A Response to Broken Harbor by Tana French
Tana French’s novel, Broken Harbor, presents an uncanny truth to readers, namely that inside and outside are not as distinct as people would like to believe, which means that the inside is not safe from the outside nor the outside from the inside. The scholar Nicholas Royle discusses how uncanny it can be to disturb a person’s sense of boundaries: “The uncanny has to do with a strangeness of framing and borders, an experience of liminality” (Royle 2). Humans create these boundaries—whether physically or mentally—in order to separate themselves from the perceived danger of the outside. In the novel, boundaries are revealed to be false and ineffective, which means that the inside, ultimately, presents the real danger. People can no longer consider the wild outside as an ‘other,’ as inherently different from themselves. Danger comes from the inside, and it is a part of human nature that people try not to acknowledge. They “draw a line” in order to mark wild as something outside of human nature (French 86). Therefore, the novel creates what Royle calls “a crisis of the natural,” making both Scorcher, the lead detective, and the reader question their “own nature[s], human nature, the nature of reality and the world” (Royle 1). Broken Harbor shows a home that is unsafe, not from outside threats as one might expect, but from the inside—a member of the family, the familiar doing something strange and unfamiliar: “[The uncanny] can consist in a sense of unhomeliness uprooted, the revelation of something unhomely at the heart of hearth and home” (Royle 1). This novel leaves the reader with an eerie and uncanny sense of discomfort after reading—and while reading—because it upsets the reader’s sense of order. The reader’s distress mimics that of Scorcher, who experiences a similar anxiety when, while investigating the murder case, he realizes that this “line” separating the wild from the civilized does not exist (French 86). Scorcher’s case and the novel as a whole reveal that wildness and savageness can come from the inside as much as the outside, and, in fact, those distinctions—between outside and inside—may ultimately be meaningless. Wildness, according to the novel, is inside humans, part of their nature, and not necessarily ‘other’ though people may want to believe that it is.
Broken Harbor examines the boundaries that separate humans from nature, the home from the wild. Scorcher’s early statement about the crime is called into question over the course of the novel: “‘Whatever happened here came from one of two places: inside this house, or outside’” (French 75). Here, Scorcher assumes that inside and outside are two distinct places and that, therefore, the theoretical outside cause would have to cross some threshold—both literally and metaphorically—in order to come inside. Home, by its very definition is “a sanctuary” (“home, n. and adj.”), a place of safety meant to keep out the wild. Many people, including Scorcher, believe that it creates a boundary between private and public or “inside” and “outside” as Scorcher says (French 75). Scorcher equates wild, disorderly nature with murder: “The final step into feral is murder. We stand between that and you. We say, when no one else will, There are rules here. There are limits. There are boundaries that don’t move” (French 84). Police keep people safe from murder and murderers—the wild, and they, in conjunction with the laws, enforce these limitations, ensuring not only that people are safe, but also that they feel safe in the same way home provides this sense of security.
Furthermore, according to Scorcher, humans initially created this barrier to separate the wild from the civilized: “[T]he first thing we ever did, when we started turning into humans, was draw a line across the cave door and say: Wild stays out. What I do is what the first men did. They built walls to keep back the sea. They fought the wolves for the hearth fire” (French 86). This passage implies that the “line” is in fact almost arbitrary (French 86). How do people determine what constitutes wild? The first humans, much like today’s humans, drew the boundary in order to protect the home or, in this case, “the cave” (French 86). The boundary demarcates a specific location (i.e. the home) in which people want to feel safe; anything wild and uncontrollable, such as “the sea” or “wolves” (French 86), are expected to stay on the outside while humans, in contrast to the wild, are tame and controlled. In fact, the word ‘domesticated’ is an antonym of ‘wild’ and refers to the home (the Latin word for home is domus). To domesticate someone or something is the act of transforming something wild into something fit for the home, in order that people may deem it civilized enough or safe enough to allow inside. The phrase “hearth fire” reminds the reader that the inside of a home is a quintessentially human and civilized place because fire is a uniquely human technology (French 86). Humans have the ability to control fire, but when it occurs in nature it becomes an uncontrollable and unbelievably destructive force. This means that, for Scorcher, part of being human includes being in control and anything or anyone outside of that control is wild and dangerous.
Therefore, it becomes undeniably disturbing when someone or something does cross that line—whether moving from civilized to wild or vice versa. Scorcher’s job entails keeping people on the civilized and orderly side and punishing those who transgress the limits of what the law considers acceptable human behavior (more specifically, those who commit murder). Moreover, he needs to figure out what made those transgressors “feral” in the first place (French 84): “Murder needs an answer…The day we stop asking why, the day we decide that it’s acceptable for the answer to a severed life to be Just because, is the day we step away from that line across the cave entrance and invite the wild to come howling in” (French 203). This means that if people accept crossing that boundary as natural—part of human nature—then the line itself dissolves. The outside and inside are no longer two distinct places; the inside no longer serves as a refuge for people, and the outside forces are free to come inside. By extension, the fact that this “line” can be dismantled by a mere thought, “Just because,” reminds the reader that this line is created by a thought (French 203). This threshold is an imagined idea of humans to make them feel safe, to assure them that danger comes from the outside and may be kept out, which implies that savageness and animalistic tendencies can be removed from or, perhaps, are not inherently part of human nature. Wildness becomes ‘other,’ and when someone crosses over into the wild territory, then those who perceive themselves as inside the line become able to distance themselves from the transgressor, allowing the people inside this imagined line to maintain their sense of safety, control, and order.
Thus, Broken Harbor subverts the idea of a boundary. The novel complicates the threshold, having the inside and outside become confused and intermixed in a frightening and dangerous way. The terror becomes more poignant when the reader considers the Spains’ house and their literal threshold which simultaneously is and is not crossed by an outsider. Jenny Spain only becomes capable of murder after realizing that her home offers neither her nor her family protection: “‘I thought I’d kept them safe. That was all I ever wanted. But that animal, that thing, it had got everywhere. It was inside Emma, inside her head. I would have killed it if I could have, I’d have done it with my bare hands, but I couldn’t do that because it didn’t exist…It had escaped; it had got outside the house too. There wasn’t anywhere left that was safe’” (French 412). In Jenny’s confession to Scorcher, she acknowledges the disturbance of the very notion of a human boundary keeping the wild out because the wild comes from within. The “animal” that Pat Spain believes is inside his home is not real (French 412); it is an imagined danger, threatening the safety of the Spains’ home. In reality, this “animal” does not come from the outside at all, but literally originates inside the Spains—the human imagination. The animal’s ability to “spread” from Pat’s mind to Jack’s and Emma’s minds to Jenny’s mind, moving from the inside to the outside, is what makes the creature so disturbing (French 84). Its ability to go “anywhere” is the reason that Jenny believes her family is unsafe (French 412); she realizes that the perceived safety barrier created by the home is extremely permeable.
Ultimately, the real threat to the Spain family comes from inside the home, within the family unit, while the outsider, Conor, enters their home in order to help them. Conor’s goal is to make Jenny happy[1]—whether by leaving souvenirs for her to find or helping her commit suicide. The wild starts inside the home and gradually moves outward: “Wild got into the air like a virus, and it’s spreading…Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone” (French 84). This passage from early in the novel foreshadows the outcome of this story; what Scorcher calls “wild” (French 84) is what Pat perceives as the “animal” (French 412), which pushes Jenny into becoming “feral” (French 84)—in other words, capable of murder. In her drive to keep her family safe, Jenny becomes the danger and destroys her family. In Broken Harbor, human nature contains wild, and people cannot establish a barrier to keep out what is already within themselves.
The housing development as a whole parallels the notion that the boundary between wild and civilized is an imagined one: “The back entrance of the estate was two great stone gateposts, opening onto a sweep of swaying long grass that had grown up thick in the gap where the gate should have been” (French 103). The “gateposts” create a literal threshold, marking the place where the development begins and the wild should end (French 103). The gate itself is absent, which means that a physical barrier between outside and inside no longer exists. Nature has begun to grow wildly, unchecked by humans, so that there is “long grass” instead of a manmade “gate” (French 103). This leaves the development with an eerie skeleton of a boundary: Posts mark where the “line” should be and once was, but the actual, physical gate that prevents those on the outside from coming inside is not present (French 203). Similarly, the locks that the builders installed in the doors are effectively useless: “[The neighbor’s key] opened the Spains’ back door like it had been oiled. The lock clicked open and the last link in that chain clicked into place, a taut glinting thread running from Conor’s hide straight into the violated kitchen” (French 242). Here, there is yet another physical boundary that is permeable; locks and keys are meant to strengthen the effectiveness of barriers. However, these homes remain accessible to outsiders even though the homeowners believe they are secure inside their homes. The boundary that people imagine or believe protects them from the chaos of the outside is, in reality, nonexistent or, at the very least, ineffective.
In brief, humans tend to feel more comfortable when they are able to categorize and define the world around them. When people label someone or something as unsafe, they want to separate themselves from said person or thing. Consequently, they create boundaries between themselves and the danger, and safe belongs inside while danger and wild belong on the outside. However, Broken Harbor shows, over the course of Scorcher’s investigation, that life is not that simple. In other words, the boundaries, if they exist at all, are not as clearly defined as people may believe. For the readers, this knowledge is disquieting—uncanny—because it forces them to consider the possibility that they may not be safe in their own homes or, even, in their own minds. They become aware of their vulnerability to unidentified, undefined and indefinable forces. For Scorcher, the knowledge is devastating because his ability to do his job effectively depends on those distinctions—legal and illegal, right and wrong, safe and unsafe. What happens when the very idea home is threatened and thresholds are not only crossed but dissolved altogether? These uncanny truths of Broken Harbor have the potential to cause an identity crisis, to make people question their entire existence and all of their life choices: “It is a crisis of the natural, touching upon everything that one might have thought was ‘part of nature’” (Royle 1). When something affects the home, a sort of ripple effect ensues until, eventually, every aspect of a person’s life is called into question, becoming a source of anxiety.
[1] Conor originally watches the Spains because witnessing their happiness provides him with some vicarious joy (French 339). Therefore, by helping Jenny make her home safe and happy again, Conor hopes, at least in part, to regain some of the “peace” he experiences when he sees how happy they are (French 339). The sense of comfort and order he feels when all is ‘right’ with the Spains—when their home is safe from the wild—is “‘peaceful’” (French 339). This motivates him to continually return to watch the family and to act when he realizes Jenny’s ideal home life is being threatened.
Works Cited
French, Tana. Broken Harbor. New York: Penguin Group, 2012. Print.
“home, n. and adj.” OED Online. December 2013. Oxford University Press. Web. 21 March 2014.
Royle, Nicholas. The Uncanny. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003. Web. 21 March 2014.
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