The Cartographers

“Wally looked miserable, as he always did every time it was clear someone else was about to join our friend group.”

Even from the beginning of The Cartographers, Wally’s behavior reflects his desire to keep Tam for himself. Romi, the first addition to the group, notices this dynamic immediately, as will the others. However, Wally keeps his feelings quiet in favor of promoting Tam’s happiness, and this dynamic foreshadows his future spiral and obsession with control.

“Daniel shrugged, still smiling, not at all embarrassed at how silly we clearly thought his essay was. ‘They’re [fantasy maps] as real as real maps. Just in a different way.’”

Daniel is characterized as a cheerful person who pushes the Cartographers to think outside the box. Even from his first interactions with them, he pushes them to broaden their horizons. When he defends the legitimacy of fantastical maps, his fervor foreshadows the original Dreamer’s Atlas project, Agloe, and the theme of Fantasy Versus Reality.

“You see, over the course of our studies, we had come to believe that even more important than the differences between art and science in cartography were the similarities between them. We’d debated the ideas endlessly, the same way that every student and scholar in our field constantly did—but for us, we weren’t trying to figure out which aspect was more important. Our goal was not for one side to win over the other. It was for both sides to win. To marry the two concepts irrevocably, to show that one could not exist without the other.”

The Cartographers are depicted as an unusual group even while they are at college; they structure their papers and projects around each other, even their PhD dissertations. The members each have their own roles and specialties, a combination of logical science and imaginative art that will aid them in their eventual Agloe project. Their goal of “marrying” art and science in cartography also indicates the close-knit relationships of the group, hinting at the high stakes involved and the web of secrecy, isolation, and destruction that occurs later in the novel.

“He cares about you a lot. In my book, that means more than how historically accurate his work is.”

Relationship versus career conflicts constantly pull Nell in various directions throughout the novel and are instrumental in her character growth. During the Junk Box Incident, Nell prioritizes her NYPL career over her relationships with both her father and her boyfriend); later, her pursuit of the Agloe mystery jeopardizes her romance and her dream career. Nell is also self-conscious of the academic condescension toward her job at Classic, hinting at the theme of Reality Versus Fantasy, in that the “reality” of cartography and conservation is ranked higher than the “fantasy” of her fake replicas; because of this Nell is initially ashamed by her perceived “fall” after the Junk Box Incident. Swann, Humphrey, and Felix try to show her that people are more important than her career; however, Nell’s stubbornness and obsession with the Junk Box Incident blind her to this reality.

“With a Young, unless you agreed on a firm date to stop working on something, ‘soon’ meant ‘when I’m satisfied.’”

Stubbornness is a characteristic of the Young family—Daniel, Tam, and Nell all possess it, often leading to disastrous consequences. Much to Felix’s frustration, this stubbornness leads to Nell’s Obsession with Agloe, and her inability to Let Go of her past. This contrasts with Felix, her foil, who has long since moved on to a happy career at Haberson and accepts that life is flawed, mysterious, and imperfect.

“He liked precision, detail. Photographs were just another kind of measurement, he said. Proof that things were real.”

Contrasting with the experimental Tam and the flexible Felix, Wally is extremely rigid. He is Obsessed with perfection and control and determined to cement Fantasy into Reality. He also keeps himself isolated and separate from the group, as symbolized by his Camera. He creates proof and memories of interpersonal connections (Photographs) but is never in them himself—this hints at his preference for anonymity and secrecy during the Agloe project and after Tam’s death.

“Eve grimaced. ‘It was dangerous, that thing. Cursed. Everyone who touched it got hurt.’ Her eyes drifted back to the compass rose symbol. ‘And it’s still not over.’”

Nell’s interactions with Eve introduce two key symbols: the Agloe Map, which represents Obsession and Secrets, as well as the Cartographers’ Compass Rose, signifying Legacy. Describing the Agloe map as “cursed” indicates the danger of secrets and the destructive nature of obsession, while the compass rose indicates legacy that Nell will inherit this legacy. Though the Cartographers want to leave Agloe and its secrets dead and buried in their past, Wally (and later Tam) keep them alive; Nell’s own insistence on solving the mystery also represents her seeking the legacy that her family and mentors left her: Agloe and the truth about phantom settlements.

“Wally had spent so long repressing his real feelings for Tam, I think he didn’t even know they were there. They were like a phantom limb to him—a thing he’d convinced himself wasn’t real, even though he could still sense its ghost.”

Much like the Phantom Settlements and trap rooms in the novel, Wally’s feelings for Tam are ghostly and Secret, to the point that he never fully acknowledges them but acts on them all the same. These feelings combine the themes of Obsession and Fantasy Versus Reality, as Wally’s fixation on his fantasized relationship with Tam lead him to try and make that fantasy a reality. This will manifest as his obsession with keeping Agloe a Secret, thereby reinforcing the symbolic associations between the two.

“‘I get it. I do. But maybe some things are worth more,’ Felix replied. ‘Like what?’ she asked. ‘The future,’ he said […] .”

Like Swann, who pushes Nell to Let Go of her past and embrace her present, Felix also encourages her to consider her future. Just as Tam believes that the purpose of a map is to “to bring people together” (49), Felix and Swann push Nell to prioritize her loved ones over her Obsession with place. This contrasts with Wally, who not only prioritizes place over people but also isolates himself to the point that he cuts off any people who would encourage similar support; in this way, Nell has the choice to mirror Wally or become his foil, but she has yet to decide her path here.

“‘If you have the map, the town will appear to you,’ he said. ‘You can go there.’”

In this quote, Francis’s revelation introduces both the symbolism of Maps as Secrets and the theme of Reality Versus Fantasy. A phantom settlement, thus far introduced as merely a historical method of copyright protection, now becomes something more: a gateway into a fantastical world, much like the goal of the original Dreamer’s Atlas (96). At the same time, without the right key (map) and the (secret) knowledge of the entry method, this reality remains simply a fantasy, nothing more.

“‘Tam,’ Wally said, his voice tight. At the time, I thought it was because he was simply afraid. That he hadn’t wanted to tell us quite yet only because he didn’t fully understand what was going on. Not because he had wanted to keep it a secret, under his control.”

Although Wally, a rigid perfectionist, has usually managed to hide his obsession with control, cracks are beginning to appear in his veneer. His desire for secrecy, to keep Tam to himself, shows through, but only to those who know what to look for. He is beginning to acknowledge those repressed, ghostly feelings for Tam, but he still tries to hide them.

“But shame is a terrible, terrible thing. It makes you lie to others, and to yourself.”

While Bear speaks mainly about his financial ruin compared to his wealthier friends, the sentiment is applicable to many of the characters in the novel: Francis and Eve, hiding their affair and later Wally’s secret map acquisitions; Wally’s obsession to control Agloe (and therefore Tam); and even Nell’s quest to solve the mystery of Agloe. All of them lie—to themselves and to others—about their shameful desires, but—perhaps because of their lies and repression—end up acting on these desires in extreme and drastic ways.

“‘I just wanted one thing,’ he finally said. ‘Daniel and Nell could have her love, all of you could have her friendship, the whole world could have her brilliance. I just wanted one thing that could be ours. That’s all.’”

At last, Wally admits his repressed feelings about Tam, but too late—the damage has already been done. Had he admitted these feelings earlier, before the secrets built up and his obsession for control destroyed his beloved Tam, this disaster might have been prevented. However, his decision to isolate himself and obsess over her holds him back, preventing him from forming a support network and driving him further into his obsession that will manifest as the Haberson Map and his search for Agloe.

“He stared at me in the dark. Determined, helpless. Alive, dead. I could see it, then. That our cursed project was the only thing sustaining him. The only thing keeping his guilt from completely consuming him. I knew he would never stop looking until he found the town again. And I knew that he would never manage to do it. Because if there was no map, there was no town.”

Although Wally tries to make his fantasy a reality—keeping Agloe secret, as much between just him and Tam as possible—his extreme obsession ends up backfiring, his fantasy remaining only a fantasy. Rather than letting go as Tam hopes he will, he is so consumed by his obsession that his guilt and shame push him into seeking that fantasy once again, and to finally create the impossible reality he so desperately desires.

“Could a perfect map only be developed for a perfect world? Or would the perfect map make the world within it perfect? he’d ask.”

Wally’s obsession with control manifests as a desire for perfection. Unlike Felix and the Haberson Map team, who are well aware that there will always be variables outside of their control, Wally is determined to play God. In his mind, if he can control the one variable he obsesses over the most, Agloe, then he can control the world, remaking it into his own image.

“William reached into his pocket and pulled out his own phone, as if to demonstrate. ‘They [pedestrians] don’t look at the street and check HabWalk [a feature of the Haberson Map]. They walk with their eyes glued to HabWalk. They only stop when the map says they’ve arrived, and then they look up to see they’ve reached their destination.’ He looked back at Felix. ‘They’re not comparing our map to the world—they’re comparing the world to our map.’”

Wally believes that if he can make his fantasies into reality, then he can effectively control reality. Much like the mystery of phantom settlements, which require a key (map) to use—effectively accepting that an imagined fantasy can be real—by changing the perception of a world, one can essentially change the world itself. By controlling the Haberson Map in all its forms, Wally can control everyone’s perception of reality and therefore everyone’s behavior—his desire to control Tam, but on a larger, global scale.

“What’s the purpose of a map? [...] Cartography, at its heart, was about defining one’s place in the world by creating charts and measurements. Nell had lived her life by that idea, that everything could be mapped according to references and thereby understood. But she could see now that she had been paying attention to the wrong references. It was not a map alone that made a place real. It was the people.”

Despite Nell’s imaginative, artful work at Classic, she has stuck with the logical idea that maps depict places, nothing more. Here, she is at last accepting the more ephemeral aspects of mapmaking: her mother’s adage that maps “bring people together” (49), and from there that people are more important than places. While Nell is still obsessed with finding Agloe, her motivations for doing so are slowly shifting—from proving that the 1930 map has value to finding her long-lost mother.

“‘You can’t imagine how difficult it’s been to return to a place that doesn’t technically exist,’ Wally said, as if it were a sufficient explanation. His words were slow and thick, clumsy. He had been convinced he would find her here, but to truly see her again at long last was overwhelming. ‘But all of it, everything I had to do to find Agloe again, has been for you.’ ‘No, it hasn’t,’ Tamara replied. ‘I didn’t want you to do any of this.’”

The rigid, controlling Wally can only accept fantasy by making it “real,” placing it on a physical map that he can manipulate. However, because he refuses to acknowledge that fantasies can and sometimes should remain fantasies, he convinces himself that his obsession is justified truth—that his determination to find Agloe is born of a desire to rescue Tam, and that she will be grateful to see him. However, when Tam rejects him and forces him to face the reality that his control in this particular matter is nonexistent, he cannot accept it.

“‘You have to let it go.’ Finally, Wally smiled. Nell could see in his eyes that he never would. Maybe his original goal, all those years ago, had been only to prove that Tamara hadn’t died in the fire after all. To prove that he wasn’t guilty of killing the person he loved most in the entire world. But the grief had festered, the years had corrupted. [...] Even now, when faced with Tamara herself, Wally had become too obsessed with the thing he’d been hunting his entire life. It was more real to him than the person. He would choose the map over everything else.”

Although Wally once was able to hide his obsession and his secrets, they have since consumed him. He may have truly cared about Tam once and genuinely hoped that she survived the fire in Agloe; however, his desire to control her and make his own fantasies into everyone’s reality have rotted him from within. In this way, Wally becomes a cautionary tale for the dangers that lie within secrets: His obsession with keeping secrets by searching for the Agloe maps inevitably isolates him and destroys any hope of maintaining his friendship with the Cartographers.

“Tamara had been trapped in Agloe for decades, lonely and waiting, and when Wally finally managed to reach her again, she had a letter for her daughter, but nothing for him, even after all this time.”

Wally’s desire to control others and determination to replace objective reality with his own fantasy are forever foiled with Tam’s letter to Nell. Although he dreams of his long-ago friendship with Tam, he is unable to let go of the past while she has long since moved on to her future. In this way, she passes on the legacy of the Cartographers to Nell, distancing them both from the disaster that Wally caused and cannot accept responsibility for. Mother and daughter move forward while Wally remains stuck in the past, just as Agloe remains a construction of a bygone era.

“A map could make things real—literally. I realized that I could use my skills as a cartographer to save myself and the town. That if I made a map of part of the town using the printing press, I could change Agloe with it. It would become real within its map, just like Agloe was within its own. Buildings could have furniture in them. Shops could have provisions. And more.”

An imaginative, experimental artist, Tam was always inclined to indulge in fantasies in her early years; she was a fan of speculative fiction and was drawn to Daniel because of his own unusual ideas. While she is not the only one to use fantasies to affect her reality, her views contrast with Wally in that she does not seek to control these changes, only to understand them. She can influence Agloe, but she does so to survive, not to impose her desires on anyone else. In this way, she can move on from Agloe’s secrets, helping it evolve as she herself looks to the future, rather than remaining stagnant in the past.

“‘Maps aren’t meant to be secrets, Wally. They’re meant to be shared,’ she said.”

Here, Tam and Wally’s role as foils for each other becomes solidified. Tam, who features in most of the Cartographers’ photographs and proves her connections with each of them, believes that maps “bring people together” (49). For her, the Agloe project was always meant to eventually be revealed to the world. In contrast, Wally clutches at secrets, desperate to control them; he believes that the knowledge of Agloe was never meant to be shared, just as he wants Tam to belong only to him.

“Maybe it was not possible for Nell to have both maps and Felix, the same way it hadn’t been possible for her parents to have maps and each other. And if that were true, then he was glad that she chose maps, in the end. They were perhaps even more a part of her life than they had been for her father, from the very day she was born, and she had been cut off from them for so long.”

While Nell learns to value people over places, cartography remains her highest priority. She learns to let go of her past, but the future she embraces is fantasy rather than reality (much like the imagination she learns to imbue into her Classic replicas). Meanwhile, Felix learns to open his mind to the improbable (visiting phantom settlements) rather than the purely logical (the reality of the Haberson Map), and to accept the idea that Nell’s desires diverge from his. This contrasts with Wally and Tam’s relationship, in which Wally refuses to let Tam go and seeks to control her instead.