Plotted: A Literary Atlas
Page 3
romantic inclinations. As a result, the various
families and estates are connected in deep and
thoroughgoing ways, even those that might
like to think of themselves as independent and
above the fray.If you reside in the community,
then you are a part of the community.You can
escape it to the same extent that you can escape
money in the modern world: at is to say,
you can’t.
Elizabeth Bennet’smother, Mrs. Bennet, is
portrayed as something of a fool; but she is very
wise in perceiving that, despite this communi
-
ty’sapparent solidity,there is still some room
for mobility, and that the way up is, almost ex
-
clusively,through family connections. e goal
of the game is marriage, but the rules of the
game are the rules of social etiquette. One can
-
not make mistakes; one cannot marry poorly.
is map shows Mrs. Bennet’sworld —
which is also, of course, Elizabeth’s. She might
draw it dierently if given the chance, but the
connections and the ruptures, the chasms and
the cracks, are never a subject of much dispute.
Most people here know where (and how) they
stand. Elizabeth winds up with both a good
marriage
and
a good husband — something
that is by no means guaranteed — but the last
line of the book is dedicated not to their lovefor
one another, but rather to their mutual lovefor
the Gardiners, the people who “had been the
means of uniting them.” Marriage may seem to
be the be-all and end-all, but good luck plot
-
ting a marriage alone. No, it takes a village.
•
41.
A
Christmas Carol
is so essential to our
modern idea of Christmas that it’snow
often hard to spot. But wherever you look,
there it is. If you’veever cried during a Christ
-
mas movie (or Christmas special, or stop-
motion animation, or advertisement), then
you’vebeen moved byEbenezer Scrooge.
It’sa
Wonderful Life
, for instance, chose to split the
character of Scrooge up into a hero (George
Bailey) and a villain (Mr. Potter), but also man
-
aged to incorporate the original story’sparallel
universe idea.
Bad Santa
,
Elf
, and
Scrooged
, for
their part, simply transformed the Scrooge char
-
acter into dierent forms (a thief,a workaholic,
and Bill Murray,respectively). Even
Die Hard
is, at its core, a redemption story,with Bruce
Willis in the role of the jaded, single-minded
anti-hero. And
Love Actually
can’tresist the im
-
pulse to bring all of its characters back into line
with their better selves by the end.
e impact and inuence of
A Christmas
Carol
isn’t just due to the fact that it has such
an archetypal redemption story; it’salso ow
-
ing to the fact that Dickens — no stranger to
tomes — managed to pack so much into such
a small space. e rst edition of the book was
only seventy-eight pages long, but Dickens was
somehow able to include a ghost story,time
travel, comedic scenes, a romance, a party,a
roast goose, and, of course (the Dickens staple),
a sickly, suering child.
Like traditional Christmas carols, the book
is broken up into ve separate staves, show
-
ing Scrooge’sprogress from his meeting with
Marley to Christmases past, present, future,
and present again. at’sa lot to cover, and yet
nothing feels rushed. If anything, it feels like
Scrooge’s redemption comes just in time.
•
Ebenezer Scrooge:
TimeTraveler
From
A Christmas Carol
By Charles Dickens
1843
44.
Ebenezer Scrooge
Bob Cratchit
Cousin Fred
e Charitable Gentlemen
Marley’s Ghost
Ebenezer Scrooge
e Ghost of Christmas Past
Fan
Fezziwig
Belle
Ebenezer Scrooge
e Ghost of Christmas Present
Cousin Fred
Bob Cratchit
Tiny Tim
Ebenezer Scrooge
e Ghost of Christmas Future
Bob Cratchit
Ebenezer Scrooge
e Charitable Gentleman
Cousin Fred
Bob Cratchit
G
rowing up,Frederick Douglass was pro-
foundly unfortunate in almost everyre
-
spect — shipped from place to place like cargo
(the dates included here showjust how brutal
and dehumanizing this must have been for
anyone, let alone a child), and deprived of not
just freedom but also of knowledge: knowledge
of his father, of the date of his birth, and of
the next household he was being sent to. But
Douglass
was
fortunate enough to learn how to
read and write. And over time, he managed to
leverage that knowledge into freedom, respect,
and eventually a form of real political power.
Douglass managed to nd a way out and up
(very quickly,too; he wrote his
Narrative
at the
age of just twenty-seven), but he reminds us not
to indulge too much in rejoicing over this fact.
Millions of slaves never escaped, never gained
such authority,and remain but poorly remem
-
bered. Douglass’sbook is miraculous (and wise,
and sad) for all of these reasons, but it’salso
more than just a book. It was intended as a
piece of political testimony as well as a life story.
is larger purpose is evident throughout, but
especially at the moment when Mr. Auld repri
-
manded his wife for teaching Douglass to read
on the grounds that literacy would “forever un
-
t him to be a slave. Hewould at once become
unmanageable, and of no value to his master.”
With these words, Auld expressed a chal
-
lenge to Frederick Douglass, and in his
Narrative
Douglass takes him up on that challenge. He
aims to induce empathy in people who seem to
have steeled themselves against that instinct and
to prove what is to them unproveable: that hu
-
man beings ought not to be bought and sold. It
sounds like a modest ambition. But upon publi
-
cation, in resistance to that implication, people
immediately doubted that Douglass ha
d written
his autobiography.ey felt that a black man
was unsuited for such a feat (as Auld’sown words
suggested they might). is doubt, this central
denigration, is still cause for concern today.
Douglass hearda similar challenge to Auld’s
when he learned the word “abolition.” He
worked to make that word a reality,and his
book remains a working text in confronting so
-
cial injustice and the mechanisms of oppression.
And thus the book extends beyond itself into
Douglass’s life and inuence. ese two maps
plot the journey contained in Douglass’s
Narra
-
tive
, and then
show the progress of his life more
broadly.ey show a life lived in almost per
-
petual exile (a sort of diaspora of freed African
Americans) and in support of a profoundly just
cause. ey also contain a geography that is in
many ways quite familiar. e rural, agricultural
look of the Eastern Seaboardof the s does
not blind us to the familiar American landscape.
is really happened here — that point is worth
remembering.
•
Up from Slavery
From
Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
By Frederick Douglass
1845
51.
ThePequod
and Its Quarry
From
Moby Dick; or, The Whale
By Herman Melville
1851
M
oby Dick
is almost beyond interpretation
at this point. e work itself is oceanic,
comically large in scope and ambition; and al
-
though it has been rendered into poetry,lm,
music, visual art, and more, none of these ad
-
aptations have come close to settling the ques
-
tion of the book’sultimate meaning (which, in
this way,can be seen as the reading public’sown
white whale). And as a result, in trying to map
this great work, we’veset aside Nantucket and
the sprawling seas and focused instead on the
two main combatants: the whaling ship and the
whale. is takes us out of space and time and
places us instead inside the
things
of the novel.
Because metaphor is everywherein
Moby Dick
,
but metaphor is contained within the stu that
surrounds us (or did, in mid-nineteenth centu
-
ry America): in boats, the sea, industry, and oil.
People tend to talk about animate and in
-
animate things as though the dividing line
between them is quite clear, but in Melville’s
universe “being”is a porous state. e Pequod
may lack a heart, but it comes alive at sea. It
also quickly reveals itself to be at odds with the
sea over which it travels. After all, the ship is a
place where the sea’smost inscrutable and glori
-
ous creatures — its whales — are denatured and
transformed into oil.
e Pequod, in fact, is most alive when it
is most dominant over the environment that
surrounds it. After a whale has been taken,
every man aboardnds his role. e ship rests
condently upon the waves, and the whale is
hoisted up, butchered, harvested, and discard
-
ed. It takes some time for the whale’s blubber
to be converted into valuable oil, but from the
moment that the whale is brought on board the
ship, it has ceased to be a whale and become
instead a commodity. e living ship thus ex
-
tracts the life from the living seas. Itseems fair
to say that one of the many concerns of
Moby
Dick
is the question of being, of soul, of spirit.
Over the years, throughout its many hunts and
harvests, the Pequod has become less and less
ship and more and more whale. It is composed
of whalebone and ivory as well as wood. And
it tends, inevitably (and increasingly,as the
novel progresses), back toward the sea. e
ship
is
the world (as a seaman seems to imply
in the chapter “e Ship”), but of course, the
ship is also, at times, no more than a speck on
the horizon, a vanishing thing. It is all a matter
of perspective. And sometimes a ship is just a
ship. Butwhen a ship has the power to turn
the Leviathan into the stu that lights our
lamps (or did), then it’shard not to see some
-
thing miraculous even in its smallest part. As
for the whale, well, it’simportant to see where
human knowledge stops. Toname is not to
know. Melville may well break down the ship
and the whale for our benet, but in the end
we’re all confronting an implacable, immutable
truth. We cannot know this whale. Inthis re
-
spect, the story never ends.
•
57.
W
hen Emily Dickinson’spoem was rst
published in , it was on account of
her sister-in-law. Dickinson did not seek pub
-
lication herself (or provide a title for the work,
which was then called “e Snake”), but that’s
not to say she didn’tappreciate the ostensible
favor. Dickinson was, however, displeased at
the edits that were made to her already n
-
ished product. e removal of a question mark
(after the question, “did you not?”) might
not rattle the average Joe,but for Dickinson,
every word and every punctuation mark was
vital and considered.
“ANarrow Fellow in the Grass” is as vivid
and sensual a poem as you are ever likely to nd,
but its central topic — the snake itself — is un
-
stated and only ever uncertainly seen. And yet,
there it is: always mobile, always shifting, but
always there. Tofollow it is to followevidence,
not proof. And asa result of this ambiguity,our
senses remain heightened and our minds alert.
e poem calls to mind the snake (the meta
-
phor as well as the animal) in all its aspects be
-
cause it does not insist on any single aspect in
particular. e question mark remains.
When we take a photograph, we often de
-
scribe the act as “capturing a moment,” but that
phrase fails to express the fact that our “mo
-
ments”in the present extend back into the past
as well — sometimes even taking us beyond
our human existence to the realm of instinct,
to a knowledge that is shared and unshakeable.
is poem captures its own moment in a much
; more inclusive and comprehensive fashion. It
is a moment that is unied neither in space nor
in time; but its message is coherent, and its in
-
sight is acute. Wehear the rumor of danger,
feel the rustle of the grass, plunge instinctively
into our shared, secret knowledge, and then are
left trembling. In aninstant we move from a
jangle of sensory input to “zero at the bone.”
We never travel anywhere; we remain where we
are. We are rooted to our knowledge, which is
as instantaneous as it is deep.
Emily Dickinson has a reputation as a mor
-
bid, isolated poet. But her words bring us to
life with the force of an electric shock, and the
result plunges us into bright colors and deep
feeling. But thereis also darkness here. e
thing that we seek, the mystery of the poem,
the unnamed subject itself, is important to
remember. It is like a midnight knock at the
door. It comes from silence, ends in silence,
and rips us from our slumber. Weare awake
now, even if we can’tquite grasp what it was
that woke us.
(Also, for fans of
e Mighty Boosh
, it’shard
not to wonder what Emily Dickinson might
have done with the character of Bob Fossil, the
zookeeper who calls the zoo’ssnake “the windy
man,” or, alternatively, “the long mover.” But
that’s a question for another day.)
•
RouteZero
From “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”
By Emily Dickinson
ca. 1865
63.
F
ew works of ction are as geographically ori
-
ented as
Around the World in Eighty Days
.
What’sinteresting about the book, however, isn’t
the actual geography involved — indeed, the
cities and countries involved in Phileas Fogg’s
travels are still quite recognizable to us now,
almost years later — but rather the way
that Verne forced Victorian readers to reimagine
what this geography meant. He took a world
that still seemed enormous — with plains that
stretched for days and seas that took months to