Identity and Belonging Theme Analysis

In Good Morning, Midnight, Sasha struggles to be the kind of person she wants to be. She constantly analyzes the way she presents herself to others, usually assuming they think the worst of her. These worries are often tied to her ideas surrounding nationality, as she often feels judged because she’s an English woman living in Paris, worrying that French people see Britons as uptight and uncultured. To be fair, she has good reason to think French people look down on the British, since she once heard a man on the bus say that Britons are like a plague in France. But Sasha also obsesses over her physical appearance, frequently buying clothes or getting her hair cut so she can look young and stylish. However, she still frets that everyone around her sees her as old and tasteless, and though she tells herself things like, “Tomorrow I’ll be pretty again, tomorrow I’ll be happy again,” none of her efforts to change the way she presents herself to the world actually bring her meaningful, lasting contentment. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t seem to shape her identity in a way that feels rewarding. “Please, please, monsieur et madame, mister, missis and miss,” she thinks at one point, “I am trying so hard to be like you.” And yet, she recognizes that her efforts are in vain, since nobody ever seems to care. By accentuating her desperate but failed attempts to fit in, the novel underscores how hard and lonely it can be to live as a stranger in a foreign country. Furthermore, the book demonstrates that relentlessly worrying about fitting in is futile—after all, it’s impossible to control what other people think.

Throughout the novel, Sasha is incredibly aware of the way other people perceive her, and this constant awareness interferes with her ability to relax and live in the moment. She worries about what people think of her in the cafés and restaurants she visits, noting that her entire life feels like “a complicated affair of cafés where they like [her] and cafés where they don’t.” Part of her anxiety about what others think comes from the fact that she does encounter people who judge her. For example, when she goes to a nice restaurant that she used to visit with Enno, she feels a sense of “panic” because she thinks everyone is watching her. And though this isn’t actually the case, she later overhears a conversation between two young women and the restaurant’s owner—a conversation in which one of the women looks at her and loudly asks (in French), “And what the hell is she doing here now?” This statement validates Sasha’s fears about not fitting in, though it’s not immediately clear why she would attract such negative attention. She doesn’t know the young women, and all she’s doing is peacefully sitting in a restaurant and having a meal. Until this moment, her self-consciousness was irrational and unfounded, but now her worries that others are judging her seem warranted—and this, of course, makes it that much harder for her to simply go about her life.

To a certain extent, Sasha’s self-consciousness also has to do with her sense of social isolation as a British expatriate living in Paris. She spends a vast amount of energy fretting that Parisians will identify her as British, clearly thinking there’s something embarrassing about her nationality. For example, when she meets two Russian men on the street, she thinks it’s very “tactful[]” that they avoid asking where she’s from—even though she asks them that exact question. The implication here is that they can sense she’s British and, because of this knowledge, don’t want to embarrass her. Sasha herself is very attuned to whether or not the people she meets are French, and she’s desperate to find ways of fitting into Parisian culture, which is partially why she makes such an effort to buy stylish clothes in fancy Parisian stores. She wants to embody the Parisian way of life so badly that she spends multiple hours in a hat shop one evening, allowing the salesperson to talk her into buying a hat she doesn’t even like. This is a clear sign that she’s not necessarily concerned with looking good, but with blending in with other stylish Parisian women, apparently hoping to leave behind her identity as a British expatriate.

Looking at it from another angle, Sasha’s desire to fit in is really just a desire to run from her sorrows, as she assumes that reshaping her identity will make it easier to cope with sadness and loss. When she decides to spend her money on lavish Parisian clothes, for example, she sees it as an opportunity to fundamentally change herself: “I must get on with the transformation act,” she thinks. The word “transformation” suggests that she’s interested in altering her entire life, and that she thinks simple things like clothing will help her achieve this profound change. In reality, though, these things are superficial and don’t actually help her escape her own life: no matter what she does, she’s still a British expatriate with a sad past. And even if she were able to fully take on a Parisian identity, it’s unlikely she’d feel any different. Plus, it’s quite clear that she’s unable to change herself in such dramatic ways, since—despite her best efforts—people always seem to notice that she doesn’t fit in. Instead of recognizing that her efforts are pointless, though, Sasha can’t stop thinking about achieving some kind of “transformation.” As a result, she spends most of her time in social settings worrying about how others perceiver her, effectively taking herself out of the moment and making it that much harder to connect with anyone. The novel therefore implies that fixating so intensely on one’s own identity is not only futile, but also very lonely and isolating.