Exegesis
The overarching irony of the novel is that it is a story steeped in Biblical scripture. Characters and event situate the novel as being non-existent without allusions to familiar stories from the Bible. The book seems beyond all doubt to have been written by someone not just familiar with the Bible, but an adherent; a true believer. And yet, any exegesis—interpretation through translation—of meaning in “The Purple Cloud” must work its way backward through four different levels of interpretation: it is the result of a contemporary author translating the shorthand transcriptions of a contemporary who was recounting the “visionary language which came puffing and fluttering in deliberate monotone” from a medium in a trance sometime in the recent past who was herself describing the text of a wildly unreliable narrator who existed in the distant future. The irony of interpreting the text of the novel is directly tied to the inherent irony of believing scripture which itself is subject to the same multiple layers of translation and interpretation.
The Last Whiner on Earth
Adam Jeffson is given to some truly majestic and ornate expressions of self-pity and, well, whining about his circumstances as the last man on earth upon living as apparently the only survivor of a global holocaust. This propensity for self-pity takes on the ornate majesty of grand irony considering that in order for him to become the last man on earth it took a murder by his fiancée. And then a later murder committed by himself.
“the White who is Master here”
Throughout the novel, Jeffson paints himself as being at the center of a cosmic battle between good and evil represented by The White and The Black. After bouncing back and forth in his loyalty between them, by the end he fully accepts his role as the new Adam giving birth to a new race of humanity and thus fulfilling the promise of goodness and light afforded by the powers of The White. The irony is that Jeffson only finally arrives at this perspective after impregnating the only other survivor: a young woman who shall become the new Eve. But this impregnation which leads to his affirmation of who is the Master only comes after turning his back on his acceptance of living a celibate life. But that that reversal of course and the decision to impregnate the new Eve only comes after she deceived him with the warning that a new—second—purple cloud of destruction was coming. Leading to a question that only seems logical: who was the real master here, the forces of the White or the forces of the Black?
Mysteriously Ironic Ways
Jeffson at one point—at point at which his memory is already very much failing and his reliability is cast under even deeper scrutiny—muses about his role in the grand battle for control of the cosmos between The White and the Black:
“there may have been some sort of arrangement, or understanding, between Black and White….that should mankind force his way to the Pole and the old forbidden secret biding there, then some mishap should not fail to overtake the race of man; that the White, being kindly disposed to mankind, did not wish this to occur, and intended, for the sake of the race, to destroy our entire expedition before it reached; and that the Black, knowing that the White meant to do this, and by what means, used me—me!—to outwit this design, first of all working that I should be one of the party of four to leave the ship on ski.”
This is the irony of the deluded. Only a man whose mental and emotional acuity was becoming frayed beyond the point of control—a man totally in the grips of monomania, in other words—could ever possibly conceive of himself as a pawn in a game of such literally universal consequence without irony when that man has led such an otherwise inconsequential life like Adam Jeffson.
Monomaniacal AND Narcissistic
The work of being the last man on earth is not easy. Essentially there are two choices facing this circumstance: you either commit to rebuilding or completing the destruction. Jeffson makes a stab at rebuilding but since he goes about it with a narcissistic intent—and narcissism is simply energy wasted without an audience—he inevitably chucks it all and decides to pursue the path that requires no audience for satisfaction:
Therefore now I shall fly from it, to another, sweeter work—not of building, but of destroying—not of Heaven, but of Hell—not of self-denial, but of reddest orgy. Constantinople—beware!'
The irony is in the ending when he changes course once again and takes on the purpose of rebuilding. This reversal is not the result of recognizing the error of his ways,however, but rather in recognizing the potnetial for subsisting on the divine food of the narcissist: he has discovered an audience:
For I, Adam Jeffson, second Parent of the world, hereby lay down, ordain, and decree for all time, clearly perceiving it now.
