Solar Storms

Agnes’s bear coat symbolizes ancestral knowledge and power. Made from the pelt of a captive glacier bear that Agnes killed when she was a child to end its suffering, the coat functions as a spiritual conduit. The glacier bear, the last of its kind, was imprisoned and put on display by a French fur trader named Beauregard, epitomizing how colonial powers commodify and brutalize the natural world. Agnes’s decision to kill the bear—an animal considered sacred in many Indigenous cultures—is one of both resistance and empathy. By ending its pain, she also takes on the animal’s story. The coat, then, is transformed into something sacred, something protective and to be protected, rather than exploited.

Throughout the novel, the bear coat is described as almost sentient. It “teaches” Agnes songs older than herself, ones she should have no way of knowing. It links her to ancestors and spirits who continue to live through the land, the animals, and those who remember. When Agnes forgets the coat on her journey to Two-Town, Husk’s urgency to return it reflects his understanding of its personal significance. After Agnes’s death, the coat moves into Angel’s possession, symbolically passing on not only warmth, but ancestral wisdom and knowledge, Agnes’s legacy, and an obligation to protect what still remains of their culture.