49 pages • 1-hour read
The Sunbearer Trials
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying, gender discrimination, emotional and physical abuse, graphic violence, and illness or death.
Birds
Throughout the novel, birds act as a symbol of Teo’s identity and heritage. Thomas establishes Teo’s unique relationship with birds in the novel’s opening scene, in which a group of birds helps Teo deface a promotional poster of Gold heroes. Teo’s wings act as a central symbol in the novel, representing the complex intersection of his identity as both a Jade semidios and a transgender boy. The wings mark him as the child of Quetzal, “a part of him—his identity and his heritage—given to him by his mom” (103), but their distinctly female coloration makes them feel “as though they [belong] to someone else or he’[s] been given the wrong ones” (103). The dysphoria Teo experiences as a result of his wings echoes the real-world gender dysphoria often experienced by those whose true gender identity doesn’t align with the sex assigned to them at birth.
The Golds’ reactions to Teo’s physiological connection to birds—ranging from benign curiosity to overt cruelty—reinforce his status as other and continue the parallel between Teo’s avian identity and the contemporary experiences of transgender youth. For example, when Diosa Fauna inadvertently reveals that Teo’s bones are hollow like a bird’s, Teo receives a barrage of increasingly invasive questions about his anatomy—“Were you hatched from an egg?” (216), “Do you perch?” (216), “Do you have a cloaca?” (216)—that drives him to flee the room in discomfort. Thomas contrasts this public group scene with the private moment between Teo and Aurelio in which Aurelio waits for Teo to give him permission to touch his wings, modeling respect and empathy.
As the Trials progress, Teo begins to embrace his intersectional identity, viewing it as a strength. Thomas signals this growth in the scene where Teo tasks the local birds with terrorizing Ocelo, which earns him the admiration of Niya and Xio and allows Teo to see himself and his connection to birds in a new light, noting: “I guess being a lowly Jade isn’t all bad” (170). Teo’s embrace of his authentic self ultimately allows him to reject the pressure to conform to the dominant ideology of his world, refusing to execute Auristela in the novel’s climactic scene.
Gold and Jade
The motif of gold and jade that Thomas uses to define the social hierarchy of Reino del Sol directly evokes the contrast of values between Indigenous Mesoamerican cultures, who prized jade for its symbolic and spiritual significance, and their European colonizers in search of gold. Historians note that “at the time of the Spaniards’ arrival in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in the sixteenth century, jade was the most valued of substances. Reserved for the adornment of gods and royalty […] a symbol of life and purity” (“Jade in Mesoamerica: Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2001). In contrast, the Spanish conquistadors sought gold for its value as currency that could increase the wealth and prestige of the Spanish Crown.
The history of colonization evoked by the gold and jade motif underscores the novel’s thematic exploration of The Injustice of Inherited Social Hierarchies. Thomas points to this tension directly as Niya observes, “You know gold is like the most useless metal, right? […] It’s way too soft, good for nothing but looking pretty […] Jade was actually way more valuable back in the day” (85). Niya’s words act as early foreshadowing of the flawed premise of Reino del Sol’s social hierarchy. The novel concludes with an uprising orchestrated by the long-imprisoned Obsidians (another highly prized material in Mesoamerican cultures), creating a cliffhanger ending that lays the groundwork for a deeper exploration of Reino del Sol’s social stratification in Thomas’s sequel, Celestial Monsters, published in 2024.
The Sunbearer Crown
The Sunbearer Crown embodies the inherent tension between The Glorification of Heroism Versus the Reality of Sacrifice. The golden sunburst crown represents the highest honor in Reino del Sol, a symbol of ultimate power, divine favor, and celebrity status worn by the kingdom’s greatest heroes. It is the coveted prize of the Sunbearer Trials, the physical manifestation of victory in a society that fetishizes the concept of noble sacrifice. The novel subverts this traditional symbolism by inextricably linking the crown to a horrific act of violence—the sacrifice of the lowest-ranked competitor in the Sunbearer Trials by their highest-ranked peer. To become the Sunbearer is not just to be a champion but to become an executioner, as the winner is required to sacrifice the loser to fuel the Sun Stones. The crown, therefore, symbolizes a terrible, violent burden disguised as the ultimate honor.
Teo’s perspective highlights the dissonance between the crown as the ultimate symbol of honor and prestige and the violent responsibilities it denotes. When Sol selects Teo as a competitor, the weight of the crown on his head immediately inspires terror rather than pride. His instinctual reaction is to reject the title and its accompanying violence, and he “rip[s] the crown off his head and hurl[s] it across the room” (60). This visceral act represents a rejection of the system itself—a refusal to accept an honor predicated on ritualized murder—and positions Teo as an outlier in his world.
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