The Book of Sand

The Bible takes on multiple meanings in “The Book of Sand,” as the narrator and the salesman share an interest in both the Bible and the Book of Sand, and each chooses the book over the Bible at some point. The Bible is established as less incantatory and mesmerizing—and less disruptive—than the book, but it also represents a certain safety and certainty for the characters. The salesman ultimately reverses his trade, taking the Wycliffe Bible in exchange for the book, and the narrator is unwilling to place the book in the place the Wycliffe formerly occupied.

The Wycliffe Bible, specifically, carries the weight of heresy from the Catholic perspective and from early Protestantism, which is further echoed in the salesman’s Scottish Presbyterian background. Turning from the Wycliffe to the Book of Sand, then, is a double heresy; as the Wycliffe represents distancing from the Catholic Church, the book involves movement away from the Protestant Church. The fact that both characters depart from their religion to seek greater enlightenment from the book shows both the spiritual limitations of religion and the comfort taken in the specific, easily located dogma of an unchanging sacred text.