There Are No Saints

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, graphic violence, child abuse, and emotional abuse.

Lark constructs a vision of artistic creation where acts of violence and beauty become indistinguishable, suggesting that true artistic expression may require embracing both creation and destruction as essential elements of transforming raw experience into meaningful art. Through the parallel journeys of Cole, Shaw, and Mara, the novel argues that the artistic process mirrors the violence of life, where beauty can emerge from brutality and meaning can crystallize from chaos.

The most literal manifestation of this theme appears in Cole’s sculpture Fragile Ego, which transforms the murdered Carl Danvers into gilded art. Cole files down human bones, dips them in gold, and arranges them into an aesthetically stunning piece that sells for $750,000. The sculpture’s creation represents the ultimate fusion of destruction and creation: Danvers’s death becomes the raw material for Cole’s artistic vision. Shaw similarly conflates violence with artistic expression, staging Erin’s drowned body to mirror Millais’s Ophelia. For both men, murder becomes a form of artistic practice, with human bodies serving as their preferred medium.

Mara’s artistic evolution demonstrates a different but equally complex relationship between destruction and creation. Her painting The Mercy of Men transforms her own traumatic experience into a transcendent work of art, suggesting that personal destruction can fuel artistic revelation.