50 pages • 1 hour read
Elizabeth StroutLucy by the Sea
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 1, Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 1
Book 1, Chapter 4 Summary
Sometimes Lucy feels angry with David, her dead husband. She knows this is part of grieving, but also worries because she hasn’t dreamed of him. In addition, she cannot stop seeing the news image of coffins for those who died of the virus in New York and are unclaimed.
William has gone to the grocery store and pharmacy a few times. He tells her about the empty shelves and the toilet paper shortage. The next time he goes, she decides to go along with him, but stays in the car. She is interested in everyone going into the store—especially the women, dressed in leggings and no makeup. While Lucy is waiting, a woman yells at her to go back to New York. Lucy is embarrassed, but when she tells William, he is not sympathetic.
Bob brings Maine license plates for their car. He asks if he can bring his wife Margaret along next time. One night, William sees a guard tower, but Lucy doesn’t care. She still struggles to comprehend what they are living through, and life feels foreign. However, they have moments of happiness, and have settled into a routine over the month they have been in Maine.
One day, Becka calls with the news that Trey has had an affair, and was preparing to leave her when they went into lockdown. She wants to leave him, and William works on a plan to get her out of New York. Lucy is anguished by the distance and the fact that she cannot be there for Becka. They talk on the phone a few times a day. Lucy can hear Trey in the background, mocking Becka for calling her.
Chrissy’s husband Michael offers to drive into New York to get Becka, but William says no. Lucy is stunned, but William will not risk the safety of Chrissy or her husband, Michael, who has asthma. Instead, he arranges for a driver he knows to disinfect his car and pick up Becka. Becka quarantines for two weeks in Connecticut, then continues to work remotely.
Lucy thinks about William’s daughter, Bridget, and she calls Estelle to ask after her.
Book 1, Chapter 5 Summary
It snows on the first day of May. William investigates a tower he has spotted, and finds out it was used to watch for German submarines during World War II. His father was a German prisoner of war, sent to work in Maine. When he fell in love with William’s mother, she left her marriage and her child. William had only recently discovered that he had a sister, Lois. About that same time, Lucy receives an email from her, saying that she regrets not seeing William the day they visited. William decides to write Lois back.
Bob Burgess brings his wife, Margaret, over. Margaret admits she was intimidated to meet Lucy, a famous author. She also talks about how her work as a Unitarian minister has changed since the pandemic began. Lucy cannot really imagine her life.
That night, William shows her the email he wrote to Lois. It talks about his regrets as he gets older, how he has lived his life, and how sorry he is for their mother’s abandonment of her. Lois writes him back, signing the email with love. Lucy tells him he should write back. He says that he will, but at the moment he feels guilty and ashamed. He had an affair with Pam Carlson, Bob Burgess’s wife, years ago, and Bob had never known. William says he wishes he was more like Bob. They talk for hours, until they get tired enough to go to sleep.
Lucy feels that Becka is withdrawing from her. She keeps waiting for the pandemic to end, but it doesn’t. One day, she and Bob take a walk together. They both miss New York—this is the time of year he would go down to visit his brother Jim and ex-wife Pam.
Bob also tells Lucy about his father’s death, how he had blamed himself for years. Jim had recently revealed that he was actually responsible, not Bob. Lucy tells him about David and how strange it felt to be with William—normal, but strange at the same time. As they return to the house, they pass their neighbor Tom and say hello. Bob tells her Tom had put the sign on their car. At first, she doesn’t believe it, but then says it doesn’t matter as they are friends now.
William and Lucy take a walk with Bob and Margaret. Margaret stops and speaks to everyone, and Lucy can see that she is a good minister and person. William walks to the guard tower nearly every day. He seems depressed when he returns, but Lucy doesn’t ask him why.
Sometimes Lucy hates William, and sometimes she likes him. Once, she asks him why he washes his jeans so frequently. He tells her that he had surgery for prostate cancer; the surgeon had botched the surgery, so now he sometimes pees a little bit. He didn’t tell Lucy or their daughters about the cancer, and when she offers sympathy now, he cuts her off.
One day, Chrissy tells them that Michael’s parents are returning from Florida, even though they said they wouldn’t. Their life in Florida has been unchanged by the pandemic, and William is upset that they don’t seem to be considering Michael’s health. William leaves Michael’s father a message telling them to quarantine, but they never respond.
William decides that he and Lucy will drive to Connecticut to confront Michael’s parents and pick the children up, and the next morning, they leave. When they arrive, Chrissy, Becka, and Michael welcome them. It is strange because no one can hug. When Michael’s parents arrive, William convinces them to quarantine in a nearby family condo, although they make jokes about it. After they leave, everyone is relieved but somehow frightened.
William is exhausted by the confrontation, so Lucy drives home. She realizes that Chrissy might be pregnant—she has had miscarriages and may not have wanted to tell them, but Lucy could tell. Lucy also suddenly believes that Michael’s father has the virus. Four days later, Michael’s father is in the hospital for 10 days—he and Michael’s mother both have the virus, although she doesn’t have to go to the hospital.
Book 1, Chapters 4-5 Analysis
When Lucy goes with William to the grocery store, she remains in the car, maintaining her position as observer. She notices changes in the people going into the store, most notably in the women: “No one—that I could see—wore any makeup at all” (52). Lucy is remarking on a common phenomenon during the pandemic; that of more relaxed appearances during lockdown.
Strout illustrates the deep divide between the rural Maine community and New Yorkers when the woman in the parking lot yells at Lucy. Then, Strout relieves the tension, with Lucy and William taking in a beautiful sunset: “We watched for these sunsets as time went by, and sometimes they arrived: the most golden orange glory in the world, it seemed to me at those times” (56). Although she is an urbanite, Lucy reconnects with nature, and it alleviates her tension. With scenes like this, Strout emphasizes how natural wonders transcend humanity’s current misery.
In Lucy’s relationship with Becka, Strout explores The Changing Role of Motherhood, as Lucy and Becka’s relationship will shift during the course of the novel. Becka’s situation is an example of tense scenarios that occurred during lockdown—she is trapped in her apartment with a husband who was preparing to leave her. Strout emphasizes Lucy and Becka’s close relationship with the fact that they talk on the phone multiple times a day during this time; Becka calling Lucy “Mommy” reinforces the mother-and-child nature of their relationship. By showing the reader their relationship’s status quo, Strout will be able to show how it changes throughout the novel.
When William arranges for Becka to leave New York, Lucy refers to it as the First Rescue Story. By titling this experience, Strout shows the development of a mythology—these stories will be told and retold later as people share their pandemic experiences. In addition, Lucy again sees William’s predictions come true: Becka is working from home, something that she never could have anticipated.
Beyond his role as Lucy’s ex-husband and rescuer, little attention has been paid to William’s character. However, in this section, Strout offers information about William’s father, mother, and his half sister, Lois. These revelations are spurred by William’s discovery of a tower along their coastline, used for spotting German submarines during World War II. Lucy recalls basic details about William’s father, a German prisoner of war, and his mother, who left her family to marry him.
William had never known about his half sister, Lois, who initially rejects him. In Chapter 5, she contacts Lucy and wants her to “tell him I hope he is safe” (69). Beyond illuminating William’s background, Lois’s gesture shows another effect of the pandemic—many people reconnected with distant family and friends, and forged new bonds. Covid shifted people’s perspectives on what they truly valued, and forced them to reconsider relationships. In the novel, William has the opportunity to build a relationship with Lois and her family. It is the same shift that also causes him to express his shame and regret over his life.
In Chapter 5, Lucy shares “The Second Rescue Story” (92), another part of pandemic mythology. Strout shows yet another way in which some people dealt with the pandemic—Michael’s parents have been living their normal lives, with no accommodation to the Covid virus. Through them, Strout shows another way in which some people grappled with the enormity of the situation—they ignored or denied it.
When William and Lucy drive to Connecticut, they have the opportunity to find out what is happening outside their bubble. This also gives Becka and Lucy the opportunity to have a conversation about shifting perspectives, in this case, about Bloomingdale’s. Becka brings up how she, Chrissy and Lucy would often meet at Bloomingdale’s, but they want to choose a different place now. She explains, “it’s really a place of bad things when you actually think about it […] it’s gross” (101). Lucy is surprised, but later makes the connection between Becka’s assertion and a news segment on a sweatshop, and understands what her daughter meant. Again, Lucy shows that, even when she may initially not “get it,” she will continue to seek understanding.
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By Elizabeth Strout
