WS 2010/2011

Fabian Schmidt

HS Recent US-American Novels

Prof. Dr. Antje Kley

Key Facts – Richard Powers' Plowing the Dark (2000)

Full title: Plowing the Dark

author: Richard Powers

type of work: Novel

genre: Science Fiction

First published: 2000

Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux

narrative structure: Plowing the Dark has two different narrative strings with different kinds of
narrators. One is mostly concerned with the character of Adie Klarpol and narrated by a third-
person heterodiegetic narrator. It is narrated in the past tense. The other plot deals with the character
of Taimur Martin and is told in “you”-form, seemingly adressing the reader and keeping the balance
between personal, first-person narrator and more distant third-person narrator.

Setting (time): The time of the narrative reaches from 1986 to the early 90's, in particular the
beginning of the Gulf War. Both narrative strings contain flashbacks to what happened to the
characters before the start of the narrative.

Setting (place): The narrative switches between Puget Sound, Washington, where Adie Klarpol
works on the CAVERN virtual reality project, and Beirut, Lebanon, where Taimur Martin is held
captive.

Protagonists: The two main characters of the novel are Adie Klarpol, an artist who turned away
from art because of its commercialization, and Taimur Martin, an American who, trying to escape
from a failed relationship, takes a job as an English teacher in Beirut, but is soon afterwards
kidnapped by terrorists.

Major conflict: The major conflict in the novel is the relation between fiction and reality. Adie
Klarpol tries creating an artificial world through art, but has to find out that eventually, her doings
in the virtual world have consequences in the real world as well, because similar technology she's
using is used by the military in the Gulf War. Taimur Martin creates his own, artificial world in his
head in order to escape from the dull, mindless reality in captivity.

Climax: Eventually, both narratives seemingly connect when Adie sees a figure in the virtual
representation of the Hagia Sophia she created. But the figure is “something we [Klarpol and
colleagues] did not make”, something that does not belong into this virtual world. At the same time,
Taimur Martin imagines himself being in a mosque, looking up and seeing a female, angel-like
figure drop towards him from the ceiling. Yet last certainty whether the two virtual domains of Adie
Klarpol and Taimur Martin actually connected is missing.

Falling action: After the incident in the virtual Hagia Sofia, Adie Klarpol decides to take a timeout
and leaves to an unknown location. Taimur Martin is finally released and returns back to America,
where he learns that he has a little daughter.
Themes: the potential of art and virtual reality to influence the real world

leitmotifs: Seeing as our way of perceiving (virtual) reality, bees as a recurrent motif in the virtual
reality of the cavern as well as the real world.