As before, please access this blog after you have read Chapter 16, for which it serves as a commentary…
Around my heart in eighty hours begins a period of narrative experimentation in the novel, and the next three chapters are linked both thematically and stylistically.
In this chapter we are now seeing things wholly from Marta’s POV. The narration switches to a first person stream of consciousness; not original I know, but it indicates that her alienation from the Mission, her lover, and her friends is now almost complete, and I felt that this could not be adequately expressed via my usual use of the privileged third person…
It’s important to bear in mind that Miss Fernandes is extremely self-centred and rather spoiled (as are all of the Children), and cannot be regarded as a wholly reliable narrator; something her closest friends try to gently point out to her.
The use of the poetry of William Blake is happenstance; nearly three years on from writing A Children’s Crusade, I cannot recall the precise circumstances, or the train of thought that led me to reference the Sick Rose, but I have a copy of Songs of Innocence and Experience, and this poem obviously made a profound impression on me. Initially, I couldn’t remember which of the Songs I was recalling, but when I turned to the text I realised which one it was, and how well it reflected Marta’s mood and circumstances!
It wasn’t a big stretch to imagine that the Children’s general education would include English Literature, and that they would study Blake as part of this. This could be termed ethnocentric, but I have already explained why the Mission education programmes manifest an Anglo-Saxon bias [1].
Anyway you have to go with what you know!
The lines that affect Marta the most (and which she references in her narration) are from The Clod and the Pebble, but she is defined by The Sick Rose. although, of course, she doesn’t know it!
We are introduced to another new nursemaid early in this chapter (although her character is not developed), and we also have another oblique reference to the true nature of the Nurses. The original plan had been to withhold this information for the whole of book one, but I think it’s safe to say that the cats out of the bag by this stage!
The source of Marta’s alienation is that she has made a great discovery, but is not believed. Partly this is because she was unable to record her observations and cannot provide objective proof; but her incipient paranoia leads her to believe that there is a conspiracy (orchestrated by Mission Artificial Intelligence), to exclude and marginalise her!
Spoiler alert! There is a conspiracy, but not the one she imagines!
The root cause of her paranoia lies with her profound insecurity; remember that it’s not long since she was being shunned by the other children, and her apparent self-confidence is paper thin!
Marta’s dissatisfaction is not confined to frustrations about her research work being blocked by the machinations of Nurse Gee; she is also unhappy with Jorge and his reluctance (or inability!) to progress their relationship… However, when this is suddenly (and unexpectedly) resolved, she finds it doesn’t really help, because all the other issues are still eating at her!
What infuriates our heroine most of all is the implication that she may be jumping to conclusions and reading far too much into her data, or (even worse) lying, by falsifying her results, in order to gain attention! In short, her objectivity and competence as a scientist is being called into question…
Meanwhile, she must put up with the triumphalism of the favoured children (Rai, Jorja and Han), who have made another important step forward in understanding the Alphanians, by divining how they communicate…
My revival of ‘steam radio’ as the Alphane medium of communication may have been an (unconscious) nod to the ‘steampunk’ genre!
Marta’s paranoia is not wholly irrational, because they are watching and listening; the Mission monitors the Children twenty seven hours a day, and has done for their whole lives! However our heroine (who is a smart cookie!), has started to develop a strategy to circumvent this!
Marta is still a scientist, and continues with her research work throughout all this; but she has started to believe that nobody cares whether she discovers anything or not!
Her ‘achievement’ in being the first (along with Jorge) of them to lose her virginity quickly palls; spoiled by by her realization that even her most private moments are being watched by the Mission, and that it is impossible to escape this surveillance…
This is what finally persuades her that she has to escape, and go off the grid…
I wanted a pop culture reference to go with all the heavy literature, and I thought that one of Jennifer Aniston’s films would fit the bill, having the same resonance for Marta as the romances and screwball comedies of the thirties and forties (i.e. Hollywood’s Golden Age) have for us…
The timescale imposed on the action is deliberate; I wanted the sense of the clock ticking down before Marta takes what she believes is an irrevocable action, and it also sets up the Jules Verne reference in the title nicely.
I could easily have called this chapter The Sick Rose, but that would have been too obvious, although I rather undercut this by quoting Blake’s poem in full…
The Sick Rose is, of course, a conceit that addresses the notion of tainted love, full of obvious and less obvious sexual metaphors. Marta’s love for Jorge is tainted by the knowledge that their moments of love and sexual joy can never truly be their own, not in the world of the Alpha Mission; but it goes further than this as she finds she has now fallen out of love with the very purpose that gives her life meaning, and even (in her lowest moments, with Science itself!
In these circumstances, it’s not too difficult to guess the identity of ‘the worm’ in this tale…
Note
[1] see Chapter 12, specifically the observations of Mr Bhatt