Cloudiness and fogginess are motifs that develop the novel’s theme of sorrow. It is constantly cloudy in the Protectorate; the community is blanketed in fog, and the “world is drab and gray” (182). The clouds and fog represent the many sorrows that hang over the people, burdening them and dragging them down. The fog makes people sleepy and heavy. Even Antain, a thinker and questioner, feels that sometimes “the world was heavy, that the air, thick with sorrow, draped over his mind and body and vision, like a fog” (117). Ethyne, one of the most self-aware and educated people in the Protectorate, admits to the Sisters that she should have known Sister Ignatia was growing strong from their sorrows, but her knowledge was obstructed by a “cloud of sorrow” (311). Gherland notes that Ethyne’s home is one of the few that is bright with sunshine, “bathed in light” (277), because Ethyne herself refuses to sorrow. Instead, she and Antain hope, love, and question.

Sunshine signifies hope and promise. As the Protectorate’s fog begins to dissipate, mothers have visions of their lost children, which lead them to question and hope, and “the more they hoped, the more the clouds of sorrow lifted, drifted, and burned away in the heat of a brightening sky” (315).