Weakened By The Light / Literature

Examples of Weakened by the Light in Literature

• In the Coldfire Trilogy, dark fae is (according to the Hunter, the only human who has ever been able to harness it) fragile enough to be weakened by a candle. However, in utter darkness it is powerful enough to stave off death itself, which is how the Hunter has cheated death for centuries.
• In Companions of the Night, sunlight kills vampires in an extremely painful manner, and it is not instantaneous. This kind of death is so excruciating that when Ethan thinks he’s about to die that way, he begs Kerry to shoot him before he starts frying.
• H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories:
  • In the The Haunter of the Dark, the titular being (an avatar of Nyarlathotep) has an extreme aversion to light. Any light will harm it and strong enough light will destroy it. In the end it is destroyed by a flash of lightning.
  • In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, the creatures known as ghasts are killed by bright light such as sunlight.
• Alison Sinclair's Darkborn trilogy focuses around two races divided by an ancient curse: the Lightborn, who cannot tolerate the dark, and the Darkborn, who are fatally burned by light, except for firelight (they are blind and operate via an inherent sonar ability). Notably most of the main viewpoint characters are Darkborn.
• Discworld:
  • Vampires follow this trope, except for the ones in Carpe Jugulum which temporarily train themselves to be immune. Granny Weatherwax later undoes this though.
  • The rather Lovecraftian creature in the old temple in The Colour of Magic also suffers from this.
  • Trolls don't get weakened by light, but in many places the heat of day makes them dumb, and in some cases, like Klatch, almost catatonic. Trolls "turning to stone in daylight" is a misunderstanding of both this and the fact trolls are already made of stone.
• Doom Valley Prep School has some demons with this problem. When Petra trades shapes with a demoness a bright flash bomb gave her a sunburn. She was also warned to be inside by dawn.
• Bram Stoker's Dracula averts or at least downplays this: Dracula is weak only at sunup and sundown. Being in sunlight has no direct harmful affect on him (he's seen approaching Lucy before the sun goes down), though he does suffer from Shapeshifter Mode Lock during daytime. However since he's weak at sunup and sundown they use this to great effect when they open his coffin just as the sun sets.
• In The Dresden Files, magic itself seems weakened by sunlight: Spells and wards that aren't constantly maintained tend only to last until the next sunrise. Ironically, Harry notes that this is not because sunlight is in itself purifying, but rather because dawn is a powerful symbol of new beginnings. Standing magic isn't weakened by light itself, but by the start of the day. Sunlight also damages or annoys several supernatural creatures for more traditional reasons.
  • The Red Court vampires get hurt by sunlight; Harry hits Bianca with a handkerchief full of stored sunlight and it burns through her meat sack to reveal the bat-thing beneath.
  • The most powerful Reds are immune to this so long as they stay in human form; in giant-demon-bat-from-hell form they're still vulnerable to it.
  • Black Court vampires are forced to fall dormant during the day (whether or not they're harmed at all by actual exposure to sunlight isn't made clear). The more powerful ones can still be active during this time, but their powers are somewhat weakened.
  • White Court vampires, on the other hand, avert this outright; they're never shown to experience any discomfort from daylight (probably because physically, they're humans who happen to have very hungry demons piggybacking on their souls, as opposed to the blatantly inhuman other two courts).
  • Sunlight, by its nature as a force that disrupts magic, will destroy ghosts who are not in "shelter" (such as their graves) when daytime arrives. Harry learns this the hard way in Ghost Story.
• In the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, Balthus Dire is a third-generation Sorcerous Overlord over the local Mordor, whose family is so utterly evil that they have developed a lethal vulnerability to sunlight normally suffered only by The Undead.
• In The Folk Keeper, the Folk are repelled by light, including sunlight, starlight, and candlelight.
• In Fortunately, the Milk, the wumpires are not keen on daylight, and with good reason.
• In the first Goosebumps book, Welcome to Dead House, the zombie mutant vampires of Dark Falls are susceptible to sunlight. They can go out during the day, but it makes them weak and direct sunlight will harm or kill them. As a consequence, they have allowed the trees of the town to overgrow, making the town feel overcast all the time. At the end of the book, when they are trying to eat Josh and Amanda Benson's parents, Josh and Amanda push over a big tree blocking the sun from shining directly on the townspeople, causing them to die. It doesn't permanently kill them, though.
• In Harry Potter, Harry speculates Dementors dislike sunlight which is why his fugitive Godfather Sirius is hiding in warmer climates. Supplementary material confirms this, adding Dementors don’t appear in the tropics (although Lethifolds, who are Dementors in all but name, do). This also might explain why Dementors create mist whenever they go and are more commonly seen at night.
• Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend is about a Zombie Apocalypse with the entire human race, but one individual, turn into mutant vampire-like creatures that hate sunlight.
• Inverted by Lamplight, in which the un-named creatures preying on the residents of Crooksfield aren't deterred by light at all - in fact they need it in order to take physical form.
• In the Legacy of the Drow series, this is what undoes and defeats the Drow army on the surface during the climactic battle of Mithral Hall. Because their eyes are sensitive to bright light, when the night ends and the sun begins to rise, exposing many of them to it for the first time, they are left flailing blindly and are beaten back.
• The Mummy Monster Game: In book 1, pharaoh phantoms are outright killed by the lights that the players carry. Unfortunately, by this point in the game, their flashlight batteries just happen to be running low, making the game that much harder.
• In The Nekropolis Archives, the majority of Darkfolk find sunlight in some way uncomfortable, with vampires being the most severely affected. Thus, for the comfort of its residents, Nekropolis's light comes from Umbriel, the shadowsun, which perpetually casts dim twilight. The Sunstone, a magical artifact capable of producing sunlight, is treated like an Artifact of Doom because so many Darkfolk could be harmed by its light.
• The Dead in the Old Kingdom books are weakened by direct sunlight, and prolonged exposure will eventually destroy them. As such, they're typically either nocturnal, dwell underground, or only come out in daytime under cloud cover, though Kerrigor knows a spell to shroud his minions in an incredibly thick and opaque fog if he has to move them during the day. Note also that some necromancers will send their Dead minions (particularly weak ones such as Hands or gore-crows) out in sunlight anyway, to do as much damage as they can via Zerg Rush before they get burned away — after all, the Dead are many.
• The Daywalking Vampires in Old Scores are not harmed by sunlight (except dawn's light), but they lose most of their powers during the day, and direct exposure to sunlight leaves Simon a little disoriented.
• In the President's Vampire series, vampires are burned by direct sunlight, and even when they're sheltered from it, they're automatically weaker during the day than at night.
• In The Red Tent, Zilpah stays in her tent most of the time to avoid sunlight. Unlike most examples, she is not a supernatural being of any kind, or even particularly evil; the reason she avoids sunlight is that she suffers from migraines.
• The Shadowhunter Chronicles: Sunlight (but not artificial light) is lethal to vampires and most demons. The first Greater Demon in the series is defeated by sunlight.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, the Shade require darkness to use most of their powers, leaving them vulnerable to both sunlight and Magitek lighting devices. The glowing sunstones also inflict terrible pain on contact.
• In The Shattered Kingdoms, the Norlander people have this attribute. However, they're still close enough to standard humans to be biologically compatible, and they're not necessarily evil (although some of the people they conquer might tell you otherwise). At least one character of Norlander birth has managed to adapt to the sun well enough.
• Hearteater from Tailchaser's Song has spent centuries deep under the ground and as a result the sun burns him. His goal is to get rid of the sun and take over the world. Hearteater's minions are also hurt by the sun. They only go above ground at night.
• In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, the sun and moon are creations and symbols of the forces of good, and the evil servants of the Dark Lords generally have trouble with sunlight.
  • Orcs are weakened and frightened by strong light and especially sunlight. They usually march under the cover of night, or under supernatural cloud-cover. On two occasions during The Lord of the Rings series, the Orcs are pushed back by the appearance of a powerful light (though, admittedly, usually accompanied by some good ol' fashioned swords).
  • Subverting this was the chief advantage of the Uruk-hai; unlike other orcs, they were part-human and thus could go about during the day without any problems.
  • In The Hobbit, trolls are turned to stone by sunlight. Apparently by the end of the War of the Ring, Sauron had overcome this weakness with the creation of the Olog-hai.
  • The Nazgûl
    • The fear that radiates from them is weakened during the day, particularly at noon. Everything is less scary by the light of day.
    • They don't see the world of daylight normally, but the presence of living creatures casts shadows in their minds. This is prevented (making it impossible to see them) by the light of the noonday sun.
  • Shelob gets burned by the light of Eärendil's star, a Silmaril containing the purest and holiest light remaining in Middle-earth. Indeed the three Silmarilli are the ultimate expression of this trope in Tolkien's Arda: Not only is the mere sight of them too much for most evil creatures, but they are so holy that their touch horribly burns evil creatures and people.
  • Subverted in The Silmarillion by Shelob's hideous mother Ungoliantë, a spider-shaped thing of darkness who greedily ate every speck of light she encountered — including the Two Trees of Valinor.
  • After millennia of being corrupted by the One Ring (not to mention living in a cave), Gollum couldn't stand sunlight, and hated moonlight as well.
  • Also true to a lesser degree of elves, who were born under the stars before the sun rose and tend to be associated with starlight and moonlight rather than full day (which belongs to Men).

• The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: The Vampire James Harris can barely venture out in the day and is visibly sickened when he does so.
• Sunshine: Vampires in this setting are harmed by light. The degree of vulnerability is proportionate to the amount of evil they have done: Constantine (the closest thing to a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire we see) can handle anything but direct sunlight, at least for a while, while Beauregard (old, powerful, and particularly depraved even for a vampire) can never go outside or even speak words related to light.
• In the Towers Trilogy, night walkers are zombie-like creatures which are pained by daylight. They bury themselves underground during the day, and emerge to stalk the streets at night.
• Vampire Hunter D: Sunlight isn't immediately fatal to vampires. Rather, exposure to more than a few seconds of direct sunlight causes them to catch fire, burning painfully so long as they are exposed. Heroic Willpower is invoked if a vampire stays in sunlight to do something important, as is a vampiric Healing Factor if they make it back to shade. However, only the High Nobility are capable of even trying this. Most vampires are entirely comatose during the day, even if they remain underground.
• In The Warded Man series, magic arises from the planet's core and is destroyed by sunlight. Demons burn in sunlight (and the most powerful ones can't even tolerate moonlight, only rising on the three nights of the new moon), and humans Invested by magic lose it when Sun touches them.
  • Arlen Bales (the titular Warded Man) is the one exception to this. Eating demonflesh has altered his body, allowing him to hold magic within himself even by day. Later on, his wife Renna acquires the same ability in the same way.
• The Warhammer 40,000 background book Xenology features an alien species known as the Umbra, which appear as black spheres that can control shadows and give them physical form, usually in the form of bladed limbs they use for offense. They don't like bright light, but using it against them is risky as light generates more shadows they can use to attack you. An inquisitor kills one by placing it in a room with bright lights on all sides so that no shadows will be generated.

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