Characters In Ascension Martin MacInnes

Geert Character Analysis: The Engineer Who Couldn’t Hold Back the Sea

Overview

Geert is the abusive father of Leigh and Helena, working as a hydraulic engineer for the Waterschappen (regional water board) in Rotterdam. His violent outbursts, directed primarily at Leigh, form the bedrock of her childhood trauma and resurface in flashbacks throughout her adult life. Yet Geert is not a simple monster. Martin MacInnes paints a portrait of a man shaped by thwarted ambition, filial fear, and the Sisyphean task of holding back the sea from a country that exists only through constant engineering. Leigh’s retrospective analysis of his life—filtered through guilt, resentment, and the unreliability of memory—complicates any easy judgment.

Plot Role

Geert dies before the novel’s present action, but his presence is felt in nearly every chapter. In Chapter 1 (Endeavour), Leigh’s narrative alternates between recounting his violence and reconstructing his life story: his failed dream of becoming an architect, his years as a Atlantic trawler fisherman, his meeting with Fenna, and his decades-long service at the Waterschappen. The abuse explains Leigh’s psychological wounds—her evasion of intimacy, her need to escape Earth—and her fascination with water, drowning, and symbiosis. In Chapter 5 (Ascension), Helena’s voice offers a counter‑memory, downplaying the violence and accusing Leigh of dramatising her past. This rupture between sisters is key to understanding how Geert’s legacy is remembered and contested.

Motivations and Traits

Thwarted Architect

Geert’s core motivation is described by Leigh as an all‑consuming desire to be an architect. He failed his entrance exams, an event he never overcame. This failure sent him to sea—first as a punishment, then as a career on Atlantic trawlers. When he met Fenna, he made a decisive break from fishing and joined the Waterschappen, where he could build and maintain the country’s water defences. But in his own eyes, and in his father Johannes’s eyes, he was a disappointment: an engineer, not an architect, who never created lasting monuments on land.

Unpredictability

Leigh’s mother Fenna once described Geert’s unpredictability as the quality that first attracted her: “whatever he does, it is always a surprise.” Leigh later reframes this trait as the essence of his cruelty. His anger was explosive, seemingly triggered by anything. He would smash objects, roar, and lift Leigh by the collar. The violence only occurred when Fenna was at work, as if he was brooding throughout her silences and releasing it in her absence.

Fear of His Own Father

Leigh realises late that Geert was terrified of his own father, Johannes. Johannes told grandiose stories about the VOC and belittled Geert’s work. Geert craved his attention and approval while hating himself for this need. This generation‑to‑generation pattern—the abused son becoming the abuser—is implied but never fully voiced by Geert.

Sense of Duty and Desperation

Geert saw the water board’s work as an endless, vital fight against flooding. He believed the complacency of others would doom the country. His work became impossible in the twenty‑first century as climate change made storms and sea‑level rise unpredictable. He broke under the pressure, and his final years were marked by bewilderment and exhaustion. Leigh imagines his death from lung disease as a release: “he didn’t have to struggle any longer.”

Chronological Arc

  1. Childhood and Failure: Geert aspires to architecture but fails his entrance exams. He goes to sea as a trawler fisherman, punishing himself.
  2. Meeting Fenna: A chance collision on a Rotterdam street leads to a 24‑hour romance. Geert quits fishing and joins the Waterschappen to be near her.
  3. Marriage and Fatherhood: Geert and Fenna have two daughters, Leigh and Helena. The stress of work, his father’s disdain, and his own disappointment feed his violent temper. He abuses Leigh physically, while Helena is largely spared.
  4. Climax of Violence: Leigh describes beatings that last several minutes, throwing her against walls, and choking her by the collar. The abuse peaks during her childhood, shaping her psychological development.
  5. Later Years: Climate change makes his job impossible. Automated storm barriers replace human judgment. Geert becomes slow, shocked, and retiring. His lungs give out; he dies in a water board office.
  6. Posthumous Legacy: Leigh carries part of him, literally—she is tall enough to bear his casket—and figuratively, as her work in marine ecology mirrors his battle with water. Helena rejects Leigh’s version of events, insisting Geert was only a stern father typical of his generation.

Relationships

With Leigh (Abuser and Inheritor)

Leigh is the primary target of Geert’s violence. She records beatings, the unpredictability, the smashing of objects. Yet at his funeral she is the only family member tall enough to help carry the casket. She realises she has been carrying a part of him all along. Her own career—studying marine ecology and microbiology—mirrors his work with water, as Helena pointed out to her. Leigh’s ambivalence—blinding fury alternating with cheap nostalgia—reflects the difficulty of reconciling love and hate.

With Helena (Observer and Defender)

Helena, three years younger, remembers a different father: one who slapped but not excessively, a man struggling with work and health. In Chapter 5, she accuses Leigh of playing the victim and creating a mythology of suffering. Helena’s perspective does not erase the violence—even she admits Geert was “harsh and uncommunicative”—but it questions the extremity of Leigh’s narrative. The reader is left to decide whose memory is reliable.

With Fenna (Spouse and Enabler)

Fenna says little about the abuse. She suffers migraines, retreats into mathematics, and works long hours. Leigh believes her mother’s silence protected Geert and their shared past happiness. Fenna may have tried to intervene but was intimidated. She nursed Leigh’s bruises at night, wordlessly, but never confronted Geert. Leigh’s interpretation: condemning his violence would mean condemning the good times they had.

With Johannes (Father and Tormentor)

Johannes, Geert’s father, is a loud, red‑faced man who tells adventure stories and belittles Geert’s desk job. Leigh observes that Geert feared Johannes just as she feared Geert. This intergenerational transmission of fear is implicit but powerful.

Key Decisions and Consequences

  • Leaving the sea for Fenna: Geert abandoned fishing to be with Fenna, taking a job at the Waterschappen. This decision bound him to a desk career he resented, and the financial demands of family fed his anger.
  • Staying at the Waterschappen for 40 years: He never escaped. The work was vital but crushing. Climate change made it untenable, and he died feeling obsolete.
  • Choosing to abuse only when Fenna was away: This suggests a conscious restraint or a pattern that allowed Geert to compartmentalise his violence. The consequence was Leigh’s lifelong trauma and Fenna’s complicity through silence.
  • Not speaking about his past: Geert never told Leigh about his architectural dreams or his father’s hold on him. This secrecy prevented any possibility of understanding or reconciliation while he lived.

Theme and Symbol Connections

  • Family Trauma and Memory: Geert is the central node of family pain. The novel contrasts Leigh’s vivid memories with Helena’s denial, raising questions about the reliability of traumatic recall. Internal link: Family Trauma and Memory
  • Oceanic versus Cosmic Exploration: Geert worked against the sea; Leigh dives into it. The water that terrified him into constant vigilance becomes her escape and, in the final chapter, her merging with the life‑filled ocean. Internal link: Oceanic versus Cosmic Exploration
  • Isolation and Connection: Geert was isolated by his temper and his work. His inability to connect with his daughters mirrors Leigh’s later difficulty in forming close relationships. Internal link: Isolation and Connection
  • Environmental Collapse and Circularity: Geert’s fight against rising waters echoes the novel’s depiction of a planet overwhelmed. The flood defences he built are a temporary hold against the inevitable. Internal link: Environmental Collapse and Circularity
  • Symbiosis and Transformation: Though Geert himself is not symbiotic, Leigh’s ability to carry him—to absorb his physical height and his relationship to water—suggests a posthumous symbiosis. Internal link: Symbiosis and Transformation

Questions and Answers

1. Did Geert physically abuse both daughters equally?

No. Leigh records harsh beatings—being grabbed by the collar and thrown against walls—while Helena was largely spared. Leigh speculates that Geert satisfied his appetite with violence against her alone, or that Helena’s quiet, stoic personality defused his anger. Helena herself recalls only light slaps, which she considers normal for the time.

2. Why did Fenna never intervene?

Leigh believes Fenna’s silence was a way to protect the marriage’s history of happiness. If Fenna condemned Geert’s violence, she would also have to condemn all the good in their relationship. Fenna also suffered from migraines and retreated into mathematics, a psychological escape from her helplessness. She did nurse Leigh’s bruises at night, but never openly challenged Geert.

3. How did Geert’s father, Johannes, shape his behaviour?

Johannes was a loud, domineering man who told grand stories of the VOC and made Geert feel inadequate. Geert feared and craved his approval. This dynamic—the abused son becoming the abuser—is implied but never made explicit. Leigh sees the pattern only in hindsight.

4. Is Leigh’s memory of Geert reliable?

The novel deliberately questions reliability. Leigh’s narrative in Chapter 1 is vivid and detailed, but Helena’s account in Chapter 5 contradicts her—Helena recalls no severe violence and calls Leigh’s version a form of dramatised self‑victimisation. The reader is left with a tension between two sisters’ truths. Explicit evidence from the text supports Leigh’s claim of beatings (she describes being lifted by the collar), but Helena’s denial suggests memory can be shaped by perspective.

5. How does Geert connect to the novel’s themes of water and drowning?

Geert’s life was a constant struggle to keep the sea at bay. The Netherlands exists only because of engineers like him. His work became impossible as climate change accelerated. Leigh, in contrast, is drawn to the ocean and ultimately merges with it. Geert’s defensive posture against water becomes Leigh’s embrace of it—a transformation she inherits, not through choice but through biology and trauma.

For further context on the novel’s ending, see In Ascension Ending Explained. For broader discussion, visit Questions and Answers.