A Spark of Light

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapter 10-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Center

Throughout the narrative, the physical edifice of the Center symbolizes determination and survival. Picoult opens the novel with a lengthy description of the building. It “squat[s] […] like an old bulldog used to guarding its territory” (3). This simile emphasizes the tenacity of the staff members and other people who keep the Center running. However, after stricter rules and clinic closures, the Center is also the only abortion clinic left in Mississippi, and, like a “unicorn,” it is rare. However, the unicorn is also an animal associated with beauty, hope, and innocence. By choosing an animal with such positive associations, Picoult emphasizes that the people running the Center and many of the patients see abortion care as a necessary and good thing. Vonita paints the Center bright orange, “the color of safety; the color of warning. It sa[ys]: I’m here if you need me. It sa[ys], Do what you want to me; I’m not going” (3). The colors and imagery assert that the Center building embodies the determination and survival of the people who attend it and keep it running. It has weathered storms and opposition but refuses to close.

Picoult also uses personification to characterize the Center. It suffers “scars from the cuts of politicians and the barbs of protesters” and licks “its wounds and healed” (3). She figures the Center’s name change as an “amputat[ion]”—first, it is the Center for Women and Reproductive Health, and eventually, it is just the Center. Like many of the staff and patients, the Center is a survivor. Even at the novel’s end, when its fate is uncertain, the last image of the Center is of a building with a tattered sign that says “choice” outside of it. It continues to represent the tenacity and grit of the people of the South fighting for reproductive rights.

Sparks of Light

Light is a motif throughout the story that represents love and hope. Traditionally, the imagery of light and darkness in literature is closely tied to ideas of goodness and evil. Picoult builds on this imagery in the novel and uses it for the novel’s title, emphasizing that even a single spark is enough to keep love and hope going in the face of opposition. Hugh wanted to be an astronaut before becoming a policeman and a father, and he and Wren share a love of space. She wants to be an astrophysicist, and they collect facts about stars and share them with one another, as well as going to view the Perseid meteor shower every year. Wren remembers the last time they watched the meteor shower and thinking, “One day Betelgeuse would explode in a tremendous spark of light, leaving behind […] a tiny white dwarf star. A core, without fire” (163). She was saddened by this idea and began to wonder what will happen when she dies. She thought, “Did you have to be missed to exist?” (163). However, when she looked at her father’s face, she saw that he was watching her and not the beauty of the meteor shower. She realized the depth of his love for her and knew that “[i]f she died, she would be missed” (163).

This motif also occurs when Louie is reading a science journal about a study on conception. He learns that the eggs that will be fertilized glow at the moment of conception. He connects this to his religious faith and the idea that “God said, Let there be light” at the moment of creation (341). He thinks that science and faith can “exist side by side” and that “[i]t [stands] to reason that both life and death began with a spark of light” (341-42). To Louie, this spark of creation is connected to the love of God as well as the beauty of science. He sees light as something that is present at the beginning and end of life, something that fights against darkness. This is the same idea of hope and love that fuels his own career as a doctor in fraught and dangerous conditions.

Bex’s Collages

Bex works as an artist, creating large images made from smaller ones. Her collages represent her secret—that she is Hugh’s biological mother—as well as symbolizing the myriad small stories that are lost in the focus on larger issues. Bex’s work draws on Gestalt theory, the idea that “the human eye—the human brain—d[oes] not have to see individual parts to imagine the whole” (214). However, she notes that “there [i]s another tenet of art: the observer c[an] easily miss what [i]sn’t obvious” (214). Though people might look at her work and only see the larger image, she as the artist might have been focused on a small one all along. Bex is focused on Hugh and Wren: “[T]hey were the subjects of every one of her pieces” (214). Her secret is obvious to her but hidden in the art, where people only focus on the bigger image that she is creating. Similarly, people focusing on the abortion debate often lose sight of the smaller stories of women’s lives that are embedded in the issue. When she is lying on the floor of the Center, Bex thinks that there “[a]re a hundred different paths that le[a]d to the corner of Juniper and Montfort” but that the one commonality is that “they hadn’t asked for this moment in their lives” (173). Throughout the novel, her art represents that tension between the intimate details and the bigger picture, reminding readers that these debates affect real lives.