How The Unwritten Utilizes Semiotics to Explain A Leviathan

The Unwritten #19

"Wilson said that some symbols become more real than what they stand for. Like they're part of a truth that's beyond the regular kind of truth." -The Unwritten #19 

With the release of issue #27 of The Unwritten this week, Mike Carey and Peter Gross send us "On To Genesis"which hints at that they will be getting to the business of addressing some more of our modern media habits (no real spoilers here, sorry). With such a shift this week I felt that it was time to go back and take a look at the last major story arc "Leviathan", to investigate some theoretical areas that the book is exploring and folding into the larger themes and concepts that the series is possibly trying to communicate.

Beginning with issue #19, Carey and Gross's "Leviathan" story arc in The Unwritten constructs an idea of metaphor usage in narratives akin to a post-structuralist viewpoint of semiotics. I am using the post-structuralist lens to explore the cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary aspects that The Unwritten has exhibited as the creators have used the series to dig at what the stories of numerous cultures could possibly mean to us and for us. I believe that this series helps us to explore the history of literature and myth while also investigating the power of what it is to be human and the connections that we all need.


Leviathan, like many words in this series, is multi-layered. For the purposes of the story arc in issues #19-23, Carey and Gross propose a theory on an idea of unconscious unification channeled through symbols and/or signs. The narrative is presenting an investigation into how certain words relate towards larger meanings (i.e. metaphors, the building blocks of communication). Using ideas present in 16th century thinker Thomas Hobbes's writings, it is revealed that Hobbe's Leviathan , as a word and concept, is implanted in Tom Taylor's head subconsciously in childhood, in which it is furthermore hinted at that Wilson, Tom's father, is preparing his son for a future event that will require him to be a strong centralized figure. Hobbes's Leviathan is a call for a unified society under a ruler (also linked by a proposed social contract theory). Using Tom as a centralized symbol of possible power (both author and audience generated) is something that Carey and Gross have played with in the entriety of the series--from messianic allusions up to the more monarachist idea of Leviathan.

But the larger idea at play that I want to focus on outside of power/knowledge dynamics in The Unwritten is that the individual reader assigns meaning. In doing so, the reader/individual thereby gains momentum with other individualized readers ( a way of de-centering the original author) which gives the story its real post structuralist stance. Tom's realization about the interconnectedness and literary mass unconsciousness that occurs through our stories is the turning point of the series. Think of it in this way-- the reader assigns meaning to a text (or text's centralized symbols) based on a context/experience in their own life. This symbol can remain static, but the context or situation of the reader can change over a lifetime or in gaining new understandings through other encounters with either same or non-same symbols. For example, the reveal in issue #23 is that Tom finds the power of the literary connection to the world not through the book Moby Dick itself (which he initially believes is the key, and in one way it is), but rather through the symbol of the Whale (i.e. the metaphor), the Leviathan, which had been used in other stories, as Carey and Gross point out, such as Pinocchio or the Adventures of Sinbad, therefore placing a greater symbol and/or meaning to the whale in the stories of many cultures. Tom's (and our own) mis-reading of the larger symbol initially had him blind to the actual unifying symbol of the whale not only in relation to the body of the whale, but also as a body politic, which his father Wilson wanted Tom to see (see figure 1). This is why we can examine Tom's (and our own) understandings regarding the representation of the whale (as seen in figure 1), through a concept associated with a branch of semiotics.

Figure 1

"When the world's flesh is scoured away, metaphors will be all that's left"- Wilson Taylor, The Unwritten #22


The important reveal that Tom Taylor is lead to (or discovers subconsciously) is essentially a semiotic theory of communication, specifically a theory that emerged in the work of Charles Sanders Pierce. Pierce's semiotics is one of the relational to a discursive claim to knowledge. One of the main narrative points of The Unwritten is that knowledge is power, and those that are aware of it are often at odds with those that control it (or attempt it). What Carey and Gross have revealed to us in the Leviathan arc is that Wilson had prepped Tom to realize the unconscious collective of the planet rests on the relation of cultures to stories-and those that are able to see the overlap (normally writers) possess great power. Therefore, fictional knowledge is real knowledge,  a knowledge that "[...] in Pierce's approach[...]emerges from the mediation of the experiences of the members of the community with the real" (*Sorrell, as cited in Rosiek & Atkinson, 2005, p.434). Even young Tom is reminded "For real truth is only true now/ Story-true is forever" (The Unwritten, issue #20).

What Carey and Gross are creating in the Leviathan arc  is something that creators in the comics medium have been chipping away at for decades. It is the very beautiful and optimistic viewpoint that we are all basically splintered from the same place in our needs, wants, and desires; that everyone wants to be able to live a free life; that everyone looks to provide for their family or neighbor; that ostensibly we are creatures of habits that have an overall good within them. All this is possible if we just step back to look at our stories to find the connections.

*Rosiek, J., Atkinson, B. (2005). Bridging The Divides: The Need for a Pragmatic Semiotics Of Teacher Knowledge Research. Educational Theory, 55(4), p.421-422.

All images used are copyrighted 2011 by Mike Carey and Peter Gross, published by Vertigo comics.