Chess Symbol Analysis

As Kublai Khan becomes increasingly frustrated with Marco Polo’s fantastical descriptions of cities (and Marco’s inability to speak Kublai’s language), Kublai decides to both ask Marco to describe cities using chess pieces and to play chess with him. He discovers at this point that Marco can not only speak the language, but that he can also describe the cities just as well using chess pieces as he can with the usual assortment of odd objects he supposedly gathered from the cities. And yet, the cities Marco Polo describes with the chess pieces seem just as fantastical as the previous ones. The chessboard, pieces, and game as a whole then come to represent a system that can’t give a person any new analysis or understanding about information they have, while also suggesting that the desire to make information work within a system is entirely understandable. Then, as Marco and Kublai play, Kublai begins to wonder what the point even is of playing the game or winning—essentially, nothing happens even if he does win. However, as Marco begins to “read” the ebony and ivory of the chessboard and paints images in Kublai’s mind of faraway expeditions to harvest ebony, the novel seems to suggest that systems of analysis—and by extension, storytelling as a whole—aren’t any less worthwhile and indeed, can be useful, even if just as entertainment.