59 pages • 1 hour read
Lily Brooks-DaltonThe Light Pirate
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Survival and Adaptation
Wanda’s story is a testament to humans’ capacity to adapt and determination to survive. She gains most of her survival skills from her training with Phyllis, who has devoted her life to preparing for the end of civilization: “Data collection and biology became the focal point of her education. Drawing, fishing, canning, gardening, and first aid were also core subjects” (236). After the federal government declares the state unsafe, most of Rudder’s residents flee from Florida in the vain hope that doing so will spare them from the effects of environmental disasters. Just as some plants and animals die out in the swamps that overtake the town while other species thrive, so, too, the people who remain must adapt if they are to survive. Wanda and Phyllis rely on their skills and understanding of nature while others, most notably Corey and his father, plunder and attack people. Thus, the protagonist must adapt not only to nature’s violence but also to humanity’s violence. The break-in forces her to kill the two intruders in self-defense, and Wanda and Phyllis decide that the best way to ensure their continued survival is to move into the swamp. Although they are meant to protect Wanda, Phyllis’s teachings harm her protégé in some ways. Phyllis teaches Wanda to fear other humans, but she eventually challenges her mentor’s beliefs by asking herself, “What if survival and risk belong to one another?” (274). In the end, Wanda understands that no one can survive on their own and that pretending otherwise courts death and despair.
Brooks-Dalton combines genres to develop the theme of survival and adaptation. On the one hand, the story is a near-future dystopian novel exploring the effects of climate change. By its very nature, this premise demands tremendous resilience and adaptability from its protagonist. Over the novel’s four parts, the reader watches Wanda’s life from birth to old age as she navigates a dangerous world transformed by environmental disasters, such as hurricanes and floods. For example, Chapter 55 describes how her hometown becomes a dangerous wetland: “The tides pressed in, rising higher and higher. The sun beat down, shining hotter and hotter. The monotony of their days took on a foreboding as the swamp spread and deepened” (280).
The story is also an example of magical realism. Wanda’s ability to communicate with bioluminescent microorganisms is an adaptation that helps her community flourish in a world where deadly daytime temperatures force people to become nocturnal. The novel’s final chapter reveals that such adaptations are becoming more common with time: “They do not call these gifts magic and they do not call them science. They call them what they are: change” (343). Brooks-Dalton’s compelling merging of genres offers an imaginative vision of how humans could adapt and survive in a world transformed by climate change.
The Beauty and Violence of Nature
Throughout the novel, the lives of Wanda and the other characters are transformed by the beauty and violence of nature. Part 1 revolves around Hurricane Wanda, which claims the lives of the protagonist’s mother and stepbrother before she ever has a chance to know them. The protagonist’s mother, Frida, is especially aware of the impending destruction: “The hurricane’s voice is all around her and maybe also inside her, filling her head with a howling, mourning, bloodthirsty cry that seems to shake the ground” (82). Brooks-Dalton’s vivid use of personification in this excerpt portrays nature as a sentient being who is both devastating and devastated. In particular, the word “mourning” reminds the reader of humans’ role in climate change, which damages the environment as well as society. The death of eight-year-old Flip in the hurricane is a particularly brutal example of nature’s violence: “By the time they found his body, it was so traumatized no one could tell which blow was fatal” (181). Through the use of vivid language, the author portrays nature’s violence as the inevitable reckoning for humanity’s destruction of the environment.
Although its destructive might is terrifying, nature also possesses awe-inspiring beauty. Brooks-Dalton uses magical realism to illustrate the beauty of nature and humanity’s interconnectedness with the environment. The author employs stunning visual imagery to describe the second time Wanda sees the sentient lights: “A smoldering, shivering spray of lights burns beneath the surface, bright and translucent” (174). Wanda’s relationship with the glowing microorganisms is damaged by her father’s death, which demonstrates both nature’s beauty and violence because the buffeting floodwaters are illuminated by the familiar glow. This encounter with nature’s violence leads her to distrust its beauty. Years later, Wanda remains keenly aware of how often the two coincide. In Chapter 58, she flees from the glorious rising sun because she knows how easily the heat could take her life:
The sun crests, a molten slice of fire that gets bigger and rounder by the second. There is extraordinary beauty occurring; all she has to do is turn her head to see it, but she doesn’t. To admire is to slow and to slow is to succumb (319).
Indeed, the lingering effects of heatstroke nearly spell the protagonist’s doom because they prevent her from recognizing the hurricane’s approach at the novel’s climax. Although the storm is dangerous, there is beauty in the way it brings Wanda and Bird Dog together in Chapter 60. The lights guide Bird Dog to the protagonist, which helps to heal her relationship with them and with nature as a whole. Through suspenseful plot points and vibrant literary devices, Brooks-Dalton teaches her readers to respect the majesty of nature in all its beauty and violence.
Finding Family and Community
Out of all the challenges the protagonist faces, the most meaningful is finding family and community. Although Wanda and Phyllis are not biologically related, they demonstrate unwavering love for each other. In Chapter 44, Phyllis believes that Wanda will move to California with her father in a matter of days and they will never see each other again. Faced with this parting, the normally stoic and reserved woman voices how much the girl means to her: “‘I’m gonna miss you,’ Phyllis says. ‘You’re my favorite, you know’” (203). In a plot twist, Kirby dies, and Phyllis becomes Wanda’s guardian instead. The two women care for and protect one another for many years, and Wanda ultimately assumes the role of Phyllis’s guardian. Although the older woman’s memory fades, she does her best to hold on to her bond with Wanda, “the intensity of her love, the ferocity of her protection, a sense of wonder as she watched a little girl grow” (330). Wanda and Phyllis’s relationship is perhaps the most powerful example of family in the novel.
After Phyllis’s death, Bird Dog helps Wanda rediscover what it means to be part of a family and a community. Although Wanda struggles to trust anyone, she finds herself falling in love: “She’d like to be as close to Bird Dog as she can possibly be for as long as a world like this might let her” (317). Likewise, Wanda is drawn to Bird Dog’s community. The protagonist is equal parts fascinated and baffled by the kindness and interdependence she witnesses among the six drifters. She longs to join them, as evidenced by the many nights that she spends observing their interactions: “She goes on watching, night after night, neglecting her own chores so that she can be close to this strange family—unable to join them, unwilling to stay away” (310). Eventually, the protagonist realizes that a sense of belonging is essential to what it means to be human and to be truly alive: In Chapter 58, she “understands that it isn’t enough to have made it home” (320) because she has no one to share it with. This awareness motivates her to welcome Bird Dog and the other drifters to her shelter in the mangroves. Wanda allows the community to thrive for decades to come by sharing her home and the gift of her light. In Brooks-Dalton’s novel, the true meaning of family goes far beyond blood, and community offers hope even in the midst of climate disasters.
