Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative

by Jane Alison

Is this book in our hands a prayer for gentler humanity, the book structured like two hands held out in supplication? Could the sixes that organize and run through this text be linked to Buddhism’s Six Realms of Existence or Six Perfections? Or, maybe an even farther-flung way of reading this: in a crucial early scene, Adam Ewing, being poisoned by a greedy doctor, protects and saves a Moriori named Autua who has stowed away in Adam’s cabin to escape the violence of his “master.” Five hundred pages later, when we return to poor Adam’s journal, we see that Autua has now saved him from poisoning. Human kindness repaid: awfully rare in the five hundred pages between. So with Autua’s return gift of kindness we have narrative balance and completion, and this act by Autua, who becomes a sort of angel or bowsprit steering the book, persuades Adam to devote his life to humanity. And here comes my most extravagant reading: look at the name “AUTUA.” Like the parts of the novel, the name’s letters form a palindrome or triangle (1 2 3 2 1). Midway, the sense of the name transforms, from “aut,” meaning self, to “tu,” meaning you. A shift from self-interest to empathy?

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