Scattered All Over the Earth

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-7

Chapters 8-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary: “Nora Speaks”

Nora works at the Karl Marx Museum in Trier and is the organizer of the Umami Festival. She is outside the museum putting up “cancelled” notices over the poster because Tenzo, the keynote chef giving the talk, claims to be stuck in Oslo due to political turmoil disrupting flights. An older man approaches and begins speaking to Nora, asking her about the festival and expressing his opinion that political unrest in Oslo is unlikely. She manages to ignore him, but his doubts about Oslo make her suspicious of Tenzo.

Roughly a month before the festival, Nora walks through the Kaiserthermen alone. She is lonely and hopes that the walk will spark her imagination and improve her mood. As she walks, she hears whimpering and finds a young man on the ground with a sprained ankle. He introduces himself as Tenzo, and as she watches him, unable to discern where he is from by his appearance, she creates a backstory for him. He looks foreign but speaks perfectly fluent German, which only adds to her confusion. He refuses to go to the hospital although he cannot put weight on his ankle, so Nora brings him home to her apartment, where he offers his shirt to her to use as a bandage for his injury.

Nora knows how to bandage his ankle because she used to work as a nurse’s assistant at a hospital. Wanting to be a member of the working class, she chose this job when she was younger instead of going to college, but when she noticed how the medical industry profits off its patients, she quit. She finally attended university, earning a degree in political science and philosophy. After graduation, she found a job at the Karl Marx Museum, where she plans to remain throughout her career.

Tenzo tells her that he walked to Trier and that before, he was bouncing around Europe, working in different sushi shops when he needed money. He explains that he is researching dashi, a stock made from fish and seaweed that is an essential ingredient in many soups. She offers to let him stay with her until he finds a job, and when she pries, he tells her he is from the “land of sushi.” Tenzo struggles to find a job at a restaurant, and in response, Nora plans the Umami Festival for him. They soon become lovers, but days before the festival, Tenzo announces that he is going to Oslo to compete in a contest where the reward is to work the Nobel Prize dinner. She is worried but does not try to stop him, and the morning of the festival, he calls to tell her he cannot return because of political turmoil.

Now, Nora goes around the city posting “cancelled” stickers on posters she put up. She decides to take a break, buys a sandwich, and heads for the baths to clear her head. While there, she encounters Akash, Hiruko, and Knut, and through Akash, she learns that Knut and Hiruko came to Trier for the festival. She explains its cancellation, and they too express doubt at the claim of political turmoil in Oslo. They all go to a coffee shop, where Akash learns on the internet that there was a terrorist attack in Oslo but that no flights were disrupted. Nora and Hiruko, assuming that Tenzo is in the same kind of political limbo as Hiruko, suggest that he has no passport and with the strict security after the attack, does not want to risk trying to travel. Nora wants to go find him in Oslo, and Knut and Hiruko decide to join her, wanting to meet Tenzo. Both have to return home first and request time off. Akash, unable to afford the trip on a student salary, stays behind. They decide to meet the next afternoon at the restaurant where Tenzo said the contest was happening. Nora remembers the name as “Nise-Fuji,” which makes Hiruko laugh because it means “Fake Mount Fuji.” Nora thinks she may have the name wrong, and Akash begs to be kept up to date on what happens.

Chapter 5 Summary: “Tenzo/Nanook Speaks”

Tenzo is not from the “land of sushi” but people always think he is, and because of that, he crafted the identity of Tenzo, researching sushi and the language, and allowing Nora to believe it. His real name is Nanook, and he is from a village in Greenland so small the government of Denmark paid North African refugees to move there. His parents both have online jobs, using English to make money after the local economy collapses due to climate change. He dreams of traveling outside of Greenland, and when his father pushes him to attend university, he applies for and receives financial aid from a Danish woman named Inga Nielson. She promises to pay for him to improve his Danish at a language school and then attend university, hopefully for medicine.

When Nanook arrives in Copenhagen, he is surprised by how people ignore him because of his Inuit identity. One day, in a coffee shop, a girl comes up to him and talks to him about school, asking if he can be a language partner for her so she can learn to read Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha in its original language. He realizes that she has mistaken him for someone from the “land of sushi.” He occasionally visits Inga, who is very supportive despite his efforts to dodge studying medicine. In language school, Nanook soon makes a friend named George, who is from the West Coast of the United States and wants to experience a smaller country. George explains to Nanook why many people believe the term “Eskimo” is offensive, and when George speaks of how the Indigenous culture and traditions of hunting in Greenland are under threat, Nanook explains that the real damage was done by the Europeans first.

Nanook believes that people marginalize him because of his identity, and though he is popular with girls, he refuses to date any because he one day wants to return to Greenland. As time goes on and he starts to miss the flavors of the sea, a friend sends him to a sushi restaurant named Samurai. On his first time there, a girl once again misidentifies him and asks him specific questions about sushi. He goes along with the mistake and finds that when he pretends to be from the “land of sushi,” he becomes more attractive to people. He gets a job at Samurai and, through research, cultivates his identity of Tenzo, though he grows worried as every website he visits disappears soon after. Nanook begins learning other languages at school and finishes his courses early. He asks Inga if he can go on a trip, and she agrees to fund him. He begins hopping around to different sushi restaurants, taking work.

At one restaurant, in Husum, the owner tells Nanook how his grandfather founded the restaurant with a friend from the “land of sushi” named Susanoo. Susanoo grew up in the “land of sushi” in a family that made robots. Many robots ended up in the Hometown PR Center, where their role was to explain to tourists and children what life in the area was like in the past. Disillusioned by the lies the robots told, Susanoo came to Germany to study shipbuilding. While in school, he meets and befriends Wolf Fisch and the two eventually open a sushi restaurant. However, after some time, Susanoo goes to Arles, in the South of France, with a woman and never returns.

Intending to eventually find Susanoo, Nanook continues working at the restaurant. One day, a regular customer accidentally leaves a book behind, and though Nanook intends to give it back, he begins reading it. It is a historical fiction book about the Roman Empire, and he becomes intrigued. When the customer returns and Nanook gives the book back, the customer tells Nanook that he is from Trier, where there are old ruins everywhere. Nanook decides to go to Trier and hitchhikes much of the way there, though he falls asleep as he nears the city and wakes to find the car abandoned and the man that drove him gone with his bag. Nanook then walks the rest of the way to Trier and finds the baths. While in the tunnels, exhausted, he collapses and twists his ankle. Nora finds him and they soon develop a strong bond. He grows nervous, however, that as the festival approaches, someone will expose him as a fraud. He also wants to extricate himself from Nora and claim some independence. When he hears about the contest in Oslo, he uses it as an excuse to put distance between them.

Chapters 4-5 Analysis

While globalization’s effects are often felt through language in the novel, the economic impacts of globalization are also a major factor in the characters’ lives. Nanook’s family’s history in Greenland demonstrates the fine line between Cultural Hybridity and Cultural Erasure. As climate change worsens, the traditional economy of Nanook and his people begins to fade and disappear, forcing his family to find other avenues of income. His father therefore learns English and begins working as a phone operator for an American company: “Not that he moved to America or anything. He worked from home, answering customers’ questions on the telephone” (84). Nanook’s father’s career change demonstrates how global capitalism has widespread effects on cultures around the world. With the traditional economy of Greenland disappearing, opportunity lies with the West, with America, whose culture and language dominate much of the global economy. It is easy for his father, once he knows English, to secure a job and spend his days at home, answering questions about vacuum cleaners over the phone instead of being out on the ice, hunting. The outsourcing of such work demonstrates globalization’s reach and its influence in erasing culturally unique economies across the world. Whereas in the past, Nanook’s father’s job might have required him to move to America, the technology available allows him to work anywhere in the world and at any time, further impacting life for those in Greenland.

Nanook’s journey in Scattered All Over the Earth is distinct from those of Akash and Hiruko. While Akash very clearly presents herself as Indian, and Hiruko’s identity centers on her origin in the “land of sushi,” Nanook often finds that his identity is mistaken by others. When people identify him as an Indigenous Greenlander, they usually ignore him, but often enough, he is mistaken as being from the same country as Hiruko. The first instance of this, in a coffee shop, startles him: “‘I’m in a Classic Manga Research Circle,’ she said, ‘and my dream is to one day read Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha in the original. Would you tandem with me?” (90). The confusion over his identity is one example of the many factors that contribute to The Stress of Diaspora. Nanook must contend with his identity and how others perceive him, being aware that their identification of his culture will impact how they not only approach him but also how they treat him. This is a factor on the minds of many immigrants who, in foreign countries, often face prejudice for a host of different reasons. Throughout the novel, immigrants encounter outright racist hostility from those who see them as a threat to European cultural authenticity, but they also must contend with well-intentioned people who exoticize or otherwise misunderstand their experience. When Nanook presents himself as Tenzo, he encounters people who assume he has deep wisdom to share about his vanished country. As Nanook, he must contend with his friend George’s romantic notions of the nomadic hunting lifestyle now under threat from climate change. He explains that his people used to stay in one place and hunt sea otters, taking only what they needed:

Then foreign fur traders came to trick us, threatening us until soon we were selling as many sea otters as we could because their fur could be sold at high prices. After many years there were no more sea otters nearby, so we started making long trips in search of new hunting grounds. But that time was like a bad dream we don’t want to remember. Now that it’s over, we are all relieved. (93)

In idealizing a hazy concept of the immediate past, George obscures the larger scope of history, recasting the aftermath of colonial violence as a purer and more authentic way of life than the one Nanook’s people now have. As everywhere in this book, the notions of cultural authenticity and purity are dangerous illusions belying a more complex and globally intertwined reality.

In posing as Tenzo, Nanook comes to fully understand Language as a Source of Identity and uses it, in tandem with his understanding of Europeans’ beliefs, to hide his past and create a new life. Nanook recognizes that being in Europe, surrounded by native speakers, his ability to influence his identity will come through a foreign language: “But no matter how good I got at European languages, no one would ever believe that I was from Europe. Learning a new language that would give me a second identity at the same time was much more fun” (100). Nanook is very gifted at languages, but without a lifelong relationship with European languages, he will never be accepted as European by the people around him. However, by learning Hiruko’s language, he can present himself as an immigrant from a faraway and mysterious country, drawing curiosity and interest from others. He recognizes that if he ever meets someone from Hiruko’s country, they will recognize him as a non-native speaker immediately, but he is confident in his ability to deceive Europeans, with their deep-seeded expectations and prejudices. In this way, Nanook is using language to define himself through others’ expectations of the language, combined with their assumptions of his physical appearance, crafting a completely new identity.