While reading all about Columbus’ train wreck of a second voyage, I thought about how that story compares to Saramago’s The Tale of the Unknown Island. If you think about it, they both start the same way. A man asks a king (or several kings and queens) for a boat. Why? Because he believes that there is still land to discover, even though he doesn’t really know where it is. Of course, The Tale of the Unknown Island is a story filled with metaphors and beautiful ideas, and is meant, I think, to be more of a thought-proving piece rather than a literal story. But in both stories, the two men set sail, and plan to explore new lands and find new unknown islands.

The difference is we get to see what happens to Columbus as he sails across the ocean, which we don’t get in Saramago’s short tale. We follow along as he tries to adhere to his own plan and directions. While he hops from one island to the next, often having to backtrack and change routes, I thought about how this must have affected his map, and then what purposes a map really serves when you’re truly exploring a new world.

To me, literal maps of land and geography have two main uses: they can be used for directions (like people using Siri or MapQuest to figure out how to get to Utica), or they can be used to record where you’ve been (for instance, us tracking our weeks for this class, or for an explorer, jotting down their route and marking where they’ve been).

Finally, though, the story of Columbus’ second voyage shows that even though we use maps to direct us, to follow a path, and to record our travels, in the end they have no bearing on our actual experiences. Sure, Columbus tried to adhere to his own path through the islands, but then he got thrown off course by weather and sickness. Yes, Columbus and others kept journals (a way of mapping) of the events of the voyage, but it doesn’t take much to know that those accounts of the “Christian’s” civility and the vast amount of gold they found are very much exaggerated—if not made-up entirely.