When thinking in more depth about the story of Pinocchio I realized that it is absolutely a story about loneliness. What bigger expression of loneliness can there be than to ascribe consciousness to inanimate objects and pretend they are your family? Edward Carey beautifully plays off from this classic fairy tale by writing from the perspective of Geppetto during the period when he became trapped in the belly of a whale after embarking out onto the ocean to try to find his lost puppet son. He describes a ship that the whale also swallowed and how this becomes his home with a limited supply box of candles and hard tack to sustain him. Interspersed with Gepetto's text are illustrations of the pictures and figures he newly creates within the prison of this marine mammal. What emerges is the most touching and creative portrait of a solitary individual desperately trying to fashion some companionship for himself as he contemplates the meaning of his life.
There's a sweet playfulness to Geppetto's character. He befriends a tiny crab in his beard who he calls Olivia and when he anticipates that he might have some company he fashions dried sea stuff into a toupee. This reinforces how he is caught in a childlike state where he believes a doll he created came to life. Not only that, but he and Pinocchio developed a multi-layered relationship filled with disagreements, fights and reconciliations. It's an expression of loneliness but one which is filtered through his creative artistry. Geppetto states “I am – despite my father's deepest wishes – a carpenter. My art is bolder than I. It send messages of me out into the world. When I come to wood and we work together, things come out of me that I should never have thought possible.” He persists with his craft despite discouragement from his father who neglected and oppressed him. Geppetto movingly describes how he never received the nurturing he needed and how he was unlucky in love with a series of women. He became a figure of ridicule and scorn in his community after his family's business collapsed. So he was essentially on his own.
The state of Geppetto's current situation reinforces the melancholy state of his existential absolute aloneness. Here he is a being trapped inside a much larger being that has no awareness of his presence (except when Geppetto tries to dig his way out of the whale.) It's in some ways worse than being a small dot in a cold universe because his circumscribed universe is a living, breathing animal. This combined with Geppetto's recollections and reflections produces a touching meditation on what it means to be totally on your own. It's also a powerful depiction of ageing and how “Old age is a single room.” In additional to the physical, financial and societal pressures that come from getting older we also essentially become trapped in ourselves and our memories. In the case of Geppetto, there's an additional anxious tension to the story and the narrative becomes increasingly hallucinatory as Geppetto's situation becomes more desperate and the candles begin to run out. I strongly connected with this artfully rendered short, impactful and haunting novel.
