61 pages • 2 hours read
Stone Yard Devotional
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Mice
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal death and death.
Mice are a plague in Stone Yard Devotional, overwhelming the protagonist and the sisters at the abbey. As their numbers grow and their violations of the abbey increase, these mice become a symbol that represents the COVID-19 pandemic and the chaos unleashed on the world by environmental collapse. Stone Yard Devotional occurs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and references to it are made throughout, but the protagonist is protected and removed from it because of the isolation of the abbey. However, the mice, and the responsibilities that come with disposing of them, mirror the experiences and scenes of the pandemic happening in the world outside: “We wore latex gloves and surgical masks. A macabre job: the smell, the soft bodies tumbling by the shovel load. I closed my eyes as I pushed the shovel into the pile” (147). Even though none of the sisters suffer from the virus, and their lack of contact with the outside world keeps them safe, the ever-rising pile of mouse corpses mirrors events happening in the wider world.
The mice’s presence and deaths reflect the pandemic in more ways than just the cleaning of the traps. The sound of their constant scrambling across the screen of a window at night reminds the protagonist of death, and she comes to associate them with her mortality: “This knowledge that remains mostly hidden from the self but is always there, gaining ground inside us, unstoppable. This is why I hate the mice; I know this now, in the humming darkness” (239). The protagonist comes to hate the mice because they remind her that she will one day die. With the macabre scenes of their own deaths constantly present, death is more of a focal point than it otherwise would be. Though the COVID-19 pandemic does not play an important role in the plot, the sisters experience an image of its stress and grief through the mice infestation.
Sister Jenny’s Remains
Helen Parry’s arrival at the abbey is precipitated by the need to have someone escort the remains of Sister Jenny back to Australia. Sister Jenny’s disappearance in Thailand decades before makes the recovery of her remains exciting and consequential, as some of the sisters shared time with her at the abbey. As her remains sit in the good room, awaiting burial, the protagonist begins to ascribe a greater meaning to them. These bones are a motif that reflects The Pursuit of Redemption, as they represent an unresolved story awaiting a peaceful end: “I think of them in their box: just bones, just a poor human animal, skinless and narrow and mud-covered. Evidence of unnatural sorrow, old hurt. Something that must be properly reburied for the kingdom to be well” (189). The protagonist associates the general tension and mayhem of the abbey with the bones, as the plague of mice worsens upon their arrival with the unpopular Helen Parry. The protagonist believes that peace will be restored once they are buried, much like peace can be achieved through the forgiveness of an old hurt. The tragic nature of Sister Jenny’s death and the anger Sister Bonaventure feels for them because of an old argument, associate the remains with the guilt many characters seek forgiveness for. Once they are laid to rest, life can return to normal.
Compost
As the protagonist reminisces about her mother, she remembers the odd nature of many of her mother’s practices and beliefs. One of these was her mother’s propensity for composting. As a child, the protagonist found the practice embarrassing, but now, as an adult, she sees her mother’s composting as nourishing: “My mother said that anything that had once been alive should go back into the soil. Food scraps went into the compost” (293). The protagonist’s mother composted to give purpose to that which is dead. She understands that compostable items can have a purpose in the future. She believed that over time, the compost would help other things to live: “All that was needed was time, and nature. Anything that had lived could make itself useful, become nourishment in death, my mother said” (293). In many ways, compost is a motif that reflects The Importance of Empathy in Parent-Child Relationships, as the protagonist uses her empathetic understanding of her mother to grow and learn about herself. Even though her mother passed, she still has an indelible influence and presence in her daughter’s life. As the protagonist grows older, she gains a new understanding of her mother, and in turn, of herself. The protagonist’s mother loved the soil, and she becomes “nourishment in death” herself.
Unlock the meaning behind every key symbol & motif
See how recurring imagery, objects, and ideas shape the narrative.
- Explore how the author builds meaning through symbolism
- Understand what symbols & motifs represent in the text
- Connect recurring ideas to themes, characters, and events