Navigating Early

“What is the holy grail of mathematics? Something that is so mysterious as to be considered by many almost miraculous. Something woven throughout the world of mathematics. A number that is nothing less than never-ending. Eternal.”

Mr. Blane presents the number pi as the holy grail of mathematics and equates Dr. Stanton’s attempt to prove that it is ending as a quest. This foreshadows the quest that Jack and Early will embark upon shortly later, which is also inspired by pi: Early sees Parallels and Connections With Pi’s story, which he reads in the digits of the number, and Fisher’s journey; thus, he attempts to find “Pi,” believing it will lead him to Fisher.

“She pointed to the little bear’s bright light. ‘That star will be my Polaris. But’—his mother pointed to a larger group of stars—’the little bear has a mother. The Great Bear. […] And a mother’s love is fierce. The Great Bear will watch over you.’”

Pi’s mother points out the Great Bear constellation and asks Pi to use it as guidance. Her assertion that the Great Bear is a mother whose love will prove protective is symbolic at multiple levels: Early searches for the big bear on the Appalachian Trail, his interpretation of the Great Bear, which ultimately does come to the boys’ rescue. The constellation itself also holds significance for Jack, who knows how to read the stars, looks to them for navigation, and is simultaneously seeking closure regarding his mother’s death, which he finds in the process of the quest. 

“You’re jumping into the navigating part too soon. Maybe you should focus on the beauty of those stars up there apart from their function. […] Besides, who’s to say that one group of stars belongs together and only together? Those stars up there are drawn to each other in lots of different ways. They’re connected in unexpected ways, just like people.”

When Jack is disappointed that he fails the navigation challenge at Boy Scouts, Elaine asks him also to appreciate the stars’ beauty, not just their navigator function. Her assertion that stars, like people, are connected in different ways is echoed by Gunnar later in the story and is proven true multiple times by the different parallels between Pi’s story and different characters. Jack’s eventual understanding of this is symbolized when he draws his own constellation at the end of the book, representing the different people in the story as stars and connecting them in the shape of Elaine’s teacup.

“I was halfway, I reasoned. Even if I turned back, that would be the equivalent of the full length of the whole log. But I wouldn’t have crossed it. Wasn’t that the whole point? To cross? To get to the other side? But for what? There was nothing different over there. Just the same rain, the same grass. And what other obstacles would I encounter?”

Halfway across Dinosaur Log, Jack freezes and is unable to cross over. The indecision he faces is characteristic of Jack’s response to challenges, particularly ones he cannot understand or that emotionally overwhelm him. He joins Early on the latter’s quest out of curiosity, rather than bravery or loyalty. He even asserts to Gunnar that the quest is not his own, and he is only accompanying Early, and Gunnar chastises Jack for not taking more initiative in the things happening to him.

“They’re not just numbers. And I’m not making up a story. The story is in the numbers. Look at them! The numbers have colors—blues of the ocean and sky, green grass, a bright-yellow sun. The numbers have texture and landscape—mountains and waves and sand and storms. And words—about Pi and about his journey. The numbers tell a story.”

Early explains to Jack how he is able to read Pi’s story in the digits of the number pi. Early’s experience is consistent with the condition of synesthesia, in which one sensory experience triggers perception in other senses as well; it is an automatic phenomenon, not a product of imagination. Early’s experience thus strongly suggests that the world he lives in is not a product of his creativity, but a function of him experiencing reality differently than others.

“You need a coxswain. […] The person who guides and navigates the boat. […] You need someone to give you direction.”

Early suggests that Jack needs a navigator to help with his rowing and volunteers himself for the position. Rowing is a recurring metaphor in the book, and Early and Jack’s relationship vis-á-vis rowing symbolizes how Early helps Jack, particularly with Navigating Grief and Loss. By Jack’s own assertion, Early is the one who helps keep Jack steady and processing his new circumstances and the feelings that arise in response to them.

“I’m going on a quest. […] For Pi. That Professor Stanton thinks he’s dead, but he’s just missing. I’m going to find him, and then Professor Stanton will quit saying he’s dead. He’s not dead.”

Early reveals that he is setting out to search for Pi, the character in the story that he equates with the number itself. Early’s quest is, in reality, a search for his brother Fisher, whom he believes to be alive. The steadfastness with which Early embarks on this quest underlines how strongly he holds onto his beliefs. Early’s conflation of the number pi with the character in the story, and later his brother, exemplifies how he experiences the world differently.

“The bulletin-board collage looked just like what I imagined you might find in Early’s mind—a hodgepodge of information, texture, color, clutter, and chaos that only Early could understand. Navigating Early was as challenging as navigating mysterious and uncharted waters.”

Jack takes note of the different kinds of seemingly unrelated information scattered across Early’s bulletin board. He equates trying to understand Early with navigating uncharted waters, underlining the symbolic link between Early and the ocean, i.e., the unknown. Later in the book, this “hodgepodge” of information comes together to prove Early right in all his calculations about Pi and Fisher, among other things. In retrospect, the bulletin-board becomes an example of Early’s extraordinary ability to make connections and form conclusions that others have missed.

“He placed the string of shells around his neck and felt their weight—the loss that they now symbolized. His family, his home, and the sound of the sea lapping the shores that he would not return to again.”

Pi finds the necklace of shells his mother had made for him, which he forgot to take with him on his journey. The necklace symbolizes his grief and regret over the loss of his family and is mirrored in the pieces of the broken teacup that Jack carries with him as a reminder of his mother.

“It was partly in the way that Early told the story, in words that didn’t seem to be his own. But mostly it was in his inability to control the story. If Early needed Pi to be alive in order for Fisher to be alive, why didn’t he just create the story that way? Because he couldn’t. The story was not his to create. He was only retelling it, translating the story he read in the numbers.”

Jack realizes that Early is not creating Pi’s story but translating it from the numbers he sees. This is one of Jack’s first true moments of understanding how Early experiences the world, building the theme of Engendering Empathy Through Alternative Perspectives. Over time, he makes sense of Early’s thought processes ad mannerisms much better, truly learning to “navigate Early,” and even picking up some of his friend’s superior deductive skills.

“I was one of them. I was lost. I’d felt this way before. At the regatta. I had been trying to row my way back to the dock in a sinking boat. Early had called out his commands that guided me back.”

Jack recognizes himself as one of the lost souls that Early describes in Pi’s story. Jack is not the only character who feels this way, however; Fisher, John, Gunnar, and MacScott all resemble the lost souls from Pi’s story in different ways. Unlike the rest of them, however, Jack has Early as his “navigator,” who helps guide him while rowing and in life.

“He was very sure about most things—whether they were true or not. […] And that I was a person he wanted to be friends with.”

Jack reflects on how Early has unshakable convictions about things, which is an attractive quality to Jack, especially at a time in Jack’s life when he feels unmoored. Early’s surety translates to steadiness as a navigator and friend. He is consistently loyal to Jack, from turning up at the regatta to guide him even after Jack ditches him to forgiving him quickly afterward and taking him along on the quest.

“The ones who are most consumed with their hunt—desperate, you might say—for what they think they are after, it is often a far cry from what they are really after. It is a fact, too, that sometime, they not really looking for anything at all but are running away from something instead.”

Gunnar presents this idea to Jack and Early, when they ask for his help in tracking the gun. This insight is applicable to multiple characters in the book, but most of all to MacScott. Jack recognizes this when he learns MacScott’s story, seeing how, although MacScott is a hunter, he himself has been hunted his whole life by regret and guilt over Martin’s death.

“‘I don’t see anything,’ I said. But I felt as I had that day in the Nook, when I’d placed my hand on the Maine and been unable to come up with a real wish. Once again, I was left lost and adrift.”

As Gunnar and Early draw their own constellations in the sky, Jack claims that he is unable to draw any. His reflection on how he feels lost and adrift is paralleled by how Pi feels following his mother’s death, where he, too, is unable to locate familiar stars and constellations and is subsequently is lost at sea.

“I knew that he saw things in a different way than most people. And a lot of what he saw, he somehow related to the story of Pi. […] Of course, there had been strange similarities and connections, but Early had a way of making them fit the story as if he were making jigsaw pieces fit into a puzzle just because he needed them to.”

Jack reflects on the similarities and connections between Early’s rendition of Pi’s story and their own journey so far. These connections are, as Jack recognizes, partly a function of Early persisting in seeing parallels, which ultimately does serve him well; however, within the scope of the book, they are also a function of magical and fantastical elements Vanderpool incorporates in the narrative.

“Did people have telltale lines like that? What would mine look like? I didn’t need to see them. I knew they had been severed last summer. A gash had been cut into me, so deep that I felt I was at that tipping point […]. But somehow I remained poised, in precarious balance, not sure which way I might fall.”

Jack contemplates on how the age lines in trees tell the story of their lives, and wonders what his might look like, remembering his grief over his mother’s death. Jack constantly dwells on the pain of losing his mother, keeping the theme of Navigating Grief and Loss alive throughout the book. His specific observation on he is poised in precarious balance further mirrors how Pi hangs between life and death in the catacombs, ultimately losing his balance and falling into the abyss.

“But if you’re not Martin […] then she has to go back to waiting again. She’ll keep waiting and making her body hang on. Even though she’s ready.”

Early points out that if Eustasia realizes Jack is not Martin, she must return to waiting, hanging onto life fruitlessly. Early experiences reality differently than most people around him, so he can recognize Eustasia’s compulsion to do so. His differing perspective on the world allows him empathy for someone else in a similar situation, and Jack, too, learns this along the way.

“Which is more important? I wondered. The seeking or the finding? My mom would say the seeking. My dad would say the finding.”

As the boys get closer to finding the big bear, Jack contemplates whether the seeking or finding is more important when on a quest. Despite Jack’s apparent disconnect from John, he appears to mirror his father’s approach to life—the finding, i.e., the result of an enterprise, is important to Jack. He gets frustrated when he fails at the navigation activity during a Boy Scouts activity, just as he gets frustrated when he loses the regatta. Throughout the book, Jack learns to embrace his mother’s perspective, seeing the importance of seeking, i.e., the unexpected experiences the journey yields.

“‘But this is a medal for bravery. It doesn’t belong in a pocket.’ ‘Then you wear it.’ The medal belonged to someone else. Wearing it would feel like an honor that was unearned. And unwanted. ‘I’ve already got Fisher’s dog tags. They’re important. You need something important too.’ Before I knew it, Early had the medal pinned on my jacket, and that was that.”

Early insists that Jack wear Martin’s father’s medal of bravery. Jack doesn’t think himself worthy of such an honor, as he knows that even his motivation in joining Early on the quest is born of curiosity, rather than loyalty or bravery. Early, however, sees it differently—he sees Jack’s need to hold onto something important, symbolic of needing a purpose in life to help him navigate his grief. This is what Fisher’s dog tags represent to Early, and the reason why the throws them into the river after Fisher refuses to come home.

“But looking at MacScott’s gaunt face and one sunken eye, I could tell that wasn’t all. It wasn’t just the missed shot at the bull’s-eye that he’d been carrying around for fifty-some years. It was the shot he’d made and hadn’t meant to that had eaten him from the inside out.”

When Jack learns MacScott’s story, he understands that part of MacScott chasing every hunting trophy in Maine is born out of pride to make up for the one shot at the bulls-eye that he missed. However, thanks to the insight Gunnar provided earlier in the story, Jack also recognizes that MacScott is equally, if not more, motivated to run away from the regret and guilt he feels over the accidental shot that did make its mark, killing Martin in the process.

“His face twisted in a pained expression. He stared at the bear with his one eye. And the bear, with its mangled face, seemed to hold an equally pained expression as it stared back, its hackles raised. I wondered if each beast saw something familiar in the other.”

When MacScott finally faces the bear, his desire to hunt it appears to have been replaced by the pain he cannot outrun anymore. Jack thinks of MacScott as a “beast,” which is precisely what he has devolved into over the years, running away from the ghosts of his past. MacScott finally faces that the only way out for him is death and goads the bear into attacking him by purposely missing his shot.

“That’s the way it was with Early. He could have the same information as everyone else, but it all meant something different to him. He saw what everyone else missed.”

When Early presents all the information that led him to accurately deduce that Fisher is alive, Jack marvels at the unique connections Early is able to make using the same information presented to everyone else. Jack’s reflection highlights how Early approaches the world differently than everyone else; what once made Early strange and alien to Jack is now an admirable quality. This shows how Jack is coming to understand and appreciate Early and, in the process, respect the value of alternate perspectives.

“And I watched as he stripped away all the softness in our house. The color, the warmth, the memories. Until all that was left was cold and hard. And clean. Very clean.”

Jack remembers how his father cleaned and packed up all of Elaine’s belongings shortly after her funeral. In Jack’s mind, John’s actions are proof that he is uncaring and detached from his wife’s death; Early is the one who helps him realize that John was attempting to put things right. Early can recognize this, as he, too, seeks order when he is overwhelmed or trying to process things.