The past few weeks have been challenging for many. I have had entire classes devoted to discussing the election and even had a class completely canceled due to the need to “process” the results. Admittedly, there has been a lot to process. For some, it was stressful; for some, it was scary, and for others, it was very exciting. But what these feelings reminded me of was what I was reading around the time the last election occurred, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Before I can summarize, I want to make it clear just how much emotional weight this book carries. This was my COVID-19 book, and despite its associations, I just keep returning to it, time and time again, for its themes and what it makes me feel about the world and myself.
Piranesi is a story about a man, Piranesi, and how he lives in a complex structure, which he refers to as the “House.” The House is an opulent, large, and abandoned structure filled with statues from times long gone, and as we see through Piranesi’s vivid documentation, completely inescapable. The “twist” of the story, if you can call it that, is that Piranesi was not born in the structure but rather was trapped there by a man who was truly evil. A man who abused and manipulated him until he went insane and was using him to gain information about the House to potentially learn a great and secret knowledge. I say “twist” because it is greatly implied from the very beginning that Piranesi is not a reliable narrator, and all of a reader’s instincts distrust those around him and the place in which he is trapped. You find yourself rooting for him, fearing for him, caring about what he cares for, feeling his loneliness and his own insanity leaking into your interpretation of his world. I wish not to say how or why or even what his real name was prior to entrapment, but Piranesi escapes the house and comes back to the real world, and the epilogue concerns him trying to bridge the identities between who he was, who he became, and what he is to become.
I think it is exceedingly clear from that description why this was my perfect book for 2020. Susanna Clarke is undoubtedly my favorite author, and she captures everything fantastical so beautifully and clearly. I am reaching for Piranesi once again because I feel lost and confused. I feel misled, like the world is unclear. It is a beautiful type of escapism to go where those feelings are made concrete. Our ability to empathize with heroic characters, to rejoice when they overcome their adversity and face those that imprison them and free themselves, is cathartic. I believe that the world cannot stop its wheels just because we are scared and hurting. All we can do is pick ourselves up and try again, reinvent ourselves until we can push forward, bend and not break, and try our very best to find happiness where we can.
