The Cartographers

A gifted cartographer in his own right, Felix specializes in contemporary cartography. After his expulsion from the elite cartography field due to the Junk Box Incident, Felix is hired to develop the Haberson Map and works for years with William, whose identity as Wally is eventually revealed in the climax of the novel. Unlike Nell, who remains fixated on the past, Felix moves on from being fired from the NYPL and embraces his new career and colleagues. However, he struggles to let go of his own past when Nell requests his expertise in examining the 1930 Agloe map, for he privately hopes to rekindle their romance, believing that the past will stay in the past.

However, Felix and Nell’s mindsets constantly clash: his adaptability versus her stubbornness, his hopes for the future versus her obsession with the past, his ability to accept imperfection versus her compulsion to know the truth, and his logical reality versus her mutable imagination. Felix wants Nell to let the past go and seize the opportunity to regain the prestige of her NYPL dream; for a long time, he doesn’t understand her fixation on the past and even opposes it, recognizing that Nell’s obsession is preventing her from pursuing her career ambitions.

While Felix is open-minded enough to eventually realize and accept the magic of phantom settlements, it is only after learning the secret of Agloe that he recognizes the proof on the security camera footage. Though he does eventually enter Agloe, the fact that he only does so under duress, as Wally’s hostage, symbolically emphasizes that his preference would be to avoid accepting the reality of the fantastical. Felix is therefore a foil for Nell, showing what her trajectory would look like if she had resisted the draw of the Agloe map. Firmly rooted in reality, Felix can accept a small portion of fantasy, but he prefers a world built upon normalcy. Ready to let Agloe’s secrets remain secret, Felix eventually gains the very NYPL position that Nell once coveted—Daniel’s job (now retitled as “geospatial librarian”). Throughout the novel, Felix looks to the future and embraces the marriage of technology with traditional cartography, but neither does he forget the past; instead, he learns to live with and appreciate both, thereby manifesting Tam’s legacy.

Wally, although initially somewhat well-intentioned, is the clear villain of the story, for he stands as the antithesis of nearly every major character. His role is to portray how badly a person can be corrupted in the pursuit of power, secrets, obsessions, and the past. Wally is the quiet perfectionist who is rigid and resistant to change. Even in the flashbacks of the Cartographers’ origins, he manifests extremes, for Tam is his only true friend, and he only grudgingly accepts the presence of the other Cartographers because Tam befriends them. Even as the group gains a collective identity, he always keeps himself apart. This self-imposed isolation is most clearly seen in his role as photographer, in which he passively observes the others through his camera lens but never includes himself in the tableau. This passive role becomes his most distinctive feature, as the Rockland locals come to recognize him by his camera; otherwise, he fades into the background.

Tam is the only person he actively listens to; she can convince him to do anything. Beginning as a man firmly grounded in reality and believing that photos are “[p]roof that things were real” (135), he initially resists the idea of the Dreamer’s Atlas and is uninterested in combining the realistic and fantastical elements of cartography. After Tam convinces him, however, he is all for it the idea. However, his attitudes toward Tam become increasingly unhealthy; he dislikes each addition to the Cartographers and represses his own unrequited feelings for Tam when she meets Daniel. As his position within the group (and therefore in Tam’s life) wanes, Wally grows increasingly obsessed with control: He supervises the initial Dreamer’s Atlas project as well as the later Agloe project. However, his desire for secrecy grows as well, and he never wants to share the knowledge of Agloe with the others. From the beginning, Agloe and Tam are irrevocably connected—if he cannot have one, he will cling to the other. Unable or unwilling to voice this desire, Wally is powerless to resist Tam’s decision to share the discovery of Agloe with their friends. Wally’s loss of control and desire for secrecy instead manifests in his desperate and unscrupulous acquisition of all remaining copies and information about Agloe, a pattern that eventually extends to robbery and murder.

This obsession isolates him even more from his already tenuous relationships with his friends, until he distrusts all of them and perceives only irrevocable betrayals in their actions. Daniel, whom Wally was already primed to dislike, betrays him by attempting to tell an outsider (their university professor) about Agloe. Francis and Eve are next when their affair disproves the devotion of the Cartographers’ friendship. Finally, Bear’s theft of a map to pay his debts pushes Wally over the edge. Wally, who now views the group as pawns to be controlled rather than as friends to be cherished, centers the remnants of his world only on Tam. Her perceived death breaks him, and he fills the void with his obsessions in the years to follow, for if he cannot have her, he is determined to have Agloe at any cost.

Wally’s free-fall into madness depicts the extreme danger of secrets and obsessions; rather than moving on, he fixates on the past, determined to control the secret of Agloe no matter the cost. He rejects what remains of his friendships in favor of anonymity and solitude, creating Haberson Global and the Haberson Map, a perfect map that can remake reality in his image, thereby giving him the omnipotence and control that he desires. He becomes a man so consumed by his fantasies that he confuses them for reality, and ultimately, he cannot find his way back. His obsessions fester to the point that when he does eventually reunite with Tam in Agloe, he no longer values her. He has learned to exist without her, but he cannot live without Agloe. Mired in the past, he seeks to control Agloe even if he can no longer control Tam. Although Wally tries to sway Nell to his side using their shared obsession for Agloe, his rigidity becomes his downfall, and his desire for power ultimately costs him everything. Without Agloe, he is left a broken man, fading into the shadows as everyone else rises above.