The Sunlight Pilgrims: Style

• The novel The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan is told from an 'over-the-shoulder' narrative point of view.
• We do not only follow one protagonist, the narrative is sometimes with Dylan, and sometimes with Stella.
• The book is structured in a prologue and four parts:
  • Each part is titled with a date and temperature.
  • This shows the relatively short time the story takes place over.
  • The dramatic drop in temperature over this short time suggests the danger of the climate change portrayed.
  • The sections grow shorter, suggesting a quickening of pace as the situation becomes more dangerous.
• Jenni Fagan uses symbolism to reflect the novel's characters and themes:
  • Light suggests positivity and hope.
  • Snow and ice express both the beauty and danger of nature.
  • Wildness suggests freedom from society and its expectations.

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The prologue is told by a omniscient narrative voice.

This provides an all-seeing, all-knowing voice that is able to set the scene effectively. It outlines the background of climate change and introduces the three main characters. It is also able to relate what they think and feel. This is the only part of the novel which enters Constance's head: "Constance is weary from matters of the heart but more so with worry for her child." The rest of the story centres on Dylan and Stella's perspectives.

The main body of the novel is not written in first person but rather in two ‘over the shoulder’ perspectives. This is known technically a third-person limited narrative perspective.

The perspective changes through the narrative, being with Dylan and with Stella at different points in the book.

Often in a chapter, it's not immediately clear whose perspective we are following, until there is a name, a pronoun or another clue to which character we are with at the time. We see all the events of the novel through their viewpoints. We don’t see what’s happening in the bigger world, unless through their eyes.

For example, Stella speculates about why Vito has stopped emailing, but we don’t hear what’s actually happening in Italy:

There are still no e-mails from Vito. He has been eaten by the snow. Northern Italy is a white mass and when she looks at their news everyone is scared, and they look like that in the village in Clachan Fells this week too. Perhaps Vito has had enough and he is living with a piccolo player in Azerbaijan. – (chapter 36)

The story is told in present tense with occasional flashbacks. Dylan thinks back on his life with this mother and grandmother, Stella on her romance with Lewis.

This style creates a sense of immediacy as we are with the characters in the moment as events take place.

It also allows us an intense intimacy with the two characters as we share both their point of view and their reflections.

The story is divided into a short prologue and four parts.

Each part is titled with its date and the temperature. Although the first and last parts are only five months apart, the drop of temperature is dramatic:

• Part I: November 2020, -6 degrees
• Part II: 8th December 2020, -19 degrees
• Part III: 31st January 2021, -38 degrees
• Part IV or The End Has Almost Come, 19th March 2021, -56 degrees

It is important to note that the sections grow shorter, section by section until the final part is only 16 pages, two short chapters, long. This creates a sense of speedily approaching danger and highlights the escalation of the climate catastrophe.

The addition of "The End Has Almost Come" to the title of Part IV makes clear the danger to the characters and humankind in general. But the inclusion of "Almost" in the title leaves a sense of ambiguity:

• Does it mean the characters survive, that this is not their end?
• Or does it suggest that things are going to get even worse?

Much of the symbolism in the novel relates to nature and weather phenomena. This connects to the themes of change and climate catastrophe.

Light is used throughout the novel as a symbol of positivity and hope, in a world where different types of darkness threaten to overpower everything good and life-affirming.

Dylan's upbringing is mainly in a cinema, an artificial dark space where light is projected out. His closing notice references this:

…it has been my family's privilege to shine a light in the dark here for over sixty years… – (Chapter 1)

Meanwhile, the ongoing darkness of night and winter reflects the lack of enlightenment of those whose prejudice condemns and isolates Stella.

As her name suggests, Stella is a source of light, positivity and hope. She is associated with light throughout the novel. Despite the humiliation and rejection she has experienced, Stella can still experience glimmers of excitement about life, also expressed in a description of light, the "little lanterns in her veins" (Chapter 16).

The "sunlight pilgrims" of the title represent something fundamental about humanity. Stella, Dylan and Constance are all sunlight pilgrims. Gunn separately tells Dylan and Stella the story of the monks, which combines tragedy - all but one killed themselves - and hope, the one who survived by ‘drinking’ sunlight, a key image repeated throughout the book:

They all died apart from one. They found him on the mountaintop naked, sitting in lotus, drinking light - orange to grey. That's how he said it. He said you just drink it. He said it keeps humans right. Guy claimed he hadn't eaten for weeks and the devil had taken his brothers, but he was okay, he said he got everything he needed from the sun. – (Chapter 16)

The message of this story, carried through the book, is that by absorbing light it is possible to survive in the darkest of times. This suggests enlightenment and positivity are life-affirming and can see us through adversity and personal difficulty, In Chapter 5, Stella encounters an old woman, who she instinctively knows to be Gunn, who tells her:

I was taught how to by the sunlight pilgrims, they're from the islands furthest north. You can drink light right down into your chromosomes, then in the darkest minutes of winter, when there is a total absence of it, you will glow and glow and glow. I do, she says. – (Chapter 5)

This phrase is also used, almost word-for-word, in the flash forward prologue. This suggests Gunn's story has had a deep effect:

She focuses, trying to absorb the suns’ energy deep into her cells so when they descend into the darkest winter for 200 years, in the quietest minutes, when the whole world experiences a total absence of light -‘she will glow, and glow, and glow. --(Prologue)

The northern lights (aurora borealis) are a particularly beautiful vision in the dark winter sky in part three, and provide some wonder in the face of the catastrophe they are in:

The aurora unfolds, it moves, it's never still. The light alters each second and it appears as a being, an entity older than they themselves will ever be. Down below them caravans are lit up, lights in windows… – (Chapter 33)

The main characters experience this light show together, in a moment of familial warmth and togetherness. For Dylan especially, it is a defining event:

If he had to grade life on the best days and the worst, […] this - the best seat in the house to watch the universe unfold, with a woman he loves, and a kid he loves too and a neighbour who is affable and a tin box for home - is as good as it gets. – (Chapter 33)

The snow and ice generally reflect the present danger and the hurdles faced by the characters:

• the iceberg coming ever closer towards Clachan Fells, its journey reported on the news:

Locals have named the iceberg Boo, because it is giving fishermen such a fright to see it travel over the North Sea and it is almost certain now to be heading toward the region of Clachan Fells. – (Chapter 13)

• the blizzard that threatens Stella whilst she is out biking in part two.

The barn doors are wide open and it's so, so cold. She will have to find her way back before dark. If the snow begins to fall and doesn't stop, then she's in trouble. – (Chapter 19)

This is reinforced by the fiercely barking dogs, and the threat of the ‘male gaze’ she experiences as she cycles home.

• Dylan's arrival in Clachan Fells where the weather is personified, in an example of pathetic fallacy:

He shouts it into the wind and the sleet is furious now. His hands are red and wet and if winter was a mistress she'd be a cold, violent, bitch – (Chapter 10)

In Chapter 34, Stella builds a snowman, far away from everyone else, but Lewis Brown sees her and his presence angers her:

It was a good day. She hopes he freezes out there in the field, with nobody to watch him die but her snowman. – (Chapter 34)

Towards the end of part three, in a chapter where we are following Stella's perspective, she summarises what she's seen about the catastrophe:

In essence: - It's going to get a lot colder. They don't know if temperatures will rise. – (Chapter 36).

The most positive moment connected to the snow comes before this realisation, when perhaps the characters generally feel a good deal more hopeful about their predicament.

Stella's triumph at the sledging sees her praised by her peers who have so often shunned or bullied her:

Stella Fairbairn was the only kid in the whole of Clachan Fells who has just sledged at 40 m.p.h. through a pack of huge Jersey cows. – (Chapter 31)

Both when she is building the snowman, and when she is sledging, the snow becomes a positive symbol. Like the sunlight pilgrims benefiting from absorbing light, it is as if by using and working with the snow, Stella is able to benefit from it.

For Dylan, leaving the city he knows brings him into a strange, wild landscape. Even in normal temperatures it is depicted as wild, on the edge of society. This shift in location, for which we are following Dylan's perspective is emphasised by the worsening weather:

It was freezing in London but this was like the Arctic – (Chapter 2)

The wolf cloak made by Alistair for Constance represents her inner wildness. She is portrayed as free and will not settle down to suit others. She will not conform to what society expects from her. When she wears the costume to the party, the descriptions of her suggest the costume has transformed her:

She comes dressed as a wolf. Through the bonfire he gets glimpses of her as she steps over the back of somebody's fence. She has a wolf's head and tail and she moves like a wolf. – (Chapter 15)

At different points, both Stella and Dylan try the cloak. Wearing it helps Stella to realise her individuality and freedom:

If the doctor asks her what she is most - she will tell him she is a wolf-child., – (Chapter 17)

As Stella and Dylan are both at times uncomfortable in their own bodies, this idea of freedom and wildness, as well as transformation, is appealing.

Barnacle is also depicted as wild. In the party scene in Chapter 15, when Barnacle introduces himself to Dylan, he is described as offering a "soft paw" by way of a handshake. He then goes on to describe an incident with a previous girlfriend where he barks at her, like a dog or a wild animal:

The bark, though. Where did it come from? Shameful. Barking at her. Bark, bark, bark. […] I barked at her like a rabid beast. – (Chapter 15)

The symbolism echoes wildness of the landscape and climate but also reflects that each character has to be true to themselves; to their own inherent nature. Trying to conform to society will not work and has no effect on the impending threat facing them.

The symbolism running through The Sunlight Pilgrims allows the characters' relationships to echo the wider themes of the book. Brush up on your understanding of symbolism with this short Higher English revision video.