should always be visible.
e other outlier is the second spread of Frederick Douglass’s
Narrative
.
As the only autobiography in
Plotted
(and only work of nonction, in fact),
it gave rise to a map that owed more to reality but which also diverted sub
-
stantially from its source. Frederick Douglass was such a monumental gure
that we thought it would further illustrate his context in historyto show some
highlights from his life after his narrative as well. His book was the story of his
life, after all, and his life went o in several new directions after the
Narrative
was published. Ittherefore seemed important to show Douglass’slife as well as
his life story as it was contained within his original book.
12.
If this project reveals anything to you about me, it should be that I am
rmly in the camp that values the journey over the destination. (Itshould
also be said that I am an unrepentant spoiler of plots — so buyer beware.) I
think these maps tend to be best viewed by someone who has actually read the
books, but that may be because that’s the only way I see them. Still, my hope
is that they can also entice people who haven’tread these books into pick
-
ing them up. Short of that, I think the maps can serve as visual placeholders
for people who haven’tyet been introduced to these books. When
Watership
Down
is mentioned, you’ll know that it’sabout rabbits in the English country-
side, and not about a ship lost at sea. In that way I hope to place some
images in your contextual framework, for both the books you’veread and the
ones you haven’t.
is introduction notwithstanding, I tried not to overthink these maps
as
maps
before I began sketching them. I tried to remain as true as possible
to the works while also oering something that felt new — or at least excit
-
ing enough to try.e fact that we had to leave so much out in the transi
-
tion from words to images was liberating, and I hopethe end result will have
something to oer to casual readers and devoted bookworms alike. And for
readers who may be too young for some of the books in question (as I am too
young for “e Lottery” — as everyone is), I hope the maps will serve as an
invitation. Like most readers, I knowwhat it is to be seduced by a cover; and
like any number of great book covers, the
Plotted
maps are intended to be
simultaneously literal and metaphorical. One way or the other, they seek to
draw you in.
One last thing about maps. ere’sno escaping the fact that maps today
are used primarily as a means for locating ourselves and our destinations. But
those are the kinds of maps that we also discard upon arrival. ese maps are
dierent, I hope. ese are maps for people who seek to travel beyond the lives
and places that they already know(or think they know). e goal hereisn’t
to become found, but only to become more lost.
Like a poorly informed but over-condent urbanite, I seek to help you get
more lost.
13.
“
Thewriter
is anexplorer.
Every step
is an advance
into new land.
”
— RALPH WALDO EMERSON
TheVoyage
of Odysseus
From the
Odyssey
By Homer
ca. 800
bce
T
here’sno place like home. You can’tgo
home again. Home is where the heart is
— and home is also, obviously,a very meta
-
phorical concept. at’sas true now as it was
in ancient Greece, when Homer was compos
-
ing his epic poetry.Odysseus is a character
who is born at odds with domestic life. Homer
describes him in the opening lines as “the
wanderer,”and that term is both a fate and a
calling. His cunning allows him to seek cre
-
ative solutions to the unique problems that he
faces (threatened by six-headed monsters! held
captive by a Cyclops! seduced by a witch!),
but it also drives him from one adventure to
the next. Odysseus’s“home,” therefore, is
just as much the wider Mediterranean as it
is the island of Ithaca. Reunion is in Ithaca,
that much is true; but Odysseus is at home
wherever he goes.
is map — containing spirits below
ground, gods above, and monsters in between
— shows Odysseus’sworld as a place that
is both recognizable and yet deeply foreign.
e landscape remains much the same; these
places often truly existed; and yet, this world
blends realistic elements with fantasy in a way
that gives us pause. Homer’swork pushes be
-
yond the world as most people knew it then,
and like many early world maps it seems that
the human imagination has picked up where
human knowledge left o. Distant seas become
home to serpents, and foreign lands give rise
to monstrous new species of animals. is is
a map of the world as it might be, rather than
the world as it is. And it’sexciting to return to
a time when so much was still unknown, when
the margins of our maps were so spacious.
But the
Odyssey
hasn’tmanaged to remain
vital simply because of its monstrous imagin
-
ings (although that didn’thurt). It’salso a very
human drama: a lovestory,a tale of familial
reconciliation, a revenge mission, and, of
course, an epic journey. We get the sense that
we are evading peril and courting adventure
along with Odysseus. ere aren’t many readers
who can still read the
Odyssey
in its original lan
-
guage or hear its original poetry,but everyone
— children and adults alike — can still revel
in this journey through the years and across
the seas towarda xed goal: toward Penelope,
Telemachus, Argos, and home.
e poem ends when Odysseus takes his
rightful place as husband and father (and dog
owner) back at home. And it’simportant that it
ends there. Because Odysseusat rest is Odysseus
no longer. But the book is immortal because,
for us readers at least, Odysseus is always on
the move.
•
17.
Elsinore
From
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
By William Shakespeare
1603
H
amlet
is one of the great masterpieces of
world literature, but it
is also a play that
has been done to death. Even before we read
it, we know its characters (Hamlet, Ophelia,
e Ghost),
use its words and phrases (“slings
and arrows,” “what dreams may come”), and
recite its most famous lines (“to be or not to
be,” “to thine own self be true,” and on and
on). e degree to which the play has perme
-
ated into our culture speaks to its power, and
the fact that we can still enjoy it is a testament
to the play’s depth — but depth and power
aren’talways enough to keep the play feeling
fresh. Itcan often feel like we’veseen the play a
thousand times before we’ve seen it once.
Luckily for us, Shakespeare’splay is built
out of words, and these images herecannot be.
Weare forced to take out what is, in a way,
the play’sbeating heart, but the result oers a
fresh perspective on some things that wemight
normally miss — for instance, the way the
play uses an increase in pace to ratchet up the
drama, and its ability to light up what we
might otherwise dimly imagine (a castle in
sixteenth-century Denmark). It also reminds
us that Shakespeare’splays are pretty simple
things, really.ey don’trequire much in the
way of special eects, and with a little imagina
-
tion and ingenuity all of the action can t upon
a single stage and end in around three hours.
But there is no getting to the bottom of
Hamlet
because, well, there is no getting to the bottom
of Hamlet. (“What a piece of work is man!”)
Madness — Hamlet’smadness in particular
— is central to the play’sdeep meditation on
the theme of doubt. All good plays have their
share of ambiguity, but
Hamlet
is fairly unique
in making that essential facet of drama the sub
-
ject of the work. ere is always an argument
to be made for or against any given interpreta
-
tion (to the point that the wisdom of the fool
Polonius — “tothine own self be true,” — is
now printed on T-shirts and given as advice),
but the two-sidedness of
Hamlet is so fun
-
damental as to be his primary characteristic.
Hamlet is both deeply sane and insane, but in
these maps we also get a chance to see the ex
-
tent to which his madness infects the rest of the
castle. He spreads like a virus, and in the end
he is everywhere. (Death is everywhere as well.)
His is a consuming madness.
Shakespeare’splay is vivid enough on the
page. ese maps are an attempt to return
some luster to certain aspects of the play that
are hard to see from our current distance; but
they can never do justice to the play’svitality,
which lies entirely within its words. It’shard
to believe, but there is no castle. ere is no
Hamlet. ere is no tragedy here. It’sall make-
believe. But then again, Hamlet says as much
himself. Ina way,he restores order to the
world when he commits himself to nothing
-
ness, to “the undiscovered country.”And yet
the irony is that through his death he achieves
a real immortality.He haunts us as his father
haunted him.
•
21.
No Man Is an Island
From
Robinson Crusoe
By Daniel Defoe
1719
R
obinson Crusoe
is everywhere. It’sthe in
-
spiration behind space-age art lms (
2001:
A Space Odyssey
), young-adult dystopian hits
(
Lord of the Flies
),
reality TVshows (
Survivor
),
radio programs (“Desert Island Discs”), prime-
time dramas (
Lost
),
and countless other adap
-
tations and reimaginings (
Robinson Crusoe on
Mars
,
Cast Away
,
e Swiss Family Robinson
,
et cetera). It’sas relevant at literarysymposia as
it is at cocktail parties — and it oers some great
tips in case you do ever nd yourself stranded in
nature. It’san enduring classic and an authentic,
global phenomenon; and in some ways, it could
hardly have come from a less likely source.
Daniel Defoe was a Puritan — and although
Puritans are known for manythings, thrilling
entertainments are not among them. Defoe was
fortunate even to be alive by the time he wrote
Robinson Crusoe
. When Defoe had turned ten
years old, he’dalready survived three incred
-
ible disasters: the Great Plague of London, the
Great Fire of London, and the Dutch raid on
the Medway. (He also spent time in the notori
-
ous Newgate Prison as an adult.) But survive he
did, and before long he was thriving as an au
-
thor of essays, poems, political tracts, religious
pamphlets, reportage, satires, conduct manuals,
and, of course, novels.
Robinson Crusoe
is often cited as the rst
English novel, and it remains remarkable for its
realism; yet despite that,
Crusoe
is rooted in an
enduring fantasy.Desert islands are the stu of
childhood dreams, and seen vaguely from a great
distance, it’s easy to understand the enduring
appeal of this vision: a pacic, pristine envi
-
ronment where one can tend to one’sgarden
and proceed by one’sown lights. But when
that dream becomes a reality and self-reliance
becomes a necessity for survival (Crusoe even
-
tually becomes his own accountant, his own
doctor, his own priest), the dream loses much
of its luster. e island that Crusoe actually
nds himself on is an island lled with fears
and wild imaginings: beasts, cannibals, dark
-
ness, loneliness, and death. Ittruly is the Island
of Despair.
is despair is only vanquished through
Crusoe’s improved knowledge — knowledge
of the island, of the tactics of survival, and
of himself. ese maps reect the manner
in which the landscape changes according to
Crusoe’s own works and words (the power to
name things is a real power, after all). As a re
-
sult, they wind up revealing how similar the
paradise that Crusoe creates is to the biblical
paradise of Eden, how it even also resembles,
in broad outlines, the political structures of
Defoe’stime (with Crusoe aspiring to the
status “king”). But this is a story that is much
more concerned with questions of howthan it
is with questions of why, a
nd it will always be
able to wriggle out of rm interpretations. It
is a book that could hardly be morelimited in
scope (one man, one island, and one problem
at a time), but it is endlessly revealing. No man
is an island, but on his little island, Robinson
Crusoe managed to recreate his world.
•
33.
TheCourse
of TrueLove
From
Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen
1813
A
ll of the books and stories included in
this collection have a share of timeless
-
ness. But situated herebetween
Robinson
Crusoe
() and
A Christmas Carol
(),
Pride and Prejudice
() seems almost shock
-
ingly contemporary.is is partly owing to
the fact that so many lms still take place in
Victorian and Regency-era England (so we’re
used to living in this world, abiding by these
customs, speaking in these tones); but it’s the
book’sarchitecture — its form as a suspenseful
love story— that makes it so eternally young.
is is a story that always holds us in suspense,
long after we know how it is going to end.
But the suspense of Austen’sbook is two-
fold. We care about what happens to Elizabeth
not just because we care about Elizabeth, but
also because we care about the entireBennet
family — and theirs is a house that does not
stand upon a very rm foundation. We know
about their imperiled estate almost as soon
as we meet them. Wealth is status and status
is integral to romance, as the book’sfamous
opening line makes clear. And this is not just
metaphor. Forso long as they are romantically
engaged, the characters within the novel are
always navigating status as they pursue their
Plotted: A Literary Atlas Page 2