Maddy Kirkwood
July 21st, 2022
Essay #4 – Alexandria
Novel and Spirituality
Her feet have gone numb under the dark, icy water; Sfia’s body shivered with fear as she peered around the group of women encircling her. Her mother rested her traveled hands on her heart as Sfia floated quietly, gazing up at the insidious clouds ripping through the blueness above; Sfia allowed her anxiety to overtake her body and admitted her distress to her mother, who could sense her daughter’s unease but was pleased with it. Paul Kingsnorth’s Alexandria follows a group of survivors, including Sfia and he mother, in a post-apocalyptic world supposedly set a thousand years in the future, as they grapple with constant persuasion to join the omnipresent computerized society of Alexandria; therefore, Alexandria can be interpreted as a means to assess overly landscape scenarios in our own lives. When the reader compares how the characters in the novel address multidimensional communication with the beings from Alexandria, it helps readers to recognize their relationships with the natural world and time and human-created cultures and time, such as the online world of Alexandria.
A part of the function of the overlay landscape technique is that there is an element in which the reader may not be sure which characters represent “good” or “bad,” and this certainly applied to Alexandria. Moreover, this storytelling structure can often be found in many religions and is used as a tool to help one find themselves in a story. This can help deepen one’s sense of the nature of things and the nature of how the world works. When thinking about the world of Alexandria, one can attribute many of its qualities to artificial intelligence, such as Siri or Alexa, which also watches and hears us in our 21st-century lives. This is a great example of an overlay landscape element in our modern lives. All we have to do is call out to our devices, and they respond, which means that they are always listening, which is not unlike as it observes the edg community. “I am thing from before Worlds makin I am thing from outside Way I bring truth from under ground” (48). This quote about Sir Pent shows us a potential biblical metaphor showing that there are elements to our world, and the world of Alexandria and the edg community, that have been there long before we have and are always listening and around us. Perhaps it is a force that has always existed, rather than the human-created elements like technology, there is something greater holding us all together, which could be interpreted as a form of relational identity, helping the reader to connect with a larger force in this world, one that is pure love and cannot be tempted by technology, which could be seen as a “modern sin.” Sir pent could be seen as an allegory for a serpent, meaning the devil in snake form that tempted Eve with the apple from the Tree of Life in the biblical tale of the origin of sin.
The snake slithers silently through the tall grass and up the nearby tree, reminding us that it is always listening, even when we are not aware. In Alexandria, there are a number of examples of overlay landscape; for example, the cantos spread throughout the novel, which adds an element of classical poetry that is a stark contrast with the narrations of the named characters. With this added overlay landscape layer to the reader’s reality, Kingsnorth is creating his own sense of world-building inside his novel. “Deep in holt is great World Tree At its roots Curlin’ windin Still, silent Breathin low: Old Sir Pent” (40). These cantos about Sir Pent allow the reader to be transported back to biblical times and to question whether or not Wayland could be seen as the serpent, or devil, equivalent in this novel. Sir Pent says, “Man Man Come to me For I bring gifts,” this tempting and taunting of the humans with gifts is similar to what Weyland does when he comes to their community as a cat to lure them to Alexandria. Once again, the reader is being guided to use their intuition to deduce who is amongst the good and who is amongst the bad in this story.
Kingsnorth made an interesting choice when he chose not to specify whether his characters are unified under marriage. However, the author makes it clear that there is not a large religious community on the Edg; therefore, the need for an official union under God and unification of a community may not be as important to this group of survivors. By applying this moral reading of the novel, the reader can evaluate their views on marriage and how our societies use hierarchies to categorize married and unmarried people. The cosmic symbolism of marriage in the novel is also entwined with the overlay landscape in the novel because when two worlds come together in an overlay landscape or in a marriage, it is actually two different senses of reality coming together, which makes you reflect on your own sense of reality here. Mother Earth and Father Sky can be interpreted as a Native American ideology and narrative that is certainly present in the edg community. The edg community is married to the holt and the fen in some ways. Additionally, Father goes out to Glastonbury to find the torr, which could be seen as him “hunting” for his truth, whereas mother keeps to the holt and gathers and assembles the edg community. They each have their roles and they are both important.
“Erth is great map of song like this, great Land scape of tone and musik. When humans forgot songs, when they sang their own over all others, one song for all places, that was when great dyin began. Always walkin, never listening, we are. Always going west” (263). This quote from Father towards the end of the novel gives the reader another excellent example of Kingsnorth encouraging his readers to remember to be still and listen to nature because when humans are in harmony with nature, they can work together symbiotically, and each can thrive on their own accord without exterminating the other. The tone of this passage is ominous and urgent. Kingsnorth subtly tells his audience that as an environmental activist, he can sense that we will send our civilization to an early grave to “the west” if we continue to exploit the Earth the way we are. An additional passage comes from the first pages of the novel from a Mohave poet, “I was still in the womb when I dreamed this singing. It was given me by the Ravens. Now I am a man but I have forgotten it. I dreamed it before I ever was born,” Kingsnorth is asking us to remember the songs in our hearts from before we were alive, to connect to our souls and spirits which have existed in this world long before our bodies have.
Kingsnorth asks his readers to examine their relationship with the natural world around them. The exploitation of the earth and its natural resources is an unfortunately common phenomenon that humans are aware of, yet many are not concerned with the detrimental effects humans are creating. Kingsnorth’s message to his audience through Alexandria is to trust their intuition and to remember to have balance in life. He believes that when humans can connect with their own inner voice and their intuitive abilities, they will know right from wrong and will be able to conclude that we cannot consume the way we do on this Earth anymore and that significant changes need to happen. Additionally, he begs his readers to live balanced lives. Without balance, there can be no harmony, and without harmony between the Earth and human beings, human beings will tear up the Earth and think they have won, but ultimately, humans will never win a battle against the ground that raised us when competing for livelihood. The Earth has been in our universe much longer than humans have. The reader is able to find truths being told by every character in Alexandria and is asked to decide for themselves what they agree and disagree with within these characters’ morals and actions. Kingsnorth is reminding his audience that in the end, Mother Earth will humble us all and take back what we took from her with force, just as his characters experienced the flooding of their home at the end of the novel. Kingsnorth’s messages follow the ideology of many dystopian novels, which is to challenge its readers to defy their views of the social and political atmospheres around them and to fight back against behaviors that do not align with their intuitive voice.