The Pillars is a captivating
novel with various themes. It features a plot of ambition, romance and courage woven
around the construction of a cathedral during the civil war in medieval
England. It’s a mammoth epic novel, with over a thousand pages long and a storyline
covering three generations. However, the novel is alive with vivid emotions of love and
lust, thrilling with battles, twists and turns. Follett unfolds the story of
this highly informative novel in a narration that is so absorbing such that one
wouldn’t put it down once he started reading. As we read the novel, we live the medieval
life with characters, we design the cathedral with Jack, we fall in love with Aliena and fight battles with Richard. This book can be called as an historical epic thriller and after I read the book, it set a new standard for my reading choices.
Story & Narration
 |
| The design of the cathedral built in the book is based on Salisbury Cathedral, England |
Philip is a bright and ambitious, yet humble and forgiving Christian monk who gets
appointed as the new prior (father) of Kingsbridge priory (town church). With
old church burnt to ashes in an apparent accident, he is determined to build a
new cathedral and to restore order in the corrupted priory of Kingsbridge.
Tom Builder is an ambitious master stonemason, attracted by the puzzling complexity of cathedral building. Tom starts living together with a widow and her peculiar son, Jack. With time, Jack grows into a
brilliant architect & engineer, travels lands of Spain and France
and gets inspired by the new Gothic architectural style. Aliena is a beautiful,
confident and smart noblewomen (girl) who has lost her father and her earldom
(castle) to a villain named William and brutally raped by him at youth.
Sadistic nobleman William, the wily bishop Waleran and few others are portrayed
as antagonists. They use the chaotic period of civil war to unleash injustice against Father Philip and Aliena. However, Jack and Aliena fall in love and Jack soothes her mental wound about lovemaking, caused by the rape.
Eventually, with endurance, she rises again as a noblewomen and regains her
castle while Jack completes the new church in a novel Gothic architectural style.
The novel is filled
with enough electrifying elements. With civil war and building of a cathedral
as backgrounds, tight webs of political power games are spun along the novel supported
by popular historic events. In addition, there is the cathedral
architecture: a impressive mix of delicate art, challenging engineering and magnificence of the project itself. To add spice to the feast,
thrilling wars, raids and invasions are placed throughout the storyline to
maintain a steady pace.
Analysis
The author, Ken
Follett is not a religious man, but an atheist. Yet, he does not stick to criticizing the church and god. Instead, he shows the church from a medieval
common man’s view. However, the author’s nature reflects strongly in Jack, one
of the leading characters. Jack, just like Follett, is skeptic about
Christianity, but is in love with cathedral architecture. To contrast him,
Philip, another leading character is portrayed as a ‘true’ monk, not as some
corrupted Christian clergy.
Underlying to the
story, the novel explores a crucial theme: the frequent clash between the laws of nature, religion and state. Jack and Aliena are together in deep
and matured love, yet they are not allowed to live together by the laws of
church. Church’s law and state’s laws keep clashing throughout the civil war as
indicated when King Stephan comments to a Bishop “I’d prefer a monk to dress
like a monk, in rags. Not like a king in tunics”, pointing out a monk's expensive clothes.
 |
| Interior of Salisbury cathedral |
Apart from the
thrill and deep emotions, the novel is highly informative. On the flow, the
reader would be able to realize many aspects of the medieval society. One would
get to know about the hierarchy of social classes of medieval England: royalty, earls,
barons, merchants and peasants and the classes of church: novice, monk, prior,
bishop, archdeacon and archbishop. Reader gets familiar with cathedral
architecture: Gothic and Romanesque styles, arches, vaulting, buttresses, nave,
aisles, gallery, transepts…etc. The book is packed with social details such as with
the marriage laws, habits of people, economy, society and other features of
medieval life. Before reading this book, I never knew that there were humble monks
in Christianity as in Buddhism and I had no idea about the engineering purpose of arches. All
this information is presented through a gripping storytelling, such that the book won't be boring like a textbook, even to those who have no interest
in architecture or politics. The book actually enlightened me on many levels
and inspired me to read more about cathedral architecture and medieval English society.
Drawbacks
On the other hand,
the novel has few minor drawbacks, which I’m sure nobody would care much about. The
characters, though very lively, are closer to either end of the good-evil spectrum, unlike in reality. Although the novel is widely praised by historians and critics for its
accuracy in portraying medieval lifestyle, I felt that the society seems bit too
matured to be real: for example, people and church judge a man by his present
own actions, ignoring his or her past and misgivings of his parents. This is
evident that after Jack’s mother is declared as a witch by the church and after
Jack insulted Father Philip, he is later given the job of master builder of
cathedral by Philip himself, purely for his skill and intellect. As such matured
behavior cannot be observed even in today's society, I suppose it wouldn't be
possible in 11th century. However, the author has done an appreciable task of filling the story perfectly
into a frame of popular history events such as sinking of White Ship,
civil war, Battle of Lincoln and assassination of Thomas Becket. Therefore,
these minor drawbacks can be concluded negligible when considering the splendor
of the narration.
 |
| Interior of Salisbury, showing the pointed vaults and pointed arches of Gothic style |
My Personal Views
As said, I have a
passion for huge buildings. Somewhat like Follett or Jack, I am attracted to the architecture of huge Hindu kovils rather than to the deities inside. Architecture seems a challenge in itself. At
that era, when building an impossibly tall buildings with heavy granite stone, masons
had to devise ways to divide and conduct the massive forces of weight to the
earth and make the tall, unstable building resist hurricanes & earthquakes for 800
years, all without an understanding of physics, without knowing what really a force is. Beyond this
engineering challenges, the result must turn out be stunningly beautiful at
first sight, since one cannot build a huge, tall ugly building at such cost and boast
about its engineering. As mentioned in book, cathedrals were the largest,
tallest, most expensive and most complex buildings ever built by Christians and each took generations to build. And that was because, the monarch and the people could justify such expenditure and the
time spent only through their blind faith on god.
As a note about the characters,
I loved this novel for those two characterizations. I personally like and
respect two kinds of people: ones who are ambitious and work with god in their
heart, like Philip and ones who are ambitious and reject the existence of god,
yet live a good lively, tasteful life. The two leading characters were exactly
the type I loved, so I was naturally drawn into the novel.
Verdict
The novel is huge, it
took me 15 days to read it to the end. However it was completely worthy for the
time. Each time I picked the book, I couldn't keep it down, and on several days,
I found myself reading frantically in nights up to 2 am and in mornings as soon as I
woke up in bed. On some days, I had to refrain myself from touching the book,
afraid I will not be able to stop reading once started and I won’t be able to
do my routine works. I took the book from the library on an impulse, but it seems I've found a gem. I’m looking forward to buy this book for my collection.
It’s a novel that’s
alive. As I read, I found myself drifting into the world it created as
intensely as I was dreaming. The feelings felt by the characters: shock,
happiness, lust, sorrow, despair, frustration…etc. manipulated me and I was
truly depressed in life for few days when the characters lost all hope. However,
it should be mentioned, this book is strictly for adults due to the detailed
descriptions (though enjoyable) of certain scenes and activities. :-D (But I believe,
anybody who dare reading a 1000 page English novel would be matured enough to
read anything) ‘The Pillars’ presents a lively tale, evoking series of emotions
& collection of experiences and I bet any good reader would love this after
reading.
A Note on the Author
 |
| Ken Follett |
Ken Follett is a Welsh author, popular for his historical epic fiction works set on different historical eras. His bestselling books include The Pillars of the Earth (set during English civil war), its sequel World Without End (set during the first outbreak of Plague in medieval England) and The Century Trilogy (Three books: Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, Edge of Eternity - each set in the 20th century during First World War & Russian Revolution, Second World War and the Cold War respectively).
In each of the above books, the story is told by following the life of few families of different social statuses with different belief systems, sometimes living in different countries. This method proves to be highly effective in describing the impact of historical events in various levels of society and in describing the beliefs and practices held in those levels of the society. One major drawback of the other historical fiction I've read (Ponniyin Selvan, Sandilyan's novels, Mahabaratham) is their story is spun mainly around the royal class. How the royal events and decisions affect the people is usually ignored in such novels. Ken Follett clearly scores above those novels in overcoming that drawback.
Also, Follett is widely praised for the historical accuracy in his novels. He weaves a brilliant drama on the frame of historical events, which is an almost-impossible task in itself. Not only that, he leaves the real historic characters (English kings, Stalin, Churchill..etc) intact with their own characters and shows their different faces through the conversations between the fictitious characters of the novel. By such techniques, he succeeds in presenting a detailed cross section of the historic era and the historic characters as seen from different perspectives.
Follett was writing a series of bestselling yet stupid thrillers like Dan Brown until he suddenly changed his course by writing The Pillars when he was 40 years old. The Pillars and the subsequent historical novels achieved immense success as record-breaking bestsellers. Now, at his 60th age, he continues to write such epic historic novels.
No comments:
Post a Comment