Guest post written by author Christopher Parker
Christopher Parker was born in Takapuna, a seaside suburb in Auckland, New Zealand, where he currently lives with his daughter. Having loved writing stories growing up, it was a walk along Takapuna beach and a chance glimpse at a distant lighthouse that made him want to revisit his childhood passion and try his hand at producing a novel. Nearly 10 years on from that fateful stroll, he is proud to finally share his story. His upcoming novel, The Lighthouse, debuts October 26, 2021. You can find him on his website.
I’m making a sweeping generalization here, but I believe there is no other building as universally adored as the humble lighthouse. From its origins in ancient Egypt, through to its numerous appearances in film and literature, right down to those modern-day motivational posters featuring battered towers being ravaged by stormy oceans, few other structures have managed to inspire and intrigue quite like these striking towers.
Indeed, over the centuries lighthouses have been painted, photographed, and written about countless times. Artists have long been drawn to that dramatic juxtaposition of the lone tower standing tall against a windswept landscape, and on the literary front every manner of story – from murder mysteries, horror, epic tales of love, even bodice-ripping romance – have been set in and around their cylindrical walls. Most notably, Edgar Allan Poe’s final piece of fiction, which remained incomplete at the time of his death, told the diary entries of a lighthouse keeper who begins to question the safety of the tower in which he finds himself housed. That fragment of a story went on to become the spark of inspiration that spurred Robert Egger’s 2019 film, ‘The Lighthouse’, starring Robert Pattinson. More recently, M.L. Stedman’s fantastic 2014 debut, ‘The Light Between Oceans’, used a remote island lighthouse as the setting for the unravelling of a young couple facing an unimaginable dilemma. And in the upcoming debut by *ahem* yours truly, ‘The Lighthouse’, the titular tower serves as a mysterious beacon to a young girl overcoming the anguish of a heartbreaking loss. For as long as lighthouses have been around, artists of every medium have seen them as ideal settings for drama to unfold, and audiences have been equally captivated.
But what’s behind the fascination? Why do we admire them so much?
Perhaps our attraction to them stems from the fact that they are refreshingly simple in their design and purpose. In a world with an ever-growing reliance on technology, where space tourists and self-driving cars are becoming the norm and those little devices in our pocket hold the entire breadth of human knowledge at our fingertips, lighthouses harken back to a simpler time and remind us that there still a need and a place for a tower with a lamp at its top. To a boat lost at sea, that beam of light remains as important today as it was all those centuries ago. True, lighthouses have evolved over the millennia – the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, burned a fire at night and used a mirror to reflect sunlight by day, whereas today there are few functioning left that aren’t operated remotely by someone sitting at a desk hundreds of miles away – and yet the purpose of these buildings remains unerringly the same. A beam of light, constant across time.
Or perhaps the real answer lies within? Perhaps our admiration for these buildings speaks to what they represent within ourselves. As structures often constructed in remote locations and designed to withstand the most treacherous of conditions, lighthouses have stood tall for decades, sometimes centuries, and in doing so have become a symbol of strength and stability. These majestic buildings were originally conceived with a utilitarian purpose, but maybe our enduring attraction to them is because they also inspire us to believe that we too are capable of their resilience, that even in our loneliest moments, when the storm clouds gather, the ocean roars, and darkness falls, we too might find a way to stand tall and keep on shining.
