Pain and Maternal Love Theme Analysis

There was a celebratory dinner her last evening in the dwelling. Her brother, older by six years, had already gone on to his own training in the Department of Law and Justice. They saw him only at public meetings; he had become a stranger. So the last dinner was just the three of them, she and the parental unit who had raised her.

She couldn’t look down at her own body but carefully moved her hands to rest there on what had been her own taut, swollen belly. It was flat now, bandaged, and very sore. The Product was what they had carved out of her.

And she missed it. She was suffused with a desperate feeling of loss.

In another, recurrent dream, Thirty-six was here with her, in her small room at the Hatchery, but no one knew. She kept him hidden in a drawer, and opened it from time to time. He would look up and smile at her. Secrecy was forbidden in the community, and the dream of the hidden newchild caused her to wake with a feeling of guilt and dread. But a stronger feeling was the one that stayed with her after that dream: the excitement of opening the drawer and seeing that he was still there, that he was safe and smiling.

“Were there any surprising names?”

“Not really,” Jeannette said, “except I was startled to hear that one, a boy, was given the name Paul. That was my father’s name.”

“But they can’t use the same name twice!” Edith said. “There are never two people in the community with the same name!”

“But they do regive names,” Claire pointed out, “after someone is gone.”

“Right. So that means my father is gone. I was surprised to hear it,” Jeannette said.

“When did you see him last?” Claire asked. She could remember her own parents, but it had been several years, and details about them had begun to fade.

Jeannette thought, and shrugged. “Probably five years. He worked in Food Production, and I never go over that way. I saw the woman who was my mother now and then, though, because she’s in the landscaping crew.”

The boat almost grazed the bank there, and she felt a yearning to go close to it. Odd, she thought, but she felt almost lured by the boat, in the same way that she found herself drawn to the Nurturing Center and the newchild who had been wrested from her body almost a year before. There was no relationship between the two, but Claire was feeling increasingly connected to both.

What on earth was the matter with her? No one else seemed to feel this kind of passionate attachment to other humans. Not to a newchild, not to a spouse, or a coworker, or friend. She had not felt it toward her own parents or brother. But now, toward this wobbly, drooling toddler—

She would not let them take that from her, that feeling. If someone in authority noticed the error, if they delivered a supply of pills to her, she thought defiantly, she would pretend. She would cheat. But she would never, under any circumstances, stifle the feelings she had discovered. She would die, Claire realized, before she would give up the love she felt for her son.

“But I fear this: that you will not be able to give birth. I think it has been taken from you.”

Claire was silent.

Alys leaned forward and turned the flame higher in the oil lamp. It was darkening outside. “There are other ways a woman finds worth,” she said in a firm, knowing voice.

“It was different, where I lived. There weren’t weddings. And yes, I gave birth.” She found herself speaking tersely to him. She was angered. “You can’t understand. I was selected to give birth. It was an honor. I was called Birthmother.”

He raised his chin and looked at her with a kind of contempt. “You live here, now. And you’re stained.”

“You must start to harden yourself. I’ll show you. It won’t be easy. You must want it.”

“I do want it,” Claire said. Her voice broke. “I want him.”

Einar paused, and thought, and then said, “It be better, I think, to climb out in search of something, instead of hating what you’re leaving.”

“To me you’re a child, still. And a mum always loves her child.”

“It should be so, shouldn’t it? But something stood in the way of it. I think it was a—well, they called them pills. The mothers took pills.”

“Pills?”

“Like a potion.”

“Ah.” That was something Alys understood. “But a potion is meant to fix an ill.”

“Claire yawned. She was achy and exhausted.

“My people—” (“My people?” What did that mean? She didn’t really know) “They thought that it fixed a lot of ills, not to have feelings like love.”

“Fools,” Alys muttered. Now she yawned too. “You loved your boy, though. That’s why you’re soon to climb out.”

Claire closed her eyes and patted the old woman’s back. “I did,” she said. “I loved my boy. I still do.”

“I have a son,” she said. “I want to find my son.”

“A son! How sweet. Maternal love is such a delicious trait. So you don’t want riches, or romance, but simply... your son?” The way he said the word, hissing it, sneering it, made her feel sick.

All that work. The weeks and weeks of planning, of building, of hoping. And all he could say now was that the paddle worked well. Gabe felt it all slipping away: his dream of returning, of finding his mother, of becoming part of something he had yearned for all his life.

But still. Still. He felt an enormous sadness that he didn’t entirely understand, when he watched Kira with her children. He felt a loss, a hole in his own life. Had anyone—all right: any woman—ever murmured to him that way, or brushed crumbs gently from his cheek? Had anyone ever mothered him? Jonas had told him no. “A manufactured product,” Jonas had said, describing his origins sadly.

It was dark when Gabe stood at the water’s edge, alone. He had begged Jonas to come with him. But Jonas had said no.

“Years ago, Gabe, when I took you and ran away, there was a man I loved and left behind. I wanted him to come with me but he said no.

“He was right to refuse. It was my journey and I had to do it without help. I had to find my own strengths, face my own fears. And now you must.”

He repeated them, like a chant. He loosened the paddle from there it was wedged. With his fingers he could feel the carved names in the smooth wet wood: Tarik. Simon. Nathaniel. Stefan. Jonas. Though she had not carved her name, he added Kira in his mind. Then little Matthew, and Annabelle. Finally he said his mother’s name—Claire—aloud, adding it to the list of those who cared about him. He shouted it—“Claire!”—into the night, begging her to live. Holding tightly to the paddle, he began to kick his way easily across the gently flowing water in the moonlight.