The Pillars of the Earth

The Pillars of the Earth has the foundation of its narrative solidly set: the characters’ greatest conflicts are outlined at the beginning, serving as solid columns for the structure that will organize the most important events of the story, with actions always generating consequences, making the scale of the events gradually increase until the climatic end.

The novel’s various plots all gravitate around the construction of a cathedral in Kingsbridge, England, during the 12th century, focusing on some of the figures crucial to the venture. It has a simple structure: the Kingsbridge cathedral begins to be built, the villains draw up a plan to bring it down or paralyze the construction – being sometimes successful – the characters then suffer the consequences, and the cycle begins again.  What usually changes is the scale of the villain’s plans and of the consequences everyone must endure. Despite being a bit repetitive, however, the narrative manages to compensate for its shortcomings by making it easy for the reader to care about the characters.

Initially, Follett makes the heroes arouse admiration, being presented as smart and determined characters. After acquiring our attention, the author then adheres to a basic concept: the more a character suffers, the greater the probability of the reader feeling empathy towards them. Therefore, the main characters of The Pillars of the Earth go through long periods in which absolutely everything that could go wrong in their lives really do.

At first, we are introduced to Tom Builder, a master builder whose main dream is to command the construction of a cathedral. Tom is a resolute but poor man, who is ceaselessly seeking to make his dream come true even if that means refusing job offers that would put food on the table. He adores his craft, so when the narrator is following his point of view, his love infects the energetic descriptions of buildings and constructions –  in an excellent use of free indirect speech. The effect is great: it makes us not only able to visualize the landscape, but also fall in love with the buildings.

However, when he is fired by his former employer, William Hamleigh, Tom desperately needs to find work to save his family from starvation. Early on, Follett exposes the character’s technical knowledge as he details the planning of a house, and his courage by showing him risk his own life to get adequate compensation for his release. After he’s fired, Tom’s life only gets worse. The master-builder is dumped on the dirty and dangerous streets of a politically unstable England. The lack of jobs, the bandits, and the famine all beat him down while he travels. Tom doesn’t need a common villain in his storyline – his social status is enough to take on that role.

At the other extreme, in the nobility, we have Aliena, daughter of the Earl of Shiring. Here, the troubled political background of the period gains space to breathe.  With the death of King Henry I, the throne of England was left without a legitimate heir, since the king’s son, William, had died years earlier in a shipwreck. Maud, daughter of Henry I, is then named successor, causing enormous inconvenience to her misogynistic society due to the fact that she is a woman. Her cousin, Stephen of Blois, with the support of the Church, usurps the crown, starting a period of civil war called “The Anarchy”. Aliena, however, cares little about these events; her greatest concern is to not suffer the same fate as her mother, who married a man she did not love.

The candidate chosen by her father is William Hamleigh, a well-known, handsome, charming young man, who also happens to be a complete psychopath. Follett contrasts the two characters by their personalities: both are described by their physical characteristics, their beauty, vigor, and youth, but while Aliena is gentle kind, William is described as the devil himself.

Although she thinks her main problem is the young nobleman, Aliena is still affected by the fatalities of the civil war, which end the relevance of her family name. Deprived of her status and of all the protection that came with it, she suddenly finds herself lost in a world she never belonged – and the implacability of poverty now begins to frighten her at every turn. Follett takes the opportunity to make Aliena a three-dimensional character: if, as a “lady”, she was kind, beautiful, and affectionate, when she finally understands her new status and realizes that her brother needs her if he is to have any chance of survival, Aliena reveals herself to be a person of strong personality, capable of threatening and even killing if there is no choice. The author also succeeds in making her journey long and excruciating without making it look forced. Aliena ends up in almost the same position as Tom, hungry and without a job, but she still has to face society’s prejudice for being born a woman. In other words, she has to escape the fate of prostitution, support her brother, and even miraculously try to recover her social position. And on top of that, her horror towards William Hamleigh is also shown to be justified, since the man, not satisfied with her constant social degradation, keeps searching for different ways to humiliate her.

In fact, the man’s entire family is characterized as one-dimensional villains who commit atrocities in exchange for power, wealth, or, in William’s case, pure pleasure. Follett spares no effort to make the Hamleighs horrible people. William is shown having fun stoning cats to death, enjoying immensely the act of murdering peasants, and even having an erection after imagining himself raping Aliena and forcing people to watch the act. His mother, described with a terrifying appearance due to a scar on her face, acts like a viper, manipulating characters with her poisonous words. Meanwhile, her obtuse husband is responsible for the first great act of injustice committed in the book. By making everyone around William evil, the chapters that focus on the character become very effective in transmitting a strong feeling of repulsion, making the atmosphere considerably suffocating.

Finally, the clergy appears in the form of salvation and damnation, personified by the monk Philip and Bishop Waleran respectively. Philip is a humble monk, orphaned by the war and raised by the Church. Because he has a strong personality and is a perfectionist, his work in managing an isolated installation in a forest leads him to gain recognition, initiating a sequence of events that put him in charge of overseeing the construction of the cathedral in Kingsbridge. Philip is tormented by the idea of committing the sin of pride, since admiring the fruit of his labor is one of his greatest pleasures. Adequately, Follett builds the character’s conflicts in a different way: the narrative displays Philip as the pillar to which all other virtuous characters need to cling to, making him directly responsible not only for the cathedral but also for the success of each one of them.

Waleran, on the other hand, represents the corruption of the Catholic Church, supporting a network of intrigue based on the exchange of favors and blackmail. By vowing not to rest until the cathedral is destroyed, the bishop takes Philip’s position for the forces of evil, becoming essential to the plans of the Hamleighs and the other villainous characters. The bishop, however, is shown to be more three-dimensional than his accomplices, thanks not only to his sarcastic nature but also to his motivations: what leads Waleran to hate Philip is not an evil nature but precisely… pride.

With the pieces on the board, Follett then arranges the events like a roller coaster, mixing betrayals with happy moments and alternating between periods of peace and great battles. The first great victory witnessed by the reader, for example, is followed by the most traumatizing event in the life of one of the main characters and, even more tragic, is its direct cause.

The author builds a fascinating ambivalent dynamic among his main characters. The presence of Tom in Kingsbridge is seen by Philip as divine help, although it becomes the catalyst of a great tragedy in the monk’s life. On the other hand, Philip is at the same time the builder’s salvation, because it finally means the realization of his dream, and his greatest torment, because Philip forbids him to live with his wife. The relationship between the monk and Aliena is even more troubled, as he influences both her victories and some of the tragedies that affect her.

The scale of the events also increases over time. Each evil plan of Waleran and the Hamleighs, however unsuccessful in its execution, generates consequences, and each choice Aliena, Philip, or Tom makes leads to new and even more elaborate plans to bring their downfall. If at first, Hamleigh needs only to threaten with brute force to paralyze the construction of the cathedral, in the middle of the book it is already necessary to manipulate a king to achieve a similar effect.

Finally, the use of the historical background also deserves praise, since it affects and alters the events of the book without stealing attention for itself in the process. The characters live in a turbulent era called “The Anarchy” and it is not difficult to understand the reason for that name when following the story. To achieve their goals, Philip and Waleran occasionally need the force of the law and the king on their side. However, as the battles of civil war generate instability, sometimes crowning a king, sometimes placing him prisoner, the law changes accordingly, frustrating the plans of the main characters.

The Pillars of the Earth is a great book. Despite its somewhat repetitive narrative structure, it manages to captivate by the increasingly huge scale of the events, the strength of the characters, and the complexity of their dynamic.

December 29, 2019.

Review originally published in Portuguese on March 25, 2015.