Do the ends justify the means? Who gets to decide which ends are worth the cost? And what is the cost? And when have the ends been achieved? In “Birnam Wood,” Eleanor Catton uses Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” as a springboard to examine these questions.
Young Mira leads an ‘Eco-terrorist’ group in outlaw efforts to farm idle land in New Zealand. She justifies the work of her merry band of vigilante farmers as a counterbalance to the capitalistic ownership of New Zealand, illustrated by the world’s wealthiest being granted land plots as a defense against crumbling infrastructures in their home countries.
Dashing and mysterious Robert pursues a monopoly on the world’s military contracts for drones and on precious metals he knows to be underneath one of New Zealand’s national parks. He justifies the supply of drones to the world’s militaries by claiming that if he didn’t do it, someone else would.
When the two cross paths, the betrayals, the manipulation, the exploitation begin to feed off each other, picking up the pace until the reader begins to experience both vertigo and dread while being unable to take his eyes offthe page.
This is not a tale for the weak of heart. After the fashion of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, this tale rips the lid off the ugly side of ambition with a breathtaking ending as dreadful and bloody as the battle scene when “Birnam Wood” does indeed come to Dunsinane. As Mira contemplates the ethics of one decision, her internal monologue provides a glimpse at the moral equivocation Robert and Mira employ in the pursuit of their goals. So, considering another questionable act, she thinks:
“It can’t be a lapse of judgement. There are no lapses of judgement. Itcan’t be wrong. There are no wrongs. There’s just choice, and choice is neutral, and we’re neutral, and everything is neutral, and everything’s a game, and if you want to win the game then you’re going to have to optimize yourself…”
This is one of a handful of recent novels using classics of the English language as inspiration. However, while Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead” is a virtual scene for scene and character for character remake of David Copperfield, Eleanor Catton has reimagined the dark forces of ambition, fear and violence that were ultimately Macbeth’s downfall. And, like Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s tragedy, no one’s hands are clean.
“Birnam Wood” by Eleanor Catton is available at your public libraries.