The story “Carbon” from Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table encourages his audience to think about the writing process and the roots by tracing the life of a single carbon atom. Although it seems Levi’s book of short stories is about chemistry, it is not. The purpose of the story, “Carbon”, is to inspire the reader to reflect on writing by looking back to where it came from and how it came to be. Not only is Levi speaking of writing and the writing process, but he is also asking the reader to reflect and trace the same way with anything: to take this story and information and apply it to anything existing in the world.
Levi traces the life of the periodic element, carbon, as a basis for anything else. Levi writes, “Carbon, in fact, is a singular element… Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance: but its promotions, its entry into the living world, is not easy and must follow an obligatory, intricate path” (234). At first glance, this quote is simply talking about the element, carbon, its purpose of existence, and some facts about it. However, if you, as a reader, read this passage thinking of what could possibly take the place of the word “carbon”, you would see that Levi is simply using carbon because it is his way of expressing what he is trying to say. He uses what he knows to get his point across; he knows chemistry, so he uses a single carbon atom in hopes that the reader will know to replace that single carbon atom with their own alternative. In our case, we can replace the single carbon atom with writing. So, what does it sound like when we do this? Therefore writing “is the key element of living substance: but its promotions, its entry into the living world, is not easy and must follow an obligatory, intricate path”. To me, replacing carbon with writing shows me the same words, but a different meaning that more directly applies to writing instead of carbon. Taking a look at our newly formed sentence, it tells us that we can’t live without writing, but that does not mean how writing came to be how it is today was an easy process. It also says that writing had to follow a required and detailed path to get to where it is. Thinking of what this means, I think of how this particular writing came to be. Levi might be using the carbon atom, but it is simply a facade for anything else, for example, writing, in hopes for you to think about the roots and process of something.
The second to last page of this story, Levi writes, “It is possible to demonstrate that this completely arbitrary story is nevertheless true. I could tell innumerable other stories, and they would all be true… The number of atoms is so great that one could always be found whose story coincides with any capriciously invented story. I could recount an endless number of stories about carbon atoms that become colors or perfumes in flowers” (240). He is saying that you could look at this story, and think that it’s obvious and exchangeable; why write about something that people already know and experience daily? Why try to write about the life of a carbon atom when it could end up anywhere? Levi is speaking on the possibility that you could think this story is pointless due to the fact that he could choose any of the numerous possible places a single carbon atom could end up and just end the story with that. But that isn’t what Levi wants nor is that his purpose of writing this story in the first place. He continues to write, “Instead, I will tell just one more story, the most secret, and I will tell it with the humility and restraint of him who knows from the start that his theme is desperate, his means feeble, and the trade of clothing facts in words is bound by its very nature to fail” (240). This “one more story” is how this writing came to be, the process of the writing of his you are reading right now. This story he speaks of is himself writing this story which we realize when he ends the story saying, “This cell belongs to a brain, and it is my brain, the brain of the me who is writing… issuing out a labyrinthine tangle of yeses and noes, makes my hand run along a certain path on the paper… guides this hand of mine to impress on the paper this dot, here, this one” (241). Levi finally clearly tells us the purpose of telling this story. He used a single carbon atom to get the reader to reflect on where things come from. His writing that is being read takes you back to how this writing even exists: a single carbon atom that became a part of a cell within Levi to make him write this story. From Levi’s writing, the reader not only is forced to reflect on how Levi’s writing literally came to existence but also why Levi wrote this and why “carbon”.
To look back at a single carbon atom and to trace it all the way until it is time to choose what it becomes a part of, we are forced to reflect on how it got all the way to us. Here, we explore how Levi’s writing, out of all places, came to right in front of us to read when it all started as a single carbon atom that could’ve become anything and could’ve gone anywhere.
