The Pull of the Stars

Throughout the novel, Julia references the bone man, a figure from folklore who personifies death: “The bone man was making fools of us all. That was what we kids called death in my part of the country—the bone man, that skeletal rider who kept his grinning skull ticked under one arm as he rode from one victim’s house to the next” (19). As patients become sicker, Julia imagines the bone man nearby, ready to take another victim.

Worrying that Delia will bleed out after giving birth to her stillborn, Julia thinks, “I sensed the bone man just outside the door. He’d claimed one small life already before any of us had realised, and now he was hovering close by, doing his rattling dance, swinging his smirking skull like a turnip in his bony fingers” (89). Similarly, when she can tell that Bridie is near death, Julia thinks, “The bone man was in the room. I could hear him rattling, snickering” (281). For Julia, the bone man symbolizes how death feels constantly close due to the number of people dying of the flu. In addition, she knows that many people are dying in World War I. She thinks, “Like the poor, maybe, the war would always be with us. Across the world, one lasting state of noise and terror under the bone man’s reign” (169). Poverty, war, and sickness are major parts of life in 1918 Ireland, and people can scarcely imagine a time when these tragedies will subside. The bone man reminds Julia of the commonness of death during this time.

Toward the novel’s end, Julia and Bridie sit on the hospital’s rooftop and look at the stars. Julia explains the origin of the word influenza: “In Italy, they used to blame the influence of the constellations for making them sick—that’s where influenza comes from” (239). Bridie responds, “As if, when it’s your time, your star gives you a yank—” (239). Bridie goes on to say, “I have heard its’s all set down up there […] The day each of us is going to die” (239). Julia thinks that this idea is nonsensical and unscientific. In her opinion, “I’d never believed the future was inscribed for each of us the day we were born. If anything was written in the stars, it was we who joined those dots, and our lives were the writing” (244). Nevertheless, much uncertainty surrounds the pandemic, and throughout the novel the characters acknowledge that no one knows when or how quickly a person might die of it.

Recognizing the uncertainty of life, Julia thinks at one point, “[M]aybe we were indeed the sport of the stars. With their invisible silks, they tugged us this way and that” (160). Regardless, with so much uncertainty in the world, the stars raise questions about whether someone’s fate is pre-determined or whether they have control of their fate on earth. Finally, Julia thinks, “Blame the germs, the unburied corpses, the dust of war, the random circulation of wind and weather, the Lord God Almighty. Blame the stars. Just don’t blame the dead, because none of them wished this on themselves” (257). Even if people do have some control over their lives on earth, no one chooses to die as quickly or painfully as they do when they have the influenza. The stars symbolize how sometimes tragedies have no clear, easy, or scientific answer. They may also symbolize how the spirits of those who have passed might watch over the ones they leave behind.