Symbolism in Writing - The Sun

 

As a writer, it's easy to forget that the sun is a strong and useful literary symbol. There it is, up there in the sky, and indeed at the moment perhaps shinning a tad too brightly for comfort in some places. I'm a druid, so at this time of year, coming up to the Midsummer Solstice, the sun means a lot to me and my life. I am in awe of the incredible strength of the sun and the divine powers that create life. This year (2023)  the solstice falls in the afternoon of 21st of June I'll be celebrating the growth and life that the summer sun brings.

Haleakelã in Hawaii as the sun rises over the volcano

People for millennia have celebrated the sybolism of our  sun – our own bright star, as it shines its light onto the Earth. Because the sun gives us life, growth, brightness and warmth, of course it might be worshiped.  Over the last few weeks in the UK, the sun has shone above us, strongly and brightly, reminding us of the glories of summer and brightening our world with the colour of flowers. The power of the sun at Midsummer is at its most potent, and its ability to make crops grow, is all around us; the earth is fertile with the bounty of life, wildflowers are on every verge, and flower borders are redolent with colour. This imbues us with new hope.

It’s not surprising to find the sun in literature, where it can be a symbol of hope, life, power, growth, health, passion and the higher self, as well as a link to the cycle of life. All this  is used as a representation in fiction and poetry especially. 

In the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro,Clara and the Sun, the sun plays a god-like role. Ishiguro allows it to symbolise the emotional power of having faith in something bigger than oneself. The protagonist, Klara, is an Artificial Friend  – a humanoid machine bought  Josie's parents to help her loneliness. Josie responded badly to being ‘lifted’ and is often seriously ill with something that may have killed her sister.  Klara is solar-powered, so the sun actually does provide nourishment to her—she is sluggish when she doesn’t get enough sunlight. She tries to communicate with the Sun in her mind, as if it is a deity that can read her thoughts. Perhaps because of this, Klara seems to overestimate the effect the Sun has on humans. Josie makes a miraculous recovery on a sunny morning after Klara has pleaded with the Sun to spare her. In the book, as in previous millennia of humanity, the Sun  symbolises the power of believing in something bigger than oneself. And yet, none of the humans around Klara think about the Sun at all. As a result, the novel  represents how people in the futuristic world Ishiguro created have become out of touch with the natural world. 

Although the sun is often seen as a guiding light in the dark or as hope in times of despair, in  Albert Camus' famous and unconventional novel, The Stranger, the sun represents the bright light of the sun which clouds the thoughts and judgment of the protagonist, Meursault. The sun is personified to represent society, which throughout the story frustrates, angers and eventually takes control overs life.

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row is a memoir by Anthony Ray Hinton recounting his wrongful conviction of capital murder and the death sentence that resulted from the conviction. Hinton's sentence resulted in thirty years of solitary confinement at Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama as he awaited death by electric chair. In the memoir, Hinton recounts both his time in prison and his time as a child and young man. Hinton's mother raised Hinton and his nine older siblings by herself while confronting poverty and racism in rural Alabama. In The Sun Does Shine, the sun symbolizes Ray’s persistent hope for a better life. In maintaining that the sun will never refuse to shine for him, Ray implies that he will always keep up hope, even in his darkest days, because that hope is critical for his survival on death row. 

All Summer in a Day by American writer Ray Bradbury is a short story first published in a Sci Fi magazine in 1954

The story is about a class of students who live on the planet Venus, where the sun is only visible for one hour every seven years. Margot is the only one who remembers the sun from her early childhood on Earth. She describes the sun to the other children as being like a "penny" or "fire in the stove". The other children, refuse to  believe her and  lock Margot in a closet down a tunnel just before their teacher arrives to take them outside to enjoy their one hour of sunshine. In their astonishment and joy, they all forget about Margot and gleefully rush to play outside. When it begins to rain again, the children realise they won't see the sun again for another seven years. They let her out of the closet and stand frozen, ashamed over what they have done now that they finally understand what she had been missing.

One of  my favourite poets, Mary Oliver, looked at the symbology of the sun in a poem of the same name; 

 Have you ever seen 

anything 

in your life 

more wonderful 

than the way the sun, 

every evening, 

relaxed and easy, 

floats toward the horizon 

and into the clouds or the hills, 

or the rumpled sea, 

and is gone-- 

and how it slides again 

out of the blackness, 

every morning, 

on the other side of the world, 

like a red flower 

streaming upward on its heavenly oils, 

say, on a morning in early summer, 

at its perfect imperial distance-- 

and have you ever felt for anything 

such wild love-- 

do you think there is anywhere, in any language, 

a word billowing enough 

for the pleasure 

that fills you, 

as the sun 

reaches out, 

as it warms you 

as you stand there, 

empty-handed-- 

or have you too 

turned from this world-- 

or have you too 

gone crazy 

for power, 

You can learn more about these vivid descriptions and powerful images which invite  us  to reflect on our relationship with the sun at this webpage; https://poeminspiration.com/unlocking-the-meaning-behind-mary-olivers-the-sun-poem/.

In Count that Day Lost, by George Eliot, the sun is the primary image in the poem. Eliot begins the poem with the idea that at the end of day, if a person has been kind just once, that is a day well spent. 

If you sit down at set of sun 

And count the acts that you have done, 

And, counting, find 

One self-denying deed, one word 

That eased the heart of him who heard, 

One glance most kind 

That fell like sunshine where it went -- 

Then you may count that day well spent. 

But if, through all the livelong day, 

You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay -- 

If, through it all 

You've nothing done that you can trace 

That brought the sunshine to one face-- 

No act most small 

That helped some soul and nothing cost -- 

Then count that day as worse than lost.

Finally, there is  

The Sun Also Rises  Ernest Hemingway's first novel. It is said that he meant this to be a piece of nonfiction portraying his friends,  American and British expatriates, who travelled along the Camino de Santiago from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona and watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights.  The title is from a longer quotation from the Bible – One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. Hemingway suggested though, that the book was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever." He thought the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been "battered" but were not lost.

Although the sun may be thought of as a cliché when using it as a writer, there is plenty of flexibility in this symbol. Thinking about what it offers a writer as representation can help you create imagery that really stays with the reader. 

To read more blogposts about symbolism in literature, click here