Summary
From the lifeboat, Florian and Joana watch as thousands of people around them die. Hundreds of passengers are trapped in the glass-enclosed sundeck as the ship sinks. Florian tries to save a young girl in the water by pulling her onto the boat. In the end the girl dies of hypothermia.
A lifeboat nearby needs a rower and Florian offers to help but Joana begs him to stay with her. Another man goes instead. Meanwhile, Emilia longs for her baby and continues to float farther away from the ship and the other lifeboats. She looks for something to row with but finds nothing. Alfred is sick over the side of the lifeboat. Suddenly, the Gustloff bursts into flames.
In his final moments, Alfred reveals that Hannelore’s father is Jewish and he gave this information to the Hitler Youth. When the Hitler Youth took Hannelore away, Alfred ran out onto the sidewalk and told them that half of her was part of the master race. But Hannelore denied this and yelled, “I’m Jewish!” The words now echo in Alfred’s mind. He admits that he should not love her but his infatuation persists.
Joana and Florian place Emilia’s baby and Klaus between them to shield them from the terrible cold. Suddenly, they see the light of a boat in the distance. The sailors on the boat unfurl a knotted net and sailors scramble onto the lifeboat to help people up. Joana and Florian are the last to climb onto the boat. As Joana climbs up, she slips and the net hits Florian, knocking him into the water. Florian is disoriented in the freezing water but hears Joana yell, “Kick your feet!” He does so and the sailors pull him onto a raft and up to the boat.
The sailors give Florian dry clothes and a blanket and explain they are on a German torpedo boat. They are still in danger of torpedoes from Russian submarines. The sailors asks the passengers for their information, and say the boat is headed to Sassnitz, on the German island of Rügen.
Meanwhile, Alfred’s speech becomes slurred from the cold. He speaks of Hitler and looks at Emilia disapprovingly. He calls her Hannelore and repeats the word Jewish. He also insists that Emilia stole his medal and is hiding it in Florian’s pack. He grabs at the pack and she shouts at him in Polish. Alfred insists he will finally serve his country and tries to shove Emilia into the water. Emilia resists. In the end, he slips on the ice, hits his head, and falls into the water.
Alone, Emilia imagines she is back home in Lwów with her daughter Halinka, her mother, and her baby brother who was never born. She watches as the storks return to their nest. She feels that she has finally made it home and is no longer afraid.
The narrative shifts to 1969. Florian lives in America with Joana, along with Halinka, Klaus, and a child of their own. While he thought what happened was behind him, one day a letter arrives from someone named Clara Christensen.
Clara explains that she and her husband Niels live on the Baltic Sea in Denmark. One day, a raft floated up to the shore by their home, carrying a pack and the body of a young woman in a pink woolen cap. They defrosted the pack and found Florian’s notebook, which helped them to understand that the raft was from the Wilhelm Gustloff. The notebook also described Emilia as a Polish girl wearing a pink hat.
When Clara saw a newspaper article about a young American swimmer named Halinka, she put the pieces together and tracked down Florian’s address. The article said Halinka wanted to compete in the summer games but her nationality is in question because she was born on a ship. All she knows about her mother is that her name was Emilia, and that she was Polish and very brave. Clara follows Florian’s instructions to bury the contents of his pack without telling anyone. She also tells Florian that she buried Emilia by a small creek in a beautiful bed of roses.
Analysis
Sepetys continues to establish a strong parallelism between the opening and closing sections of Salt to the Sea. Just as each narrator is jolted by a “bang” at the beginning and the end of the novel, so too does each continue to feel hunted by his or her emotions.
Through Florian’s character, Sepetys brings the theme of revenge to the fore. On the lifeboat, Florian still feels hunted by fate, as he is certain that both he and the amber swan will end up at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. He feels that his lying and killing were in vein. Florian reflects that revenge is a useless cycle, since it tries to answer pain by inflicting more pain.
Meanwhile, guilt continues to hunt Joana. All Joana ever wants to do is help and heal those around her. But in the face of an enormous catastrophe, she is unable to help. Rather, she is forced to watch thousands of people die all around her. This makes her feel that she is guilt’s hostage.
For Emilia, shame continues to be a hunter. On the raft, she is separated from her baby and surrounded by hundreds of dead children. She feels this is her punishment for losing her honor when she was raped by the Russian soldiers. Meanwhile, Alfred continues to feel hunted by fear. He says that fear encircles us when we least expect it, forcing us to make decisions. When he was encircled by fear, he decided to tell the Hitler Youth that Hannelore’s father is Jewish. He reflects that continues to be infatuated with Hannelore because it helps him to avoid his own fear.
As Salt to the Sea draws to a close, Sepetys contrasts selfishness and selflessness, prompting the reader to question what true heroism looks like. In the lifeboat, one passenger does not want Florian to try to save the drowning girl because she is afraid the boat will overturn. Yet Florian yells at her to shut up and selflessly tries to save the girl. And Emilia, rather than getting into the lifeboat herself, selflessly tries to save Klaus.
These small, selfless, heroic acts stand in stark contrast to Alfred’s selfish idea of heroism. In his final moments, he insists that he will finally be a hero by killing Emilia because she is Polish. Alfred only helps others if he feels it will bring him the recognition he longs for. His idea of heroism is based on seeming important in the eyes of those who have power.
Sepetys’s dramatic final pages include the phrase that gives the novel its title. Joana wonders if the news of her death will make it to her hometown of Biržai. She wonders if her remaining family will learn that she became "salt to the sea." This moment, and the title of the novel more broadly, emphasize the theme of nature as the great equalizer that is more powerful than human war-making. The Nazis started brutal wars on the basis that Aryan Germans were superior to others. But in the end, all who perished become equal, the same salt to the same sea.
Emilia died, just like more than nine thousand real people who were on board the Gustloff. But Sepetys ends Salt to the Sea insisting that while war breaks families into irretrievable pieces, “those who are gone are not necessarily lost.” Emilia is physically gone, but her memory lives on. Florian, Joana, Klaus, and Halinka continue to be inspired by Emilia’s bravery. And Clara and Niels, the couple who found Emilia’s body on the Danish shore, buried Emilia by a small creek near a beautiful bed of roses. Emilia loves nature and surely would have been happy in this setting. Clara insists that she thinks of Emilia often, and that Emilia is safe and loved.
