The Cartographic Paradox: Investigating the Fragmented Truth of a Map in Adrift and 438 Days

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the notion of truth in survival tales, Adrift (1986) and 438 Days (2015), through analysing the Cartographic element in them. Both Adrift and 438 Days, described as true tales of survival (where the castaway subject survived alone at sea), employ various maps in them. Deceptively innocuous though it may appear, this research will argue how the maps in these texts have multifarious-dimensions.

A map attempts to be truthful, by relying on order and factuality. It has ability to compress mammoth details, while simultaneously presenting them with astounding clarity. However, it must also depend on distortions and omissions to convey a selective reality. The map becomes a contested site, where truth and lie coexist. The understanding of truth as a solid, monolithic entity suddenly shatters. This ambivalence becomes our entry point in understanding the nuanced nature of a map in life writing. Its paradoxical existence, its interconnectedness with things beyond itself, allows the map to possess an added dimension, which the written word does not possess.

Furthermore, this paper will highlight how maps in survivor tales do not just place the narrative, but themselves exhibit a narrative potential. The relation between the written word and the experienced world culminates harmoniously in the visual world of map. This study will argue how the map provides a framework necessary to structure the text. Furthermore, this paper will also depict how a map transcends its factual role, and becomes a holder of memories by making the survivor’s traumatic experience more palpable. This research will ultimately attempt to challenge the rhetoric of concealment around maps, and pierce through the myth of their apparent objectivity. Through a work of select scholars this study will scrutinise maps as social constructions of power and knowledge in survivor narratives which mould the reader’s understanding of truth.