60 pages • 2 hours read
Birnam Wood
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Part 1, Pages 3-46Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Pages 3-46 Summary
The novel opens with Mira Bunting, a 29-year-old horticulturalist and founding member of a New Zealand guerrilla gardening group called Birnam Wood. She finds out that a piece of property in a town called Thorndike has been taken off the market. She calls a local realtor to see why and gets little more information than she already knows from recent news: The town’s main road has been cut off by a landslide that killed four people, assumedly triggered by an earthquake, and as a result the economy is suffering.
Mira attempts to feel pity for the victims before quickly giving up and continuing her research. She discovers that the property was a former sheep farm and backs up to the Korowai National Park. The owner, Owen Darvish is about to be knighted for services to conservation. His successful business, Darvish Pest Control, started when he was a teenager killing rabbits. News reports emphasize the fact that his original .22 rifle and skinning knife are proudly kept in a display case in his living room, and that his wife, Jill, is the actual owner of the property, since she inherited it. Owen is joining forces with an American technology company called Autonomo that makes drones; together, they will monitor endangered New Zealand wildlife. Owen annoys Mira. She sees that he will be away from his property and thinks that it’s a perfect opportunity for her group.
The narrative switches to Shelley Noakes who is tracking Mira using a phone app. She is nervous, as she wants to tell Mira that she’s leaving Birnam Wood. Shelley doesn’t like that she has been cast as the unoriginal and practical sidekick to Mira. When she first met Mira she was enthralled, and Mira sneered at Shelley’s family and values. Now Shelley realizes that Mira was criticizing things that Shelley most liked about herself. Shelley regrets that the organization will probably fail, as Shelley handles the day-to-day operations that Mira doesn’t even try to understand. Furthermore, Mira doesn’t care about debt because she doesn’t intend to pay it. She steals tools and uses land and resources that aren’t hers, all of which Mira excuses away, as they are in service to Birnam Wood’s virtuous mission. Shelley, however, can’t manage stretching the rules.
A man in his early thirties interrupts Shelley’s thoughts. She recognizes Tony Gallo, one of the founding members of Birnam Wood who has been abroad in Mexico teaching English. He doesn’t remember Shelley and is obviously embarrassed about this. He is looking for Mira. Shelley decides to sleep with Tony, since she knows that he and Mira were developing a relationship. Mira would feel betrayed and it would sever all ties between them. Shelley asks Tony out for a drink, and since he feels bad about not remembering her, he accepts.
The point of view switches to Tony. He’s been back in New Zealand for five weeks and has attempted to see Mira multiple times. He’s worried about his image betraying the fact that he inherited money and carefully dresses in old clothing. He is bothered that he didn’t remember Shelley as it points toward an ugly truth about his privilege that he doesn’t want to accept. He and Shelly banter over their first pitcher of beer. He finds her a fun and attentive companion and shares that he wants to be an investigative reporter. He confesses that he wrote a disastrous travel essay while in Mexico that sparked outrage online: He was accused of enforcing harmful stereotypes and of being an entitled poverty tourist. He tells Shelley that he learned his lesson but then objects that the only people criticizing him were also, like him, white intellectuals. When he brings up Mira, Shelley tells him not to worry about their one-night stand—Mira was really drunk and it was a long time ago. Tony’s attitude turns sour. Mira texts Shelley to say that she’s heading to a new planting site near the Korowai pass.
Part 1, Pages 3-46 Analysis
Eleanor Catton uses screenwriting’s three-act structure (setup, confrontation, and resolution) to organize Birnam Wood. Part 1 adheres to the setup by using its first three unlabeled sections to introduce the characters, setting, and situation. Because Birnam Wood is a thriller, the intense characterization of this section lays the foundation for conflicts and payoffs to come and establishes the characters already demonstrating three of the four major themes: Ambition as the Root of All Evil, Compromising Morality in Service to a Cause, and The Dangerous Proliferation of Technology in the Modern World.
From the first page, Catton shows Mira inhabiting a shady moral arena. Her thoughts and actions while searching the internet reveal aspects of her personality that underline an already fluctuating sense of Compromising Morality in Service to a Cause. She not only lies to people when seeking information, but enjoys it. She abandons her attempt to feel pity for people who died in a landslide after mere moments. The narrator notes that this attempt at empathy is a habit that Mira had from childhood “as if testing for a pulse” (5). At this point in the narrative, it isn’t clear if Mira has one, making her an ambiguous antihero. This section also highlights another theme that emphasizes Mira’s anti-heroic qualities: Ambition as the Root of All Evil. Mira’s ambition leads her to dishonesty, and her arrogantly confident attitude stems from the ambitious belief that her goals are lofty enough to warrant deception and theft.
The second section concerns Shelley Noakes. Catton’s exploration of Shelley’s family life makes her an empathetic character. She appears practical and down-to-earth compared to Mira. Mira’s biting dismissal of Shelley’s family rankles, and the work that Shelley does for Birnam Wood makes her seem like the moral center of the novel. This gets turned on its head when Shelley’s logic leads her to decide to sleep with Mira’s love interest, Tony Gallo. Her reasoning parallels that of Mira’s when weighing up Compromising Morality in Service of a Cause, since Catton shows Shelley weighing up immoral actions in order to teach Mira a lesson about personal morality. Shelley is invigorated, and feels blameless. While she fails to betray her friend this time, the groundwork is laid for another attempt later in the book.
The third section is from the point of view of Tony Gallo, whose ambition is clear from the way that he leaves New Zealand upon graduation, thinking that he has mentally outgrown the country, and upon return has grandiose plans of becoming an important political reporter. This ambition will drive him for the rest of the novel. He immediately encounters issues that challenge his self-esteem and his opinion that he is worthy of this ambition, and one sees his turmoil as he tries to reconcile his privilege with the morally righteous warrior that he also believes himself to be. His attempts to convince himself that he’s the person he hopes is the beginning of an increasing strictness that will ultimately put him on his fatal path.
All three characters establish the theme of The Dangerous Proliferation of Technology in a Modern World. Mira’s sources of information exist entirely over the internet, even when she interacts with other humans. She forming her judgments to fit her purposes, specifically about the Darvishes and the vacancy of their land, which recalls Macbeth. As Catton sees it, both Macbeth and Mira’s misjudgments of people and places based on open-source information are fatal. Mira’s other big error in judgment concerns Lady Darvish who gets disregarded with half a sentence’s of thought; however, this is the character who ultimately shoots the villain between the eyes. Shelley’s use of a tracking app to check on Mira’s movements likewise sets up larger payoffs toward the end. Her nefarious use of surveillance technology starts small and innocently in these sections. A quick check of the app opens the door to Shelley’s later guiltless, complete surveillance of Mira.
Because of the novel’s psychological nature, Catton uses these opening chapters to establish character traits and habits that seem minor, but when injected with ambition and opportunity snowball out of control and cause deadly moral compromises for each character.
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