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Vianne didn’t hesitate. She knew now that no one could be neutral—not anymore—and as afraid as she was of risking Sophie’s life, she was suddenly more afraid of letting her daughter grow up in a world where good people did nothing to stop evil, where a good woman could turn her back on a friend in need.
This quote can be found in Chapter 23. Unlike her rebellious sister, Vianne keeps her head down during the early stages of the German occupation, hoping to stay out of trouble. She feels that by complying with the Germans’ demands, she can keep her daughter, Sophie, safe during the war. However, when the Gestapo begins to round up Jewish families in Carriveau, she feels that she must act. When her closest friend, Rachel, faces deportation, she begs Vianne to take in her son, Ari. Despite the risks involved in harboring a Jewish child in her home, she takes Ari in without hesitation. At this point in the novel, she realizes that her moral responsibilities extend beyond protecting her own daughter. Though she is still afraid, she realizes that she cannot allow her daughter to be raised in a world where “good people did nothing to stop evil.”
Do I look like the mastermind of this? I just do what I’m told. They tell me to arrest the foreign born Jews in Paris, so I do it [...] Point rifles at them and be prepared to shoot. The government wants all of France’s foreign Jews sent east to work camps, and we’re starting here.
In Chapter 22, when Isabelle learns that the Jewish residents of Paris are being taken to the city’s sports arena, she immediately heads to the arena to investigate. There, she questions a French police officer, who tells her that the Germans have ordered that all Jews to be deported to “work camps.” Observing that many of those detained are women and children, Isabelle again questions the officer, who angrily insists that he knows nothing of the Germans’ plans, and further, that he doesn’t care. Noting the accusatory tone of Isabelle’s questions, he argues that he is not the “mastermind” behind the policy and is simply doing his job. He believes that he bears no moral responsibility for the antisemitic policies as he occupies a low position on the chain of command, just doing as he is told. The French police officer represents the many people across Europe who collaborated with the Germans and, after the war, attempted to justify their actions by arguing that they were merely “following orders.”
In the years that she had been tying scraps to the branches, the tree had died and the fruit had turned bitter. The other apple trees were hale and healthy, but this one, the tree of her remembrances, was as black and twisted as the bombed-out town behind it. She tied the brown-checked scrap next to Rachel’s.
This quote can be found in Chapter 33. When Antoine is conscripted into the French army, Vianne ties a scrap of fabric to an apple tree in the garden of Le Jardin to mark his absence, thinking of him when she looks at the tree. As the war goes on, Vianne suffers more personal losses. Her closest friend Rachel, for example, is deported to a concentration camp by the Nazis, and Vianne again ties a scrap of fabric to the tree. She ties yet another scrap when her father, Julien, informs her of his plan to sacrifice himself for Isabelle, falsely confessing to being “the Nightingale.” The tree, Vianne observes, is unhealthy. Its branches are dead and its fruit “had turned bitter,” while the other trees in the garden remain healthy. The tree, then, reflects Vianne’s distress and all that she has lost in the course of the war.
