Explanation of The Novel's Title
The title is derived from Matthew Arnold's poem Dover Beach. This excerpt of the poem appears at the beginning of the book:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
— Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (emphasis added)
This relates to the novel in several ways. The characters are indeed swept about, often against their will, by the "ignorant armies" of the Green Storm and Traktionstadtsgesellschaft, on the "darkling plain" of the Great Hunting Ground.
Reeve references his choice of title himself towards the end of the book when the character Nimrod Pennyroyal writes a book within a book titled Ignorant Armies.
Read more about this topic: A Darkling Plain
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