What Comes After

Content Warning: This section contains references to death and animal death.

The house that Isaac lives in symbolizes family: both the potential of healing and growth in family and the painful emptiness of loss within a family. Evangeline initially views the house as “huge, too huge for a single old man. It would have to have lots of empty rooms and at least one extra bed” (17). The house’s size and emptiness suggest that she may find a space in a world where she has rarely found anywhere to belong. The novel repeatedly describes the house as empty, and that emptiness represents the possibility of fullness and the physical manifestation of loss. The silence and emptiness of the house when Isaac returns from the funeral and again later when he returns from the hospital thematically emphasize The Power of Silence.

The silence resulting from the absence of family—at the beginning, Daniel’s absence, and at the end, the potential permanent absence of Evangeline and Emma—pushes Isaac to move beyond his grief. Notably, the upstairs is the emptiest space in the house: “We had little reason to think about the empty space above. Even the stairs to that level were hidden. Most of the home’s total volume existed unseen and unused” (25). The echoes of Daniel’s life reverberate in that upstairs throughout the novel: Isaac moves beyond Daniel’s death while physically upstairs in his house. The house’s description in the final chapter evokes the choice that Isaac must make between emptiness and grief or fullness and healing.