The Sunlight Pilgrims: Themes

There are three key themes in The Sunlight Pilgrims:

• change
• climate catastrophe
• family

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Change is the overarching theme of the novel. The changes take many forms and can be positive or negative.

There is the positive idea of new beginnings and rebirth.

Dylan's new life in the Highlands.

Dylan leaves London after the loss of his mother and grandmother. His life is changing as he goes through the process of grief and recovery. He has just experienced the loss of everything familiar to him: the death of his family, loss of his home (the cinema) and security.

He is Initially unable to deal with his grief, but he begins to come back to life after meeting Stella and Constance.

Through creating a makeshift home for himself in the caravan, and accepting his growing feelings for Constance, he finds a new beginning, a chance to live again.

Stella's transition

Stella is going through transition. She is starting a new life, one that she feels is more authentic to her sense of self.

From Stella's perspective, it is the start of her ‘real’ life. But she faces difficulty in finding acceptance, from her father, Alistair, and from her classmates. Rather than being brought down by the attitudes of others, her developing sense of selfhood is a sign of her growing maturity. She is also going through the change from child to adult.

In an early scene at the dump, Stella describes the feeling of jumping from a tall cliff of mulched paper:

Stella has done it a hundred times and she can see herself leaping, an imprint of light against the sky - her outline like a negative. It's dangerous, but every time she survives it feels like being reborn. – (Chapter 7)

This ideal of cycles of survival and rebirth is seen throughout the novel. Though Stella’s experience is specifically that of a trans girl, feeling insecure, judged and unable to find your place is common to many young people - and to some older people too. Stella’s courage and strength help her to cope and thrive, even after a near death experience. Her example also helps Dylan in his new life.

The action takes place over a winter, a time of bringing things to a close and making resolutions for the future; of death and the hope of rebirth in the spring - when the world comes back to life after the darkness of winter. This reflects the changes the characters undergo, as they leave old lives behind, ready to be reborn.

The novel also deals with the idea of change as a negative force: the world is becoming increasingly frozen and uninhabitable. There is a threat hanging over the characters, and the world, that there may not be a spring and a new beginning to look forward to:

The novel does not deal with what humanity has done to damage, and possibly destroy, the world as we know it. It does not even deal in possible solutions. It is too late for that. It focuses instead on the major effect, the apparently unstoppable process of freezing, and the impact this has on the main characters, and by extension, all of us.

The threats of the new ice age become more intense as the events of the novel progress. These include:

Frozen animals and people

The climate becomes too hostile to support life. This is introduced when Stella notices there are "no cows out" and Constance informs her "They've been in the shed for weeks, Stella. They found two calfs frozen on the top field." (Chapter 16). Later, this moves on to the people, who are also being kept indoors out of the cold:

People are being found frozen up and down the country. There is footage where troops of people are going into community halls to live because their homes have no heat or electricity, or the pipes are frozen. – (Chapter 23)

This reaches a climax right at the end of Part Three when Dylan finds Barnacle dead in the snow:

Barnacle's eyes stare up at the mountains. Clear. Frozen solid. – (Chapter 37)

Fagan uses minor sentences when Dylan finds Barnacle dead in the snow:

Barnacle's eyes stare up at the mountains. Clear. Frozen solid.

The use of minor sentences, or fragments, in "Clear. Frozen solid." heightens the tension of the scene and emphasises the stark and deadly impact of the frozen climate.

Brush up on your knowledge of minor sentences and why writers use them with this short Higher English revision video.

Landmarks freezing

As the weather deteriorates, rolling news explains that flights are being cancelled and there are worrying reports from familiar places even closer to home:

The South of England is already struggling. The Thames flashes up, all frozen over. – (Chapter 13)

This continues later, when Stella is trying to get back home and reflects:

Nobody is laughing any more. The Thames has frozen over and they are holding fairs on it and she saw a picture of Trafalgar Square with all the water frozen around the sculptures and snow on all the grand buildings. – (Chapter 22)

This is important, partly as Dylan comes from London at the start of the novel and this shows how the place has changed since his exit, but also because it is not just the 'wilderness' of Clachan Fells that is dealing with this emergency, cities and rural caravan parks are all in the same position of freezing over.

The historical city of Pompeii is referenced in the book. Many of the people who died when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD were preserved - their bodies encased in enormous amounts of volcanic ash. The parallel between this and people being literally frozen to death is a powerful image.

The approaching iceberg

Constance, Stella and Dylan get their first glimpse of the iceberg on the same television news broadcast:

Footage of the iceberg shows a hulk bigger than a hotel; it is bigger than the new shopping centre in the city. Stella drops to her knees in front of the telly, shocked. – (Chapter 13)

Climate change and survival

Along with much of the imagery about the natural world, both on Earth and into space, the theme of climate change shows how insignificant humankind is. The scale and age of the world around us, shows how small and short our lives are. When nature turns against people, their world begins to fall apart. Everyday life, like the schools and other services we rely on, the food supply and shelter we need begin to fail.

While the novel does not put forward any solutions for climate change, it does show that the best we can do is to pull together to make the best of our circumstances, and to offer our best hope of survival.

The ending is ambiguous. The main characters are sheltering in the haven of Alistair’s cottage, but the temperature keeps dropping, and they appear to drift off to sleep, without us ever finding out if they survive.

The novel explores the importance of family in providing support, love and purpose. It acknowledges that family, and belonging, can mean many things. This echoes the other themes of the book, where nothing is fixed and everything is in flux.

Dylan has lost his biological family through the deaths of Vivienne and Gunn, but gains a new ‘found’ family in Constance and Stella.

Dylan realises that both he and Stella love Constance and their group is a version of the traditional nuclear family, with shared love, support and humour. Barnacle is also included, and there is genuine warmth on occasions such as the aurora borealis party.

Dylan has suspicions that he has a more genetic connection to the area. Through Vivienne’s scrapbook, he realises that he and Alistair are cousins. This makes him a sort of uncle to Stella, as well as a sort of substitute father figure at times.

Stella refers to her father, Alistair, as her "biological donor". By rejecting Alistair and accepting Dylan, there is a sense that families can change, and we can build our own family groups.

Towards the very end of the book, Alistair seems to eventually accept Stella for who she is. As with his gift of the wolf cloak to Constance, he shows that he understands her true self through a handmade piece of clothing:

She pulls on the moccasins that Alistair gave her. He must have taken ages to make them and it means something, although just because her feet look pretty in them doesn't mean he can retrace his steps, but these moccasins are clearly not designed for a boy. Her biological donor has never called her by her real name, but he has stopped using the boy one and he did not give her shirts this year; he spent months sewing together the prettiest little moccasins she has ever seen. – (Chapter 36)

Not all family connection is positive in the novel. Alistair is not supportive of Stella at first, in contrast to Dylan. His failure to accept her as a girl, continuing to use her birth name, reflects the problems and difficulties all families experience. An extreme example of the harm that can come from a family is the discovery that Gunn was raped by her brother, which led her to reject her family.

The novel ends with the new family unit of Stella, Constance, Dylan and Alistair sheltering together for survival. It leaves us with a sense that true family is built on support, understanding and acceptance, rather than biology or social convention.