Titus Alone - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The story follows Titus' journey in the world outside Gormenghast Castle, having left his home at the end of the second book.

He bumbles through a desert for a time, then uses a canoe to row down the river, where the reader gets a surprise: although Gormenghast is a crumbling, medieval castle, Titus finds himself in a modern city. Skyscrapers tower, and the river itself is covered in pipes, canals, and fishermen. As he slips the painter on the canoe, he has his first encounter with two faceless, silent persons, ostensibly police officers.

Later, Titus befriends a man named Muzzlehatch, who runs a zoo and drives a shark-shaped car. He meets and has an affair with Muzzlehatch's former lover, Juno. Titus walks down a crumbling highway, where he has an unpleasant encounter with a beggar that eats money. He even spends some time wandering around the Under-river, an underground city filled with outcasts, runaways, and derelicts. There (in yet another contrast to the antiquity of previous novels) someone informs us that 'Molusk' has just circled the moon, probably a kind of metal-plated satellite.

Titus eventually is found in a state of fever by a woman named Cheeta, who is the daughter of a scientist who runs a light-bulb equipped factory filled with mysterious bad smells and who talks to his workers through a giant television set. Cheeta is described as a 'modern girl' with 'a new kind of beauty', who drives a helicopter. Titus lusts for her because he has spent all his life in a tight-laced Medieval castle, and Cheeta lives like science incarnate. Although Titus lusts for her body, he also tells her several times that he hates her and tells her to 'go home to your horde of vestal virgins and forget me as I shall forget you.' Cheeta is shocked because other men would give anything for her favor. She contrives an elaborate plan to lure him into the "Black House", to see 'a hundred bright inventions', and end their relationship on a high note. There, she attempts to recreate Gormenghast horrendously, but is foiled by Muzzlehatch, who dies in the effort. Muzzlehatch also manages to blow up Cheeta's father's factory as revenge for the murder of his animals. Titus flees and spends months wandering a wasteland alone, until he comes across a large rock that he knew from his childhood. Hearing the guns of Gormenghast saluting the missing Earl, he is confirmed in his knowledge that he is not insane and that the Castle exists. Tempted to return to his duties, he nevertheless confirms his desire for independence and once again strikes off alone, this time in a different direction.