Plotted: A Literary Atlas Read online

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 dierently 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 dierent 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 inuence 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, suering 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 inuence. 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 aboardnds his role. e ship rests

  condently 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 benet, 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 unied 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