Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
An inventive narrative of Riddley Walker’s endeavour to comprehend the past and present of a world that is still in existence two thousand years after the ultimate calamity occurs is written in an eccentric yet authentic voice.
“Riddley Walker” by Russell Hoban is more than just a post-apocalyptic book; because of the language it utilizes and the mythology it invents, it stands out as a work that may have been left behind by an imaginary civilisation. Hoban chose the county of Kent in southeast England, now known as Inland, as his location. In 1997, a phenomenon known as the Power Ring, encircling what was once Canterbury, was responsible for a nuclear catastrophe known as the 1 Big 1, which came dangerously close to wiping out most of humanity.
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
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Since then, humanity has experienced an evolutionary breakdown and regressed to tribal society and technology from the Iron Age, using spears to hunt, scavenging for scrap metal, and speaking a rudimentary version of Cockney English.
The voice of the book is that of 12-year-old Riddley Walker, who is one of the few literate members of his village. His writing style, which includes forming jumbled sentences and phonetically spelling words, is a reflection of the rudimentary speech of his society. He is the only one who can appreciate the magnificence of the civilisation that was long since destroyed, and he is perplexed as to why his own people are unable to “place boats in the air and pictures on the wind.”
He channels the energy of an entity known as Eusa, a fabled character to whom the 1 Big 1 and possibly all of creation are attributed, as a “connexion” man. The most well-known site in “Cambry,” the former Canterbury, is where Eusa got her name from. An eyeless child named Lissener who Riddley meets and who calls himself the “Ardship of Cambry” demonstrates the strange logic with which the theologies from the two eras have converged. Riddley discovers a Punch hand puppet one day while digging at a location called Widders Dump, complete with a severed hand still inside.
This theatrical item is known to Abel Goodparley, Inland’s “Pry Mincer,” but the Inlanders, whose sole idea of amusement is the “shows” that recount the Eusa legend, are unaware of its significance. Nevertheless, it is this puppet who gives Riddley the motivation to break out from his captivity as a connexion man and go on a new course.
The novel does not attempt to resolve any disputes through the use of violence, while having lots of violent scenes, particularly when Riddley discovers a material that, when combined with “Saul & Peter” and “chard coal,” creates a potent explosive.
Hoban wisely stays away from clichés like a final showdown between rival factions and morality tales about good triumphing over evil. He also doesn’t use the book as a warning to the public about the horrors of a post-nuclear era; instead, the emphasis is solely on a civilization’s awakening to the possibility of change.
The book is brilliant, even though it is admittedly challenging to read and comprehend because the words demand such intense focus to understand what Riddley is trying to communicate. It develops its own bold style of communication and pays off the careful and attentive reader who relishes the effort of navigating a foreign environment with enigmatic symbols.
