The Grey Wolf

“Using his handkerchief, stained with the little girl’s blood, Armand carefully wiped the whipped cream off his hand.”

Armand gets whipped cream on his hand while holding Charles’s hand as he dies, and his handkerchief is spotted with the blood of the young girl he saves. Armand comforts himself in this moment. Hands symbolize comfort and the ongoing presence of the dead; throughout the novel, images of hands and whipped cream remind Armand that Charles had whipped cream on his hand when he died.

“How nice it was, how peaceful, thought Reine-Marie, to live in a place where bumbling was a virtue. Even a necessity. And where lives were intertwined.”

Penny’s acknowledgments note that her Gamache books are about community and home. This is one example of the importance of the Three Pines setting to the Gamache family and the series. Reine-Marie expresses how she likes living in a place where she easily bumps into her local friends.

“Gamache tiptoed from supposition to supposition, like someone fording a rushing river, from one stepstone to the next. Hoping not to slip. To slip up.”

This quote uses the water motif in a simile to thematically develop The Power of Controlling Water. Here, the water is figurative and dangerous; Armand must avoid falling into it. This image foreshadows the rushing water in the water-treatment plant.

“The Jeanne Caron we met years ago was a chrysalis. Practicing, training, learning. Just beginning to turn into the person she’s become.”

This passage compares Jeanne’s transformation to that of a butterfly. While Armand and Reine-Marie initially think that Jeanne is transforming into someone eviler, she’s in fact transforming into someone less evil. This makes the quote ironic: At this point, they don’t know the nature of the transformation.

“Some malady is coming upon us. We wait. We wait. It was from the T.S. Eliot play Murder in the Cathedral.”

Penny references modernist poet Eliot throughout her Gamache series. The title of her novel The Cruelest Month alludes to Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Here, Dom Philippe uses an Eliot quote to subtly warn Armand about the water being poisoned; in this case, the “malady” is botulinum.

“Murder, it seemed, was a skeleton key.”

Homicide is a reason to open otherwise locked doors. Armand and Jean-Guy can enter the Gilbertine monastery in both this novel and a previous novel. Later in The Grey Wolf, Isabelle enters the monastery in France where chartreuse is made because Brother Robert is killed there.

“Unless you give Action Quebec Blue ten million dollars, we will poison the drinking water with arsenic. The arsenic you produce, you asshole fucks.”

This is an unsent letter written by the director of Action Quebec Blue (AQB), Margaux. She expresses her anger about companies polluting the natural resources of Canada; she never intends to follow through with the threat. This letter functions as a red herring, distracting attention from the real killers, David and Sebastien.

“The Church is very good at keeping secrets and holding onto its mysteries.”

The mystery that Simon alludes to in this quote is the secret recipe for chartreuse. This highlights the theme of Secular and Religious Dualities in several ways. One is that the church can keep more secrets than the secular world, and another is how the alcoholic drink itself is considered both an elixir and something sinful.

“Those letters had been the equivalent of the stone in the calm lake.”

This is another example of the water motif that helps thematically develop the power of controlling water. The letters calling Philippe and Sebastien away from the Gilbertine monastery initiate ripples of action in this simile. The letters disturb the peace of the holy place.

“Gamache realized he might not be pretending to be incompetent. He might actually be. And yet…and yet…”

In this moment, Armand doubts himself, developing the theme of The Complexities of Faith and Doubt. He doesn’t have faith that there is a connection between the drinking water and chartreuse and wonders if his ideas are leading the investigation astray. These moments of doubt make Armand not only a relatable character but also a good detective because he reexamines his suspicions to test their validity.

“What mattered was that in violating trust and privacy, the monk might have inadvertently saved thousands of lives.”

This is another quote that develops the theme of the complexities of faith and doubt. It describes how Simon, in reading other people’s mail and thus violating their trust, ironically provides Armand with valuable clues that help him solve the case and thus keep people safe. Philippe had faith that Simon would open the mail.

“As Sister Prejean said, No one of us is as bad as the worst thing we’ve done.”

Armand looks for goodness in everyone but can’t do so with Jeanne. However, she transforms from the person whose retaliatory actions harmed Armand’s son; she begins to help people. This passage affirms that Armand is right to look for goodness in everyone.

“Contaminating a city’s water is one of our top fears. Just below a nuclear attack.”

This is a warning from Whitehead to Jean-Guy. Poisoning the drinking water would not only kill people but also destroy law and order. Attempting, but failing, at the attack could likewise lead to chaos and a coup, thematically demonstrating the power of controlling water.

“‘Letter B, ohhhh, letter B…’ ‘The Beatles?’”

Here, Honore sings the lyrics of “Let It Be” adapted by Sesame Street for Armand and Reine-Marie. Armand’s grandchild helps him figure out that the monks and nun were singing karaoke in their religious garments, thus rewarding his willingness to listen to everyone.

“As the water poured out of the tap, he took a handful and smelled it; then he dipped his tongue in. Though he knew that botulinum has no odor or taste, he still needed to do it. Just in case.”

This is another scene that thematically emphasizes the power of controlling water. When he learns about the possibility of poisoning, Armand gets a little paranoid. His thoughts and feelings are being controlled by the threat alone.

“Lacoste felt like they were hobbits approaching Mordor.”

Isabelle’s impression of the Grande Chartreuse monastery alludes to the Lord of the Rings series by J. R. R. Tolkien. The monastery reminds her of a fantasy location, illustrating how removed it is from modern secular society. The image of the evil tower appearing in Tolkien’s fantasy novels foreshadows how Sebastien throws Brother Robert from a turret.

“Yes, that’s how defenses were breached. By friends. By the wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

This develops the symbolism of wolves that runs throughout the novel. The novel’s events reveal that Sebastien is the black wolf—an evil person—hiding in monastic robes. Sheep represent the church and faith in Jesus as a shepherd, keeping the flock safe.

“The mention of the murdered agent had found a wound that would never fully heal. The Chief had learned to live with it. As people in chronic pain do.”

This simile compares the pain of trauma with the pain of persistent, ongoing illness. Armand experiences significant trauma over the death of his fellow Sûreté agents, and David uses this trauma to take advantage of Armand.

“Gamache turned and saw David Lavigne. While not a big surprise, it was still a shock. To see someone he had once completely trusted holding a gun on him.”

David’s deception and betrayal develops the theme of the complexities of faith and doubt. Armand learns that he sometimes has faith in the wrong people. He trusts David instead of Jeanne, which he later learns was an incorrect decision.

“A very slight change in the hum, the thrum, the throb around them. It grew deeper, slower. Like a huge heart stopping.”

This quote describes the sound of the water-treatment plant’s pumps shutting down. Penny’s simile compares the plant pumping water to the heart pumping blood; water is as important as blood for humans. This slowing sound is the last thing Armand hears before a gunshot temporarily destroys his hearing.

“His ashes were spread over his favorite rock. The one jutting out into the water, where young Yves had sat and contemplated the great mystery. The mystery the elderly Yves had now solved.”

This describes the final resting place for Yves, also known as Philippe. It’s part of the water motif, developing the theme of the power of controlling water. Yves helped solve the mystery of the water-treatment plant attack, and he explored the mystery of what happens after we die.

“And there was still a storm.”

Another example of the water motif, the metaphorical ongoing storm represents Armand’s ongoing work investigating homicides. The book ends on a cliffhanger; its companion piece, The Black Wolf, is the next installment in Penny’s series, in which this metaphorical storm will continue.

“Had she simply made, as people eventually do, a terrible mistake? How easy it was to slide into conspiracies. To mistake misjudgment for deceit. To see treacheries and plots and sedition where none existed.”

Armand thinks about Tardiff and reconsiders his position of doubting everyone in the Sûreté. Sometimes, people are simply inept at their job, and imagining an elaborate conspiracy isn’t productive. Other times, as in David’s case, people are corrupt and conspire to commit crimes.