60 pages • 2 hours read
Eleanor CattonBirnam Wood
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth
Birnam Wood is heavily influenced by Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Macbeth (1623). The first and most obvious influence is the title and name of the organization, which in Macbeth refers to the forest outside Macbeth’s castle and one of the prophecies that he dramatically misunderstands. It states that he will not be vanquished until the trees of the wood come to fight him, which he arrogantly interprets as impossible. Much like Macbeth, Lemoine assumes that Birnam Wood is no threat, as it’s small, poor, and insignificant. Misinterpreting and misjudging Birnam Wood contributes to the downfall of both characters.
Another similarity is the idea of open-source information misleading people. In an interview, Eleanor Catton refers to the witches’ prophecies in Macbeth as “open-source information” rather than magical predictions. If Macbeth had carefully considered the predictions, the two big surprises in the play wouldn’t have happened. It’s not hidden information that an invading army will choose the surrounding wood for cover, or that Macduff was born by cesarean (and hence kills Macbeth—Macbeth believes that he cannot be killed by any man born of a woman). Macbeth had access to those facts. Catton’s characters use and interpret open-source information such as property descriptions, online biographies, news articles, cellphone data, and tracking apps to suit their own purposes. The information appears on their screens like the oracles of the play; like Macbeth, every one of Catton’s characters misuses and misinterprets information, resulting in their downfall (Interview with Miwa Messer, Poured Over, Mar. 2023).
The main way Shakespeare’s play influenced Birnam Wood, however, is the character of Macbeth himself. Catton notes that he’s the single major Shakespearean tragic hero with whom no one identifies. He is the model of unchecked ambition, greed for power, and betrayal. Catton states in the same interview that she wanted every character to be Macbeth in their own personal way, and so each character exhibits an ambition for power that corrupts, and each character betrays either themself or another person. This idea becomes the central theme of her book, Ambition as the Root of All Evil. As in Macbeth, any character corrupted by ambition does not survive, so there is no one left standing at the end Birnam Wood.
Genre Context: The Thriller and Its Subgenres
Birnam Wood is a thriller; this is a large genre containing many subgenres and spinoffs. The spy thriller, the political thriller, the heist, and the disaster thriller are only a few that fall under its vast umbrella. Despite the variety, most thrillers, including Birnam Wood, share common tropes, including quick pacing, high stakes, plot twists, and a climactic ending. There are, however, aspects of Birnam Wood that diverge from the standard thriller, which changes the way reviewers and booksellers refer to the novel, sometimes placing it in one of the many thriller subgenres.
Birnam Wood has been called a psychological thriller, as it takes time to explore the emotional and psychological depths of the characters, focusing on how they’re at odds with those around them. Standards of the subgenre like Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938) are characterized by an intense interiority. Catton cited Highsmith as an influence for Birnam Wood (Poured Over), and the anxious, self-aware stream of consciousness is indeed similar to Highsmith’s depiction of Ripley. This interiority pushes Birnam Wood further into psychological thriller territory as the characters’ mental states becomes the source of tension in the novel rather than a crime, existential threat, or mystery that drives traditional thrillers. Lemoine’s plans are indeed thriller-worthy, but it’s the motives, choices, and betrayals of the other characters that create Birnam Wood’s tension. Because the reader knows the hidden motives and conflicting plans, the increasing sense of dread comes from watching the characters spin toward collision rather than the standard race to defeat an external threat.
Another way readers have categorized Birnam Wood is as an eco-thriller. The eco-thriller has inside itself a wide range of differences. The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) by Edward Abbey, Jaws (1974) by Peter Benchley, and The Pelican Brief (1993) by John Grisham are all considered eco-thrillers as they focus on some aspects of nature, whether through activists fighting environmental disaster, a sea creature’s revenge, or legal issues. Birnam Wood’s main plot centers around gardening activists and a villain who drains the land of rare-earth minerals, but it also contains a larger environmental plea to humanity.
