The Ennead by Jan Mark

First published: 1978

Type of work: Science fiction

Themes: Religion and social issues

Time of work: The future

Recommended Ages: 15-18

Locale: Erato, a barren planet

Principal Characters:

• Isaac, fifteen, who finagles a position as his half brother’s steward, thus avoiding deportation
• Eleanor Ashe, a gifted sculptor, who is uncompromising and headstrong and who, heedless of the consequences of her behavior, refuses to conform to Erato’s laws
• Moshe Ben-Yaakov, a gardener, who falls in love with Eleanor
• Theodore, the selfish half brother of Isaac
• The Reverend Aumer, minister of the First Secular Church of Epsilon
• Gregor, the steward for the town magistrate
• Mr. Peasmarsh, a hermit

The Story

The Ennead opens with a desperate and unemployed Isaac. Unless he finds employment immediately, he will be deported from Erato, a dismal, rocky, dust-laden planet—but one that offers some chance of survival. He successfully convinces his half brother Theodore to accept him into his household as steward and factotum. Isaac’s duties take him near the home of Mr. Peasmarsh, a hermit. The recluse confides in Isaac his intent to build a house and employ a sculptor to adorn it with statues. Artists do not last long on Erato; the last one was deported for overstaying his contract, so one must be brought in from another planet. Soon after arrangements are made with the Immigration Bureau, Peasmarsh dies. If the authorities learn of this, Eleanor, the artist, will not be allowed to board the intergalactic ship and begin the two-year journey. Isaac conceals the old man’s death, confident that he can find work for the sculptor, who, he fantasizes, will realize that her life has been saved and respond with limitless gratitude.

Far from being grateful, however, the headstrong Eleanor is hostile and argumentative. Worse, when taunted by Gregor, the steward of the town magistrate and a brutal, vicious manipulator, she assaults and humiliates him. Her meeting with Theodore does not go well, which causes Isaac to have misgivings about her future and his security.

Eleanor learns that she must attend the first Secular Church of Epsilon, an institution devoid of religious purpose, which functions to support the state’s intolerance of nonconformity. Despite warnings, she violates the first Sabbath, thereby adding the Reverend Aumer to her growing list of enemies. Moshe, the magistrate’s gardener, becomes Eleanor’s first friend. Later, they become more than friends. The relationship is prohibited by the community, and they become the victims of an elaborate extortion plot directed by Gregor, who savors his revenge. The topic of Aumer’s next sermon is lust. Although unnamed, the objects of his venom are clear to everyone, and his threat to exile them is met with approval. Moshe rises to leave and pauses to declare his disgust with this travesty. On his head, in open defiance of rules demanding undeviating conformity, is a yarmulke.

Aware that he will be sent back to the planet Euterpe and certain death, Moshe speaks to Eleanor one last time and, addressing Isaac by his Hebrew name, warns him against behaving like a golem, a mindless, soulless creature of Jewish folklore who does the bidding of others. As he leaves, Moshe is captured by the Deportation Squad. Anguished, Eleanor tells Theodore that she will not continue her work and shows him the incomplete statue. Instead of the conventional tribute to his father that her employer had commissioned, it is an image of subjugation and despair. Theodore orders the squad to return for Eleanor the next day, but when their prisoner learns that she will not be sent back on the same ship as Moshe, she attacks her captors and, in the subsequent confusion, escapes. She races to the church, where she calls to the populace, expecting a compassionate response. Instead, they react with fury at her daring attempt to challenge the social order. Isaac slips away from the others, leads Eleanor to temporary safety, then joins her in her flight toward certain death. Isaac recalls Moshe’s last words in church, “To your tents, O Israel,” and Eleanor promises to tell her mentor the story of Moshe’s people.

Context

The Ennead, Jan Mark’s third novel, marks a radical departure from her first two child-centered, contemporary, realistic, relatively easy-to-read works. The Ennead, in contrast, features mature characters in a futuristic society engaged in adventures with symbolic overtones. It is the first part of a loosely connected trilogy that includes Divide and Rule (1979) and Aquarius (1984), all three of which examine the human propensity for corruption, manipulation, and ruthlessness. Of the three, The Ennead is the most demanding of the reader’s background knowledge. It is also the most hopeful, because it presents a heroine who, although doomed, retains her integrity and inspires two others to follow her example despite the cost to themselves.

Mark’s finely tuned sense of the absurd and her skillful use of irony appear in later works. The church, having abandoned its religious role and assumed an entirely secular function as a repressive arm of the state, emerges even more forcefully as a metaphor of distorted purpose in Divide and Rule. Not confined to a single form, tone, or point of view, Mark’s later works include realistic novels of sensitivity and gentleness as well as bright, clever, and humorous short stories.

Critics have noted Jan Mark’s versatility and the intelligent, fluid quality of her writing. Culpan and Babbitt have observed that The Ennead surpasses “conventional science fiction,” the former comparing it favorably with Utopia and the latter noting its “sharp, witty, and clean” style. Perhaps too demanding to be popular with a mass audience, The Ennead rewards the patient reader with a disquieting, memorable, and thought-provoking literary experience.