There is more than one way to map, and just as this novel plays with conflicting story traditions, I think King is also playing with conflicting ways to chart territory. What do you think lies at the centre of King’s mapping metaphor?
Maps are inherently political, and I think it is a purposeful choice that King makes to include so much content related to mapping. Just as King carefully examines the conflicts and differences between oral storytelling and written works, mapping is another technique that is used by all cultures due to necessity, but the way it is done — and the way it is recognized — varies across them.
For instance, at a conference I attended last summer, a representative from a small northern municipality in Ontario asked the provincial transportation minister why First Nations were not included on provincial maps of her area. The minister said she did not know this was an issue, but promised to get it fixed. The fact that this issue existed in the first place, combined with the fact that the provincial minister responsible for the maps had no idea it was an ongoing problem, speaks to the way modern colonial governments can engage in erasure of Indigenous communities even without realizing it.
As King grapples with and occasionally mocks Western ways of storytelling, he also pokes fun at Western conceptions of mapping — for instance, by making all roads lead not to Rome, but to Fort Marion for the Women who fall from the sky.