Told with high-contrast black-and-white art with bold linework, the book's protagonist is a little man who leaps from the imagination of his sleeping creator.

The little man repeatedly tries to find his way to the sun, climbing towers, trees, and a staircase of clouds before his success sends him plummeting back to earth—and his creator.

A young Lynd Ward read a copy of The Sun while studying wood engraving in Germany, and the book was an influence of the American artist making wordless novels of his own, beginning in 1929 with Gods' Man.

Crowds of people try to divert him with sex and alcohol, but the little man persists in climbing trees, chimneys, church steeples, masts, and cranes.

[2] American artist Lynd Ward read a copy of The Sun in its German edition while studying wood engraving in Germany in the late 1920s.