The List

“Nothing wasted, nothing lost. John Noa’s mantra, Benjamin’s mantra. If the day came that man ever needed language again, Ark would be ready.”

Letta marvels at Benjamin’s library, which has every word anyone knows. At this point, she believes that she and Benjamin are working to preserve words. Nothing is lost, because she and Benjamin are the stewards of words, and therefore, of the thoughts that those words can express. 

“There’s always truth in dreams. Don’t you know that? We have to learn what they mean, that’s all.”

Marlo describes his dream of being a hare to Letta. When she says it’s just a dream, he says that no dream is without significance. It is the job of the dreamer to draw the correct conclusions from the dream, not to dismiss them as mere accidents. Marlo interprets his instincts and dreams as clues that guide him. He does not resist his own feelings in favor of guidance from Noa’s doctrine.

“Children in Ark were taught the bare minimum when it came to reading. Enough to allow John Noa to communicate with them using the written word—but no more.”

Letta works with the children at school. Control of literacy is common in many authoritarian regimes. The fact that Noa only allows enough knowledge to let children read his words is one dangerous sign of a dictator. If they can only read his words, they cannot be reached by the writing of Noa’s enemies. It also limits their ability to ask questions about their reality.

“She knew, of course, that older people had good language, though they were forbidden to use it. She tried to imagine how he had been reared, in hiding obviously, surrounded by people who spoke whatever way they wanted to. She felt a twinge of envy. She loved Ark but hated List.”

Marlo has qualities and abilities that Letta desires, which surprises her, given that he is a Desecrator. She longs for language because she wants to be able to express herself. Even if she doesn’t believe in what Marlo stands for, she envies his freedom to shape his identity through language.

“She had always been taught that words were the root of evil. Before the Melting, people had used all the words there were, and it did nothing to save them. John Noa would say they talked themselves into the disasters that they created.”

Noa values action more than speech and equates language with evil. He believes that, if language was worth saving, it would have been used to craft such persuasive arguments that the Melting would have been prevented. Action is more useful when it comes to forcing change rather than coaxing it through persuasion.

“She found it hard to believe that the woman would have left John Noa to go live with the Desecrators because of something like music. Did people never understand that they had to make sacrifices for Ark?”

Letta is skeptical when Marlo says Leyla worked for Noa until he banned music. Letta seems unaware of her hypocrisy. She judges Leyla, and suspects Marlo of lying. However, she is acting counter to Noa’s wishes by harboring Marlo and dreaming of language beyond List. She does not seem to sacrifice her value of caring for those in need for Ark.

“Everything is a risk. Life is a risk. We have to be what we are. Our souls are not like the souls of a fox. Our hearts are not like the heart of a sparrow.”

Marlo says a new world without freedom is meaningless to him. He does not believe the risk he takes as a Creator is less than that of potentially causing a new disaster through dissent against Noa. He thinks that the structure of Ark runs counter to human nature.

“She found it hard to believe that people lived in these conditions. No water, no food except for what they could get for working in Ark. These were the people who had been too late, the unbelievers. Benjamin had told her about the hordes who had descended on Ark after the Melting, only to find the gates closed against them. Thousands had died.”

The conditions in Tintown horrify Letta, but she believes that this is the result of their faithlessness. Tintown does not make her glad that the faithless are being punished, but she is grateful that she is lucky enough to believe Noa’s teachings. She cannot yet conceive of a situation in which people would prefer the relative freedom of Tintown to the control of Ark.

“Benjamin had told her how artists had been revered when he was a boy but that they had become arrogant and led people astray. They were not tolerated in Ark, and even their work was banned. They had become a secret organization known as the Desecrators.”

Letta remembers the origins of the Desecrators. Musicians, painters, sculptors, writers, and all other artists are viewed as criminals and radicals under Noa’s law. The Desecrators allegedly work to defile Noa’s work, pervert his ideas, and to drag other people down to the level of their misery.

“There was such a chasm between the world they saw and the one John Noa had seen before the Melting. Could the two ever come together? There was no word on the list for hope or love.”

Letta’s perspective changes gradually. Now, after interacting with Marlo, and seeing more of Ark she doesn’t understand how the Desecrators can actually be an enemy. She thinks there must be a way to live together in peace. She doesn’t understand what Noa might know that the rest of them are missing but is still willing to place her faith in him.

“Hope looks to the future, does it not? We hope for things we don’t have now but wish to someday. And that is what makes humans greedy, Letta. We are the only beings on this planet that refuse to live in the present. We were always looking for something else.”

Noa reacts to Letta’s suggestion that they add the word “hope” to the new lists. He thinks Hope is dangerous because it ignores the reality of the moment. If people had paid more attention to the present, they would have been more aggressive about responding to global warming. Instead, they trusted in hope and words at the expense of action.

“She’d always thought of him as a stopgap, someone who would take care of her till the people she loved came back. Now she realized he was the person she loved, and he was the person who loved her, and she didn’t want to lose him.”

After finding Benjamin, Letta’s perspective about his role in her life changes. He has been a mentor and a father to her. Letta has taken him for granted as his apprentice, but now she resolves to save his life. They are each the only reason the other has someone to love. Benjamin’s example will help Letta chart the course for the remainder of her life. If she can emulate his example, she knows she will be on the right path.

“In the old days, before the Melting, no one would listen. No one. The politicians just talked and talked. They used words to keep the people in ignorance.”

Benjamin shared Noa’s disillusionment with empty speech prior to the Melting. The politicians used words to control what the people thought and to prevent them from wondering about their situation. Noa now controls the people with language, but by destroying it, which limits their ability to think and wonder, in a different way.

“There was lots of laughter as Letta walked on by, and she was struck by how her attitude had changed. Once, she would have seen this as proof of her community pulling together, one big happy family living lightly on the planet. Now she knew differently. This was how Noa exerted his control, pulling their strings, a menacing puppet master, hiding in the shadows. If only people knew what he was really like!”

After Benjamin’s death, Letta returns and witness the Changing of the Shoes. It is a festive occasion, but she knows the happiness is false because the people don’t understand what’s actually happening. Noa uses a sense of community to make people feel safe, while undermining them with his plan.

“Music comes in all colors, Letta, just as we do. Before I knew the word for Creators, I called us color-catchers, the musicians, the painters, the dancers. That’s what we try to do, catch the colors in our own hearts and share that with other people. Color-catchers. I think I still prefer that word…. One of my colors is sadness, my friend.”

Leyla explains why she played the sad song in the pump house. Leyla understands that art is an attempt to express something that is otherwise inexpressible. The notion of sound as a color is abstract, but it makes sense to Letta when Leyla explains it. Leyla does not shy away from the sadness that music can bring, but finds it an invaluable piece of the experience of art.

“Once ingested, Nicene destroys the left temporal lobe. After that, you can’t speak, can’t read, or write, can’t understand language. You are totally isolated from all other living things. And you can’t invent a new language, either.”

Salom gives Letta the history of Hans Nicene and his invention. This shows how well the scientists came to understand language and its relationship to the brain. Nicene is a tool to isolate people from one another, impair their ability to think, and strip the meaning from the words that enrich their lives and their relationships to one another. It imposes a sort of solitary confinement upon people who are not literally imprisoned.

“People should use words for function, not for nonsense!”

Letta tries to appeal to Noa’s sense of outrage over the superfluity of language as an artistic medium. Noa believes that language, when it is necessary, should serve only to communicate the most basic messages. Here, we see that in her use of language, Letta can appear to be Noa’s acolyte, but her words do not reflect her actual thoughts and feelings. Noa may be able to control language, but at a certain point, he cannot control what people do with that language, no matter how little of it there is to use.

“She had always seen herself as special in Ark. She was the wordsmith’s apprentice, part of John Noa’s team. The ordinary people were somehow separate from her. They didn’t have as much language or the right to speak it. They didn’t have information or power. She realized now that it was that sort of thinking that had made Noa into the monster he had become.”

Letta realizes that she has been part of the problem. Even though she had always had a disdain for cruelty and anti-intellectualism, she still elevated herself over the normal citizens. Her status as an apprentice could have led to her zealotry. She was ignorant of her perspective, and only realized this by meeting other people who are truly committed to self-expression.

“His heart is changed somehow. He loved her very much. There are no arranged partnership among the Creators, you know. People get together because they love one another.”

Marlo talks about Finn’s change after Leyla’s death. Other than Letta’s reluctance to mate with Werber, this is the most pointed conversation about relationships in the novel. The Creators understand that there must be an art and an element of risk inherent in partnerships. Love does not guarantee a utilitarian outcome like an arranged marriage.

“I will never meet anyone like you again, Letta. Go safely, please.”

These are Marlo’s final words to Letta before she enters the empty barrel and ascends the tower. He speaks romantically in a novel that is largely free of spoken metaphor and poetics. His words represent the Creators’ enduring respect for love, for partnerships based on emotional need, and they help Letta feel another precious aspect of the world that Noa would deprive her of.

“We need words… Why can’t you see that? We can think because we have words. Without them, we won’t have memory to look at the past or imagination to glimpse into the future. Without words, we will be imprisoned in the here and now forever.”

Noa believes that a lack of language forces people to live in the present moment. Living in the present moment is one of the foundational concepts of meditation systems like Zen, yet Noa skews that principle to serve his own desires for power. Letta believes that an inordinate focus on the present eliminates both the pleasures of nostalgia and the practicality and joy of planning for—and looking forward to—the future.

“These are the maps and charts your parents took with them. I copied them so that one day you might have them. Go safely, little one.”

Benjamin leaves maps for Letta in his satchel. They are from her parents and are the most concrete mementos she has of them. She does not yet know what to do with the charts, but they foreshadow the mission she will undertake in the second book of the series. Benjamin showed enough foresight that he probably understood that Letta would know how to make use of the maps.

“She was a wordsmith, a color-catcher, just like Benjamin and Leyla and her parents had been. That knowledge was what she would take with her.”

Letta has lost Benjamin, her parents, and her aunt Amelia is now her enemy. However, she finds comfort in knowing that now she has joined a proud tradition of defiant free thinkers. She knows enough to sustain her through what she must do next, even without the support of her mentors.