The Signature of All Things

“More than a possibility, even, it may have sounded like a command, and a most welcome command at that: Go forth in the world, Henry, and learn how to become a gentleman. And in the hard, lonely years that Henry was about to spend at sea, perhaps this casual utterance of Banks’s would grow only greater in his mind. Perhaps it would be all he ever thought about. Perhaps over time Henry Whittaker—that ambitious and striving boy, so fraught with the instinct for advancement—would come to remember it as having been a promise.”

This passage in the opening pages of the novel establishes both the omniscience and the occasionally playful voice of the narrator, who is able to relate the story of Alma and those near her as well as the doings of the larger world. Henry’s rough education abroad contrasts with Alma’s carefully cultivated education at home, while his drive to better himself foreshadows the theory that Alma develops later in her life. Henry’s wish to be a gentleman drives his acquisition of a fortune, his establishment of White Acre, and his ability to exploit others for his own gain—an example of the will to survive.

“She wanted to understand the world, and she made a habit of chasing down information to its last hiding place.”

Alma’s wish for knowledge, to have questions answered to her satisfaction, is a definitive aspect of her personality. She is an emblem of an era obsessed with advancement and knowledge, while her ruthlessness in hunting down answers foreshadows her trip to Tahiti to find out the truth about Ambrose’s relationship with The Boy in his sketches.

“What Alma wanted to know most of all was how the world was regulated. What was the master clockwork behind everything? She picked flowers apart, and explored their innermost architecture. She did the same with insects, and with any carcass she ever found.”

This description shows Alma’s inquisitiveness, her appreciation for knowledge, her complete lack of squeamishness, and her wish to understand why things work—evidence of her scientific mind. This wish to understand the nature of things and the mechanism that runs them echoes the theme of the book and the title’s