Pompeii by Robert Harris - Assignment Example

Robert Harris’s novel Pompeii spans four days in the history of this Roman town. The two days prior to the eruption and the two days of eruptive violence comprise the entire span of the novel. In these four short days, the young engineer Marcus Attilius will repair an aqueduct, navigate the treacherous halls of Roman politics, solve a mystery, sail with Pliny and fall in love; all while surviving a volcanic eruption 100,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that was detonated over Hiroshima (Harris). Although the plot moves briskly through Pompeii, one of the real drivers of the story is the science behind the tale. The science in the book Pompeii is used by the author as foreshadowing for the events to come in each chapter. There is a quote from some sort of academic or professional book or journal such as Dynamics of Volcanism or Volcanoes: A Planetary Perspective. The science behind the physical actions of the mountain and the seas surrounding Pompeii adds a tension to the story that would not be present if the author did not tip off the reader at the beginning of each chapter. The science of volcanism is used as effectively in telling this story, as is any literary device. The action begins with Marcus Attilius being called from Rome to be the new aquarius for the cities along the Campagnia coast. Pompeii and Herculaneum are among these cities. The aquarius is the engineer charged with keeping the municipal aqueducts in working order. He was assigned here from Rome because the prior aquarius had gone missing mysteriously. Campagnia is in the midst of a terrible drought and Attilius is worried that the reservoir will soon go dry. To preclude this, the first chapter finds the new aquarius leading a reluctant team of laborers up the side of Mt. Vesuvius to fins a new spring they cam tap in order to supply more water to the aqueduct. The science that drives the first two incidents centers around the emission of sulfur from vents in the ground prior to a volcanic eruption. As magma moves into the space occupied by a dormant volcano, the balance of sulfur and carbon can change. This is because the minerals locked in rocks escapes as a gas when the magma melts the material that makes up the Earth’s crust. Sulfur can be emitted as a vapor into the atmosphere, giving off a smell like rotten eggs. This gaseous sulfur is important at the beginning of the story. Marcus Attilius uses a technique his father taught him to locate the source of a spring. Laying on his belly, he scans the horizon of the earth looking for ripples of water vapor in the air. Spotting an area of vapor, Attilius commands the workers with him do dig in a certain spot. The digging is not successful. A trace of water is found, but the vapor that was escaping was apparently a gas other than water vapor. This failed attempt to find water sets up early conflict between Attilius and the supervisor of the workers, Corax. Soon after coming down off of the mountain, Attilius is called to the house of a local tycoon Ampliatus. The daughter of Ampliatus, Corelia, asks him to intervene on behalf of a slave that is about to be executed. The slave’s offense was the poisoning of some fish that Amliatus had been keeping. All of the fish were dead and Ampliatus was sure the slave had poisoned them. Attilius did not arrive in time to save the slave, but he did discover that sulfur had contaminated the aqueduct water. His announcement of this in front of the household made Ampliatus look foolish. Attilius had made two formidable enemies only two chapters into the book. Things go from bad to worse for Attilius. Small earthquakes begin to shake the ground. They are nothing like the earthquakes that wrecked Pompeii seventeen years ago. They are almost imperceptible, actually. The best way to even see if they are occurring is to see the ripples they form in a wine glass. Although he doesn’t see the connection, these earth tremors are the cause of a failure of the aqueduct. All of the towns below Pompeii are going without water. There is panic because the aqueduct is the only source of fresh water along the entire coastline. Seismic activity is a common occurrence before a volcano erupts. The surface of the volcano actually will bulge as gasses and expanding water get trapped under the surface without escape. This bulging and pressure causes slippages along established fault lines or creates new ones where there are weaknesses in the structure. The heat of the new magma may also cause magma that has long since cooled to began to expand, creating tremors as well. There is actually several passages in the book where Pliny, the Naturalist and Admiral of the Naval Fleet at Pompeii measures the occurrences of these tremors by recording their intensity and frequency. In the hours leading up to the eruption, the tremors become both more frequent and more intense. This is a pattern that has been observed by modern vulcanologists studying recent eruptions. While it is not exact at predicting when a volcano is going to erupt, an increase in seismic activity is a good indication that a volcano is building for an eruption. The action resumes as Attilius and his men scramble to find the area of damage along the line of the aqueduct. They know that Pompeii still has water because the fountains are running there. They set out for Pompeii, assisted by Pliny who has given them a ship for speedy passage. Once in Pompeii, it becomes clear that the water is not polluted here with sulfur and that the aqueduct is broken nearby because the water pressure is extremely high. They split into teams to accomplish all of the tasks necessary to find the break. Corax goes ahead to find the break in the aqueduct while Attilius goes to gather tools and workers. He ends up needing to borrow materials and men from Ampliatus, which makes Attilius very uncomfortable. His suspicions of the tycoon are confirmed soon when Ampliatus’s own daughter rides out to the field to warn Attilius that her father has hired someone to kill him. Apparently, the old aquarius was corrupt and was taking bribes from Ampliatus in exchange for free water from the civic aqueducts. Ampliatus suspected Attilius would not go for such an arrangement so he wanted him out of the way. The next bit of science that moves the story along is the cause of the obstruction in the aqueduct. Attilius finds that something has caused the floor of the aqueduct to shear and be thrust up even with the ceiling of the other portion of the aqueduct. This is a very realistic occurrence because of the seismic activity caused by the bulging mountain. The fault slipped vertically in this instance, causing the aqueduct to collapse. Lateral and horizontal movement along faults is common in the days, weeks and months prior to a volcanic eruption (Lutgens and Tarbuck). A mid act climax occurs when Attilius and Corax finally square off. Attilius, after clearing and repairing the aqueduct, sends the workers back to town. He wants to understand what is happening on the mountain that is causing it to swell and heave. He knows that the aqueduct will rupture again if he can’t figure out why the mountain is acting so strangely. At the summit of Vesuvius. Attilius finds the two-week old corpse of the old aquarius. Apparently he had come up on a similar errand and died up on the mountain. His body lay in a depression in the ground about 30 yards in circumference and several feet deep. Attilius attempts to retrieve the body but is overcome with the vapors escaping from this vent in the ground. As he is swooning, he sees the image of Corax on the other side of the depression. He holds a knife and attempts to come straight across the vent to kill Attilius. He makes it to the edge of the depression before noxious gasses emanating from the vent overcome him. The science behind this event becomes even more important during the second day of eruptions over Pompeii, but this event shows the importance of the science behind a volcanic eruption. Often, the most deadly aspects of a volcano is not the eruption itself or even the magma that spills our of the vent, incinerating all in it’s path. Often it is the hot gasses that are forced out of Earth’s mantle and crust that is the most deadly. Super heated water vapor, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide are some of the common deadly gasses that spew out of volcanoes. The author hints that this very vent that plays host to the fatal showdown between Attilius and Corax is the very vent from which the mountain will be erupting soon. Understanding the science behind the noxious gasses and their destructive potential makes the showdown all the more dramatic. Wondering if the protagonist is going to escape before the vent opens and destroys the cities adds tension to the storyline. Attilius does make it down from the mountain, and by this time his thoughts have turned to Corelia. She had risked her life to save his and she had now returned to her home in Pompeii to face her wrathful father. Attilius attempts to head to Pompeii but the mountain erupt. No one is sure what is actually coming out of the mountain because no one has ever seen anything like this. Most thought that it was smoke, but it soon becomes apparent that the material is a fine ash. This is often the first material to be emitted from a dormant volcano that becomes active again. The ash is fine but can be fused together into larger clasts that have the potential to harm if hit someone. This ash is so fine it can travel high into the atmosphere and actually alter climatic patterns around the world for many years (Critchfield). Many in Pompeii looked up in awe at the plume of ash rising to the sky but didn’t feel the need to react right away. The next stage of the eruption finds greater pyroclastic materials erupting from the volcano. Pumice started to fall from the sky. This is rock that forms from magma that is emitted high into the atmosphere, cooling while in flight and then falling to the earth. During these types of eruptions, rock literally rains down on the cities below. So much pumice can fall that the entire landscape can be changed without lava running down the slope of the volcano (Ritter, et al.). This is what happened in Pompeii. Up to nine feet of pumice fell in some places. This rain of rock is psychologically and physically devastating. Homes begin to collapse under the weight of the rock. The sky is darkened and there appears to be no end in sight because the eruption keeps increasing in violence. During this rain of pumice, Attilius is trying to get to Pompeii any way he can. He ends up stranded with Pliny in the bay of Neapolis on a ship. The pumice floats on the water due to its natural porosity. The oars of the ship are worthless because the pumice is so thick they can’t reach the water. The captain runs the ship aground after catching a breeze with the sail. Making his way to Pompeii, Attilius is trying to run against the wave of refugees leaving the city. His only thought is to rescue the woman that has rescued him. He finds Corelia locked in a bathhouse, kept captive by her own father. Ampliatus has gone insane. The two lovers make a break for freedom just before the climactic final eruption of Vesuvius. The final stage of the eruption was a pyroclastic flow probably made up of super-heated gasses such as water vapor and sulfur dioxide that were heavier than the surrounding atmosphere. The gasses came boiling our of the vent at the top of the mountain and charged down the mountain slope at hundreds of miles per hour (Halliday and Resnick). Everything in their wake was ignited and all living things caught by this fast moving wall of gas and ash suffocated or had their respiratory organs burned beyond repair. The flow would have been through the town in less than a minute, but that would be enough time to destroy everyone in town. The evil tycoon Ampliatus dies while pursuing Attilius and Corelia. But how do the lovers escape? Again the answer is founded in sound science. Attilius used the lifeblood of the city, the aqueduct, as an underground hiding place. The lovers followed the aqueduct out of Pompeii and were preserved to live and love again. Work Cited Critchfield, Howard J. General Climatology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1983. Print. Halliday, David, and Robert Resnick. Fundamentals of Physics. New York: Wiley, 1988. Print. Harris, Robert. Pompeii: a Novel. New York: Random House, 2003. Print. Lutgens, Frederick K., and Edward J. Tarbuck. Essentials of Geology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995. Print. Ritter, Dale F., R. Craig. Kochel, and Jerry R. Miller. Process Geomorphology. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown, 1995. Print. Read More