helps him open up. Mirroring Crow’s path to acceptance and appreciation of her life, by the end of the novel, Osh is ready to acknowledge the world he has built with Crow as an indelible father-daughter relationship.
Miss Maggie
Maggie is as tough and rugged as Osh and Crow, with the same isolationist streak, and the same vaguely undefined background. Maggie “lived in a smart little house apart from most of the other year-rounders” (16) and one year calmly eats her pet rabbits when they froze to death in the winter. Maggie is “a castaway, too. Like Osh, by choice,” having left behind a life as a farmer on the mainland for an unnamed reason (33).
Nevertheless, this independent spirit hides a deep desire for connection, which she initiates when Crow washes up on Osh’s island. Maggie becomes an important link between Crow, Osh, and the wider world. She often advocates for the two of them: She tries to enroll Crow in the local school, carries her mail to the post office when others do not want to handle it, checks out books for Crow when librarians do not want her touching them, and gives Crow school lessons.
Maggie is also a surrogate mother for both Crow and Osh, rebuking Osh for getting angry about Crow’s interest in her past and helping Crow research and the history of Penikese. When Osh relents, agreeing to be called Daniel, a name Maggie invented, he tells her, “[y]ou’re a part of what I am now” and the tough Maggie becomes “pink and fluttery as a primrose,” implying her affection for Osh (181). Maggie will always be a constant presence in Osh and Crow’s lives, and thus a part of the family they have created.
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By Lauren Wolk
