The return home
The allegorical value of Sancher's character is that he was accepted into a exclusivistic and tight-knit village for two symbolic reasons. First, his ancestry has their roots on this French archipelago. Secondly, he himself has accomplished at his age a tremendous amount of social honor and skill that makes the villagers admire him deeply. Together, this forms a motif very common to heroic literature. He has accepted him ancestral home as his place of death, and the community accepts and adores him until he does die.
The tortured hero
Another motif is present in Sancher's character. He does not know whether his life adds up to the honor that he is given by his loving community. This adds a tragic element to his character. He sometimes seems confident and proud and powerful, but then in his private life, he is often tumultuous and grieving. He is a dark person, but he does not affect his community in a dark way. They rally around him to encourage him, but his epic story ends in pain and confusion, a commentary on all of human life, really, because all life ends in death.
The dual lovers
At the funeral, in the symbolic context of death and the pain of grief, two women make good friends with each other who were set against each other; both were lovers of the deceased, and as such, they represent a balance to Sancher's character. The duality represents a balance that is quite lovely and nuanced; the man has died, but the women live. He is balanced by two very different women who are themselves balanced: one has a child by Sancher and the other miscarried. That means that the hero's death is balanced by a living balance that still symbolizes the duality of life and death.
The curse of death
Not only is the main character a representation of death because he is dead by the time the novel about him begins, but he also represents death in his living character too. Ask the people tell stories about him, the reader realizes that he was severely aware of his own mortality the whole time. In a way, he came to this island village to live a peaceful life and die in the land of his ancestors. He talks about the curse of his family that all the men die at 50 years old. He has correct knowledge about his own death.
Legacy and mourning
There is a poignant motif present in the novel. The motif is a dynamic of irony. Although there is no proof that Sancher gets to survive his death in anyway (perhaps something remains, but that is a subject best suited for religious mystics and philosophers), there is a way that he does literally survive his death. In the lives of his community, he lives on in their memories. This novel takes that trite-sounding idea and explodes to full volume, showing that the painful grieving process is also an appreciation. As they mourn, the community accidental establishes a heroic legacy about the man.
