The Sundial Symbol in Sundial: Time, Ritual, and Cyclical Fate

The Sundial as a Physical Object and Living Instrument

The sundial that gives the house its name is not a conventional garden ornament. It is a human sundial, built by Rob's father Falcon, who wanted the family to be part of the earth and the passage of time. The structure consists of a semicircle of stones, each carved with a month, enclosed by an outer ring of numbered stones. A single central stone marks where a person stands, becoming the needle that casts a shadow across the numbered ring. As the sun rises, the shadow reveals the date. In chapter 9, Rob steps onto the marker at dawn and reads January 23, a moment she describes as a small miracle that makes her a precise fixed point in the orbiting solar system. The sundial is located near a stone cairn enclosing a spring, a place of running water and life in the desert. It is both a functional timepiece and a ritual site, and it is the reason the house and land are called Sundial, even though the deeds list only a street number.

Recurrence and Shifting Meaning

The sundial appears at pivotal moments in the narrative, and its meaning evolves from a marker of cosmic order to a site of private grief and, finally, to a symbol of the family's inescapable cyclical fate.

A Place of Pilgrimage and Grief

In chapter 9, Rob makes a private pilgrimage before dawn. She carries a trash bag of cheap meat cuts and throws handfuls over the west fence as offerings, then follows the sound of water to the sundial. She steps onto the central stone, reads the date, and whispers words of grief and love before crying until her throat is hoarse. This ritual is entirely hers; she does not want Callie to see it. The sundial here is a confessional, a place where Rob can mourn the losses that she keeps battened down in her everyday life—the death of her sister Jack, the loss of her unborn child, and the weight of her own violent history.

A Burial Ground

The sundial also becomes a grave. In chapter 24, after Jack attacks Rob and causes her to lose her baby, Rob buries the remains beneath the sundial. Later, in chapter 31, after Jack dies defending the newborn Callie, Rob buries Jack by the sundial, under the rose where she once thought her mother Lily lay. The text notes that the sundial is now a real grave, near Rob's little lost one. The sundial thus accumulates the dead: Lily, the baby, Jack. It becomes a physical repository of the family's losses, a place where time and death intersect.

A Symbol of Cyclical Fate

The sundial's function as a timekeeper takes on a darker resonance as the novel unfolds. The family's history repeats: Rob's mother died young, Rob's sister died, Rob's baby died, and now Rob faces the possibility of losing or harming her daughter Callie. The sundial marks the passage of time, but it also suggests that the past is never truly past—it is always casting a shadow forward. The name itself, Sundial, implies a loop, a cycle that returns. Rob's ritual of offering meat along the fence, which she continues even years later (as noted in chapter 31), suggests an attempt to appease or connect with something that keeps coming back. The sundial is the fixed point around which these cycles turn.

Character and Theme Connections

Rob

For Rob, the sundial is a site of private vulnerability. She performs her grief there, away from her daughters and her carefully constructed mask of normalcy. It is also where she buries her most painful losses, making it a place of both confession and concealment. Her relationship to the sundial mirrors her relationship to her own past: she cannot escape it, and she returns to it again and again.

Jack and Lily

Jack is buried at the sundial, and Lily's rosebush grows there. The sundial thus connects the sisters across generations. Jack's death and burial at the sundial echo the earlier loss of Lily, reinforcing the theme of maternal sacrifice and the inheritance of violence. The sundial becomes a family crypt, holding the women who have been lost to the cycle.

Callie

Callie is aware of the graves of Mia and Falcon, but the sundial itself is not directly associated with her until the end of the novel. However, the sundial's symbolism of cyclical fate directly implicates her: she is the living child who must break the cycle or perpetuate it. The novel's final chapters suggest that Callie may be the one to escape, but the sundial remains as a reminder of what has come before.

Themes

The sundial ties together several major themes: time and ritual (the human sundial as a participatory act), maternal sacrifice (the burials of Lily, Jack, and the baby), engineered violence and inheritance (the family's repeated pattern of harm), and memory as a constructed refuge (Rob's private ritual as a way to hold onto the dead). The sundial is also a symbol of isolation—it stands in the desert, far from the nearest gas station, a lonely marker of human presence in a vast, indifferent landscape.

Study Questions

How does the sundial function as both a timekeeping device and a burial site, and what does this dual role suggest about the novel's treatment of time and death?

Answer: The sundial measures time through a human shadow, making the observer part of the instrument. Its dual role as a grave means that time and death are inseparable: the passage of time leads inevitably to burial, and the dead remain present in the landscape. This suggests that the past is never fully past—it continues to cast a shadow, just as the human needle casts a shadow over the numbered stones.

In chapter 9, Rob performs a private ritual at the sundial. What does this ritual reveal about her character and her relationship to her family's history?

Answer: The ritual—throwing meat as offerings, standing on the sundial, and weeping—shows Rob's need to connect with the dead and to acknowledge her grief in a space separate from her domestic life. It reveals that she carries profound guilt and sorrow, and that the sundial is her only outlet for these emotions. The ritual also suggests a belief in the need to appease or honor the past, even as she tries to protect her daughters from it.

How does the sundial's meaning shift from a symbol of cosmic order to a symbol of cyclical fate over the course of the novel?

Answer: Initially, the sundial represents human participation in the natural order—a way to be part of the earth and the passage of time. As the novel progresses, it becomes a site of burial and grief, accumulating the dead. By the end, it symbolizes the inescapable repetition of family patterns: the same losses, the same violence, the same sacrifices. The sundial's fixed position in the desert mirrors the characters' inability to move beyond their history.

Consider the burials at the sundial: Lily, Rob's unborn baby, and Jack. How do these burials connect to the theme of maternal sacrifice?

Answer: Each burial represents a loss that Rob experiences or witnesses as a mother or sister. Lily's death shaped Rob's childhood; the baby's death was caused by Jack's violence; Jack's death was a sacrifice to save the newborn Callie. The sundial becomes a monument to these sacrifices, suggesting that the women in this family are destined to give up their lives or their children. The burials also create a lineage of loss that Rob hopes to break by sparing Callie, but the sundial's presence implies that the cycle may continue.