THE VOYAGE OF THE NARWHAL
By Andrea Barrett
Norton, 399 pages, $24.95
As readers of her National Book Award-winning story collection “Ship Fever” know, Andrea Barrett has long been fascinated by the ironies of the scientific endeavor, how the quest for a clarity of vision is often distorted by the complications of human passion. In her powerful new novel, “The Voyage of the Narwhal,” Barrett continues to examine, now on a grand scale, the myriad dangers of gathering knowledge of the world without at the same time deepening a knowledge of the self.
In May 1855, the Narwhal sets sail from Philadelphia in search of any sign of the lost arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin. Sharing this voyage are Zeke Voorhees, commander of the rescue party, and Erasmus Wells, the ship’s naturalist. Initially allies, these two men are embarking on separate personal journeys that will set them at odds with each other.
Erasmus hopes above all to write a naturalist’s account of this new voyage and thereby erase his disappointments from an earlier expedition exploring the Pacific. Middle-aged and burdened by self-doubt, Erasmus traces the vacillations of his life to the tales from Pliny’s “Natural History” that his father, a wealthy armchair explorer, read to him and his brothers. Peppered among accurate descriptions were often fantastic tales of oysters that gave birth to pearls conceived by the dew, and mouthless people near the Ganges River who lived off the odors they breathed. Erasmus has long wondered, “What would it mean . . . to grow up hearing stories in which truth and falsehood are mingled like the minerals in granite?”
As a young boy, Zeke had sometimes joined the ” `wonderful, fertile clutter’ ” of the neighboring Wells family and listened to the same tales of Pliny, enthralled not by their curious blend of truth and falsehood but by the promised romance of exploration. Now vibrant with youthful energy and engaged to Erasmus’ younger sister Lavinia, Zeke is less interested in his rescue mission than the possibility of discovering an open polar sea and the personal glow that would come to him from such a feat.
Once at sea, Zeke reveals a dangerous lack of humility in the face of the unknown. His willful decisions, often overriding those of the ship’s captain, lead to “a single long nightmare” of navigating through shifting waters filled with enormous icebergs. Once the Narwhal becomes trapped in ice, the crew must survive the arctic winter’s extraordinary cold and isolation.
This harsh setback secretly suits Zeke who, keeping counsel with no one, bends his efforts toward locating that fabled polar sea. He seeks out bands of wary Inuit, hoping to engage their assistance, always impervious to the irony that they have traveled for millenniums across any landscapes he might “discover.” The ship’s captain, reduced to despair and drink at the prospect of this enforced long winter, makes a paper tombstone with spaces for the names of not only those already dead but for the remaining crew members of the Narwhal. Zeke, however, is more affected by the deaths of his pet sledding dog and fox than by the loss of any crew members.
Though the explorers are soon enough reduced to searching caribou skins for the burrows of warble fly grubs–which they find ” `(f)resh-tasting, a little sweet’ “–they are also somehow able to bide their time by building, out of the surrounding ice, fanciful copies of a Greek temple, the Boston library and a Japanese garden. The startling juxtapositions of arctic travel could not be more poignant.
Spring and summer return, and still the ship remains locked in ice. As Zeke’s emotional isolation continues, Erasmus develops a warm friendship with the ship’s doctor, Jan Boerhaave, whose own imagination is quickened by the world’s natural wonders. When Boerhaave dies during an ill-advised journey to an Inuit settlement, Erasmus secretly blames Zeke for his death, yet he is torn by doubt over how to respond. Is Zeke only the misguided future brother-in-law he has vowed to protect, or a dangerous commander who must be challenged?
Erasmus’ dilemma is reflected in the arctic landscape surrounding him: “By now he’d long been familiar with the way the blank ice shifted perspective and perception–how what looked like a bear, far away, might turn out to be a hare nearby; how a nearby gentle hill might resolve into a distant, mighty range.” Zeke’s true identity, like this arctic ice, like Pliny’s tales, is too difficult for Erasmus to resolve, though he does refuse to accompany Zeke on one last quixotic exploratory trek.
In no way chastened by his accumulating failures, Zeke sets off alone across the ice, leaving Erasmus in charge. When Zeke doesn’t return by the promised date, no one among the expedition believes he could have survived. After long days of soul searching, Erasmus gives the order to leave the still ice-locked Narwhal rather than risk the uncertainties of another harsh arctic winter. Standing in the belly of the ship he is about to abandon, Erasmus pauses in despair: “Next to his head was the skin of the ship, a wall of wood; and beyond that waves, water, wind, creatures flying and swimming and breathing, the world spinning and stars whirling around the fixed pole to the north. Years from now, so much later, he would remember wanting to punch through that wall and dive into the waiting water.”
During the long and punishing overland journey home, Erasmus loses his toes to frostbite, resulting in a physical infirmity of balance that mirrors his inner doubts as the novel shifts, nearly at midpoint, from the arctic to Philadelphia. Yet Erasmus’ journey continues within him, still fraught with seemingly irresolvable moral ambiguities. His necessary inner accounting, which offers the possibility of personal redemption, comes to parallel the artistic and emotional growth of Alexandra Copeland who, employed as a companion to Lavinia, chaffs at the confines of her class and sex.
Barrett underlines what appears to be a change in the novel’s course when Alexandra’s sister, during a dinner party’s literary discussion, declares to her skeptical male companions: ” `You like tales of adventure, in which the hero truly explores that wide world. But the novel is about tyranny, really; the tyranny of family and circumstances, and how one survives when running away isn’t an option. Which it never is for women like us.’ “
Yet tyranny and survival have already ruled the first half of “The Voyage of the Narwhal,” as they will the second, and adventure will observe no boundary of geography or gender. Barrett quickly weaves an artful narrative web of a family dividing against itself, the usurpation of a home, an act of scientific barbarism, kidnapping and sorcery, as well as a love story. At the center of it all is Zeke’s miraculous return to Philadelphia with two Inuit in tow and his dreams of glory intact. Now his and Erasmus’ divergent moral paths must play themselves out.
Throughout “The Voyage of the Narwhal,” Barrett portrays magnificently the austere majesty of the arctic while conducting her own exploration of her characters’ inner landscapes and the intimate fit of scientific and personal passion. Building on the achievement of “Ship Fever,” she has created a meticulously researched historical novel that breathes with a contemporary urgency, an exhilarating adventure novel that is also a critique of adventure novels, and a genuine page-turner that long lingers in the mind.
