The monk
In this book, the climax comes first, and then with that climax in mind, the reader learns the various rising plots that take each character to their fate. The monk is spared from the horrible death that he witnesses, and he concludes that he was spared so that he could correctly consider the nature of their fateful deaths. He decides on fatalism for his analysis, so that his character becomes a symbol for a certain way of understanding suffering. As a religious person well-steeped in meditation, his opinion is that life is too synchronous to be random. He suspects that the creator God is organizing human lives and the events of fate.
The writing pilgrim pair
There is a pair of writers who are mother and daughter. As they realize that the daughter is pregnant herself, they decide to take an important religious journey to a shrine in Mexico. On the way, they die in the terrible event. Their story is both dual and singular, because although in the context of their relationships, they are dual (in fact, they work through serious emotional issues and bitterness as they sojourn), they are singular in their life's story which makes mothers of both of them and they both die at once. They represent motherhood and generational human life.
Esteban's death
Esteban's death is symbolic because he almost killed himself just before he died accidentally on the rope latter. He was experiencing the horrible pain of loss because of the death of his own twin brother. For a short time, they represent the duality of life and death, but when Esteban solidifies his preference for life, he dies. Therefore, the symbolism points to the confusing nature of death, because it does not matter what one decides about death; the same fate befalls all of us.
Literature as a motif
The motif of literature and the importance of books to the cast of this novel provides an important meta-narrative element to the text that helps the reader to consider the value of human life and the meaning of human stories. Within the stories, the characters struggle with the meaninglessness of their suffering and the lack of control they feel in life (like the monk's fatalism). But, they use literature as a way of defying that pressing sense of existential meaninglessness, and so does the reader by reading this book.
The motif of convents
The other important motif throughout the book is the constant interplay of "normal" people and monks and abbesses who have sworn a life of celibacy, dedication, and the pursuit of God. The novel starts and ends on religious notes with variations on those themes provided in the plural stories that sort of feel like movements in a major musical piece. Religion is like a spinal column in this text, and the ministers have the first and last say about the humans who are lost. The survivors of the tragedy provide a comment about life's purpose in their decision to become monks themselves.
