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Giving a Voice to Nature – Humility and Curiosity

Giving a Voice to Nature: Humility and Curiosity

To counter climate change and ecosystem collapse, one strategy has been to give political rights and personhood to natural entities such as rivers, forests and lakes, ensuring the protection of their healthy existence. Organisations working together under the Global Alliance of Rights of Nature argue that the needs and desires of humanity have to be balanced against what is good for other species and the planet as a whole. In order to represent the needs and wishes of other species, it becomes essential to represent their voices accurately and earnestly. While considering natural entities as people or at least as having personhood is common in mythologies and pantheons, for much of modern Western thinking, nature was separated from humanity, either in the nature/culture dichotomy or through the idea that humans were somehow positioned outside or above nature. This anthropocentric worldview, which presents human reasoning as the highest form of knowledge, also disconnects the human experience from the experiences of other animals. Rediscovering the needs, desires and preferences of non-human animals and ecosystems as a whole requires a multidisciplinary approach, combining considerations from perspectives of law, ecology, politics and philosophy, but also benefits from literary attempts to imagine non-human vantage points. In order to approach voices outside human standards, authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Laura Jean McKay and Alan Moore invite their readers to consider non-human perspectives through disturbing assumptions and deconstructing the human-nature binary. To establish the voices of nature and continue to approximate consciousness beyond human limits, literary imagination allows readers to feel and think beyond their own purview, a process that will need to be further refined indefinitely to produce the respect and understanding humans owe to the environment they are a part of.

In “The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of Association of Therolinguistics”, Ursula K. Le Guin explores animal language from the perspective of a future science journal to show the beauty and humility that can be discovered when people take on non-human perspectives. In examples from an ant writing revolutionary texts on seeds, a discussion on whether it is possible and worthwhile to study the body language of penguins and a glance at the future frontier of plant language, Le Guin stretches what humans conceive of as language through advancing science beyond current paradigms. The debate on animal language has already been had, as the editor writes in the third segment: “Language is communication. That is the axiom on which all our theory and research rest, and from which all our discoveries derive; and the success of the discoveries testifies to the validity of the axiom.” (3) This starting point allows the reader to join the imaginative leap where humans have come to accept that animals deserve to be listened to on their own terms and have compiled enough data to discover the nuances and significance of animal communication. By starting in the middle of new findings, the story invites the reader to become a “therolinguist” and move outside their human framework.

By deconstructing the assumptions in human associations, Le Guin invites the reader to exercise in a non-human view of the world. The first example where Le Guin asks the reader to question their own human bias is in the message “written in touch-gland exudation on degerminated acacia seeds laid in rows at the end of a narrow, erratic tunnel leading off from one of the deeper levels of the colony” (1), authored by an anonymous ant. The message is presented as having multiple possible readings, relying on the current consensus of translation, but also notes that this text shows a “striking lack of resemblance to any other Ant texts known to us” (1). This starting point makes it possible for Le Guin to treat readers as experts, while at the same time opening the first step in listening to alternate stories: resisting the assumptions of one’s own worldview. Because “[n]o known dialect of Ant employs any verbal person except the third person singular and plural and the first person plural” (1), the first message Le Guin presents is radically ambiguous and can be read as “an autobiography or a manifesto” (1). This consideration of different readings is further exemplified by the suggested new reading of seeds 30-31, “Eat the Eggs! Up with the Queen!” (1), where the therolinguist suggests that despite human associations with the word “up” as being positive and therefore praising the queen, ants might use it as a condemnation or threat: 

We venture to suggest that the confusion over Seed 31 may result from an ethnocentric interpretation of the word “up.” To us, “up” is a “good” direction. Not so, or not necessarily so, to an ant. “Up” is where the food comes from, to be sure; but “down” is where security, peace, and home are to be found. “Up” is the scorching sun; the freezing night; no shelter in the beloved tunnels; exile; death. Therefore we suggest that this strange author, in the solitude of her lonely tunnel, sought with what means she had to express the ultimate blasphemy conceivable to an ant, and that the correct reading of Seeds 30-31, in human terms, is: Eat the eggs! Down with the Queen!” (2)

This reversal of the “ethnocentric interpretation” through the means of imaginative science showcases the ability of literature and the arts to stretch the limits of human understanding beyond its self-centered assumptions.[1] Presented as an academic debate in a future that is advanced, but recognisable, this exercise in open-mindedness nurtures a willingness to be curious about nature’s communication while creating awareness of human limitations in interpretation.

The second and third example of “The Author of the Acacia Seeds” present similar messages on the requirement of humility and curiosity when looking at communication outside the human sphere. Reading Penguin body language through “the use of the underwater motion-picture camera” so that “by constant repetition and patient study, many elements of this most elegant and lively literature may be grasped” nevertheless has a disclaimer: “the nuances, and perhaps the essence, must forever elude us.” (2). The thought-provoking idea of humans learning how to read the “literature” of penguins swimming, which Le Guin can present as scientific fact, creates excitement, whereas the recognition that the human mind might never comprehend this animal language completely fosters humility and respect for the authentic voice of the penguin. Both are required to discover the meaning in penguin speech. When D. Petri, the penguin therolinguist, states that “the difficulty of translation is still with us” (3), the examples are telling. Human verbal language cannot represent the “multiplicity of the original text” (original italics, 3), so ballet is a better medium. Petri continues: “Indeed, what we call ‘translations’ from the Adélie—or from any group kinetic text—are, to put it bluntly, mere notes—libretto without the opera. The ballet version is the true translation. Nothing in words can be complete.” (3). Petri, and thus Le Guin, acknowledges that human language is inherently connected to human experiences, suggesting an unbridgeable gap between the experience of Adélie penguins and humans. However, Petri’s enthusiasm to keep studying penguin by first deciphering Emperor, listing reasons for its closer approximation to human speech, shows that the value of the endeavour is not in a literal or full translation, but in the discoveries on approximating the penguin’s communication. Their poetic description of the Emperor’s “kinetic language” (4) shows Petri’s and Le Guin’s imaginative power and can convince the reader that the aim of listening to animal voices is not to capture their language and translate it, but to learn from the ways that other life forms perceive and express. This is also expressed in the third segment, where the next frontier is presented as learning how to understand plant life. Here, Le Guin deftly recreates the possible objections of readers in the present through imagined complaints in the future:

Can we in fact know it? Can we ever understand it?

It will be immensely difficult. That is clear. But we should not despair. Remember that so late

as the mid-twentieth century, most scientists, and many artists, did not believe that Dolphin

would ever be comprehensible to the human brain—or worth comprehending! Let another

century pass, and we may seem equally laughable. “Do you realise,” the phytolinguist will say

to the aesthetic critic, “that they couldn’t even read Eggplant?” And they will smile at our

ignorance, as they pick up their rucksacks and hike on up to read the newly deciphered lyrics

of the lichen on the north face of Pike’s Peak. (5)

The appeal of interacting with other living beings is combined with a refusal to accept the skepticism of what could be called anthropocentrists. The mid-twentieth century, a symbol of the ignorant past, is in fact Le Guin’s present, from where she imagines a future in which listening to the voices of non-human nature is recognised to be valuable and possible. Thereby, she makes a strong case for the ability of humanity to learn how to understand the natural world they are a part of, while recognising there are limits to the understanding of the human mind. The research done by these ambitious, enthusiastic and yet humble scientists offers a powerful direction for representing the voices of other species, where the goal is not completion, but increased approximation with the awareness that human limitations require human humility.

Another instance of the literary capacity to change perspective on human-non-human relationships is the The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay, where the population of Australia falls prey to a flu that allows them to hear what animals are saying through smell, body language and sound. Frequently, the effect is unsettling, serving to unmoore the reader from their position of anthropocentrism. The central relationship is between Jean, a caretaker at an animal park and shelter, and Sue, one of the dingoes she takes care of until the disease breaks out. Already before the flu, Jean is aware of the limitations of human awareness and sees animals as having unique perspectives: “Tell me she doesn’t know something about the world that you and me haven’t ever thought of” (1). The humility of Le Guin’s idealist scientists is represented here in a character who revels in her own simplicity and anti-elitism, much more a practical recognition of the untranslatable knowledge of other species than a philosophical consideration. When the flu strikes, scientists define the disease as “zoanthropathy” (34):

‘The disease is very high in morbidity and very low in mortality. Infected humans appear able to communicate (encode) and translate (decode) previously unrecognisable non-verbal communications via major senses such as sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound with non-human animals. Zooflu is also referred to as ‘talking animal disease’ (35).

The pathologising of communication with non-animals is symbolic, as understanding beyond the human language is dangerous and debilitating. People’s eyes turn pink from the virus, but the true risk to health is the psychological toll of understanding other animals without filter, especially in a society dominated by human decisions. Unable to bear the constant strain of being confronted with non-human communication, many affect by zoanthropathy commit suicide and since animals are freed impulsively because their incessant communication from confinement is maddening, society comes to a halt. Jean travels to find her daughter and comes across a range of animal species, from pets to pigs held in the bio-industry and whales beckoning people into the sea. As humanity is forced to listen to the voice of animals, there is a reckoning of all the suffering inflicted and the arrogance with which humans placed themselves above nature. Imagining the ability of animals to make their voices heard serves to remove humanity from its hubristic position outside of nature.

McKay presents animal speech in a different font from human speech, with broken lines, in fragmented English, which leads to an uncanny relationship of recognition and distance. Becoming aware of the arbitrary conception of human as masters of nature, readers are forced to consider animal perspectives alongside Jean and other humans exposed to the virus. The first animals Jean hears are mice, who say:

Run.

It’s glands from the

body. It’s crops

and

killing and shelter ­-

(…)

On a

hillside. Run

to the wall.

You go, I’ll

make my way, one

and everyone.

Everything. The body. Run. (76)

The words are familiar, but represent a world view and logic that are different from the human one. Through the encounters with the animals, Jean doubts her personhood, her past decisions and humanity’s relationship with other animals. Readers are led along an increasingly unhinged journey that poses these questions to them, as well. Though unaffected by the flu, readers are imagining its effects through the medium of literature, creating a poignant thought experiment about the limits of human understanding of the animal world. Hierarchies are subverted, with Sue calling Jean “Bad Dog”, “Little Bitch” and “Lickspittle”, claiming the title of “Queen Mum” for herself (232). Human hubris falls when humanity’s mistakes and assumptions are communicated by the animals it suppressed. When there is no escape from listening to non-human voices, society is undone. At the end, the military forces people to take an antidote to the flu, reasserting order through humanity’s return to isolation from nature. Jean is forced by an army officer under threat of violence: “’You’ll be well,’ the woman tells me firmly. ‘You’ll go back to your normal life. (…) Tie up your pet. It’ll be over.’” (272). This can come as a relief to readers, who have been confronted with suffering presented through fragmented and inscrutable text. Still, the words “well”, “normal”, “pet” and “over” have all been redefined. Even if Jean would forget, the reader cannot understand these terms as before. The exercise in representing nature’s voices is complete, and the return to human discourse does not remove the awareness of alternative voices and the humility that it demands.

Whereas “The Author of the Acacia Seeds” present the quest for understanding as a scientific endeavour led by curiosity and appreciation for beauty, in The Animals in That Country understanding is involuntary and destabilising. Though there is beauty in the speech of animals and regret for losing the ability to speak to Sue, the dangers and risks of zoanthropathy symbolise the necessity to listen to nature before being forced to. If humanity were to redesign its exploitative systems and return space and autonomy to the nature it has separated itself from, the effects of forced communication with nature would not be as dire. Still, both texts consider that even if humans were to be able to understand non-human language, it would not mean complete understanding of the non-human world. Le Guin and McKay acknowledge the limitations of human comprehension of the natural world, but nevertheless emphasise the value of striving for as much insight as possible.

A third example of the ability of literature to deconstruct the human-nature divide can be found in the form of the Swamp Thing, a superpowered being that like so many of its comic book counterparts has been presented in many different forms by different writers and artists. In Alan Moore’s The Saga of the Swamp Thing, human arrogance is juxtaposed with the willingness of non-human nature to coexist with other life. Artists Stephen Bissette and John Totleben create a beautiful consideration of the boundaries between human and non-human nature through the language of horror and superpowers, with the distinction between the human and non-human blurring, reasserting and fading through the use of shifting colour palettes, amorphous shapes, permeable frames and Moore’s narration, which plays with the distinction between humans and other nature. At first, the Swamp Thing is represented as the transformation of Alec Holland, a doctor and scientist who acquires his powers in the classic superhero trope of a scientific accident. After a bomb attack by a vengeful corporation, the “bio-restorative formula” (48) he has been working on turns him into a being made of plant fibres, able to communicate with the swamp, possessing super-strength and regenerative powers. However, the first part of The Saga of the Swamp Thing call into question the established narrative of the Swamp Thing’s transformation, instead emphasising how human consciousness and plant bodies do not mix. After the capture of the Swamp Thing, Jason Woodrue, also known as the villainous Floronic Man, is tasked with an autopsy to reveal the secret of the bio-restorative formula and how, despite only working on plants, it somehow saved Alec Holland. Woodrue finds that the Swamp Thing has created human organs that cannot work: “They look like lungs, but human lungs have tiny capillary tubes that let oxygen pass through into the blood. (…) Vegetable fibers are too coarse to allow molecules of oxygen through in that way. These things suck and blow and they don’t do anything else. They don’t work. They’re not lungs.” (44). As the autopsy progresses, Woodrue stresses the differences between plant life and human anatomy, baffled by the Swamp Thing’s physiology. Then, he realises that earlier discoveries that “consciousness and intelligence can be passed on as foodstuffs” (47) resolve the conundrum: the Swamp Thing is not Alec Holland, but a collection of plant life that has absorbed memories from the corpse of Alec Holland. This realisation is later shared with the Swamp Thing, who was not killed, but merely believed it was dead after being shot, thinking it was human. The next chapter, “Swamped”, shows the Swamp Thing struggling to process this discovery, with the human presented through the symbol of a human skeleton, which tells the Swamp Thing to keep running “the human race” (81). When the Swamp Thing refuses to stay human, he becomes “a vegetable” (66) and merges with the swamp, “as if his humanity has leaked away down the shoots and the stems” (72). Yet Abby, a friend of Alec’s, finds the “moss-encrusted echo of a man” (66) and yells “Alec, you’re not a damn vegetable, for God’s sake! You’re human, Alec… You’re the most loving, the most gentle, the most human man that I’ve ever met.” (75). Reinforced by the visual cues of leaves, roots and vines, the swamp is made distinct from the human world of helicopters, guns and lab coats. The Swamp Thing, previously presented as a nexus between the two worlds, is revealed to be separated from the human experience, which at first suggests the plant world is fully distinct from the human one.

In The Saga of the Swamp Thing, nature’s voice is represented through “the green”, a collection of all plant life. The Swamp Thing connects to the green instinctively after submitting to the realisation of its plant origin. This communion is depicted through a visual immersion in the world of plants, shown through fibres, cells, streams and shifting edges (88-9), but also through the words used in the Swamp Thing’s narration: “Somewhere quiet… Somewhere green and timeless. I drift… The cellular landscape stretching beneath me… Eerie… Silent. (89). Despite his immense strength, the Swamp Thing is at harmony with the world around him, never seeking to dominate it, but only to be one with it. His words are always represented with pauses, in speech bubbles that punctuate his difference from human characters through colour and shape. In contrast to the humility of the Swamp Thing, Jason Woodrue asserts dominance over the green after he becomes connected to it. By consuming a part of the Swamp Thing’s vegetating body, Woodrue also hears the green, but unequipped to hear the voices of plants across the whole Earth, he loses his mind: “And somewhere in the writhing jungle of his mind, the small and scared mammal that was Jason Woodrue twitches once… and then lies still. It begins to rain blossom. He is the Floronic Man, and all that was once human in him is consumed. Engulfed. Swamped.” (84). As a mirror image to the Swamp Thing, who submitted to the green world, the Floronic Man seizes the voice of nature and becomes intoxicated with it. Due to his domineering character, heavily implied to be a human characteristic, Woodrue uses the power of plant life to threaten humanity with extinction by increasing plant oxygen production to levels that would make animal life impossible and will make any spark of flame lead to an inferno (112). His broadcasted villain speech displays his misguided perception of nature: “You have waged bitter and undeclared war upon the Green, gutting the rain forests mile after mile, day after day, but know this: the war has come home! It is man’s turn to embrace the scythe. If allowed to live, you will kill the planet. You must be removed.” (112). The Floronic Man thinks himself the vehicle of nature’s vengeance, but makes the same mistake of separating humanity from the rest of nature. Represented in red, orange and yellow, the Floronic Man represents a contrast to the peace of the Green, symbolised in the Swamp Thing’s view of the Green as a red tumor. While the Swamp Thing is green with red eyes, an indication of human memories, the Floronic Man’s yellow is discoloured by his rage and the fires around him (108, 118, 122). In this contrasting colour scheme, the distinctions between humility and domination are juxtaposed.

When the Swamp Thing confronts the Floronic Man, the error of separating humanity from nature is revealed and replaced by a harmonious presentation of an interlocking unity of differences. The Swamp Thing notices the invasion of Woodrue in the Green, remembering the “red world” (93), representing human interference. Since he is able perceive through plant life all around the world, he quickly locates Woodrue and breaks his mania by revealing the error in his reasoning:

“You… are hurting… the Green. (…) This… is not… the way… of the wilderness. This… is the way… of Man. Your way, Woodrue… The Green… did not do… do this. You did.” (original italics, 122-3). When the Floronic Man refuses to accept this message, the Swamp Thing states: “What… will change the oxygen… back into… the gasses that… we need… to survive… when the men… and animals… are dead?” (original italics, 124). Though distinct from plants, humans and other animals are an essential part of the ecosystem as a whole, an underlying interdependence which Woodrue ignored. This shows the dangers of speaking on behalf of nature while excluding humanity from the natural world. Woodrue is the symbol of a divisive conception of nature and humanity, who crosses the communication barrier through the superpowers of the avatar of plant life in a human shape: the Swamp Thing. Misunderstanding the role of humanity in the larger ecosystem, he turns to destruction while claiming to act for nature. This shows how the boundary between nature and humanity is explored, reinforced and deconstructed throughout The Saga of the Swamp Thing. As Bissette, Moore and Totleben reveal, humanity should show the humility to listen to other voices in nature without imposing its own assumptions, such as conflict, war and victory. When the Swamp Thing returns to the swamps, he finds bliss in becoming one with his environment again:

Almost dawn… A bird speaks… barely awake… Another answers… Soon… All the birds… are talking… telling… each other… their dreams… Why? Why did… I ever… leave this place? I want… to walk here… forever. I want… to struggle… with the alligators… turning over… and over… in the mud… I want to… be alive…” (132).

Though utopian from a human perspective, the Swamp Thing’s monologue argues for a position of adaptation and selflessness in order to understand and enjoy the messages that are constantly expressed in nature, even if they are not addressed to humans.The dreams of birds can be appreciated even if not fully understood. The Swamp Thing’s desire to repeatedly struggle with alligators metaphorically conveys to meet the animals on their own terms, not focusing on a completed end point, but finding value in the repetitive process. This is what it means to be alive in a connected world, to be a part of nature rather than trying to separate from it. It requires careful attention to natural phenomena as well as a shift in perspective that can be achieved through imagination and consideration.

In conclusion, giving a voice to nature requires humanity to move beyond the simplistic human-nature divide, something which can be practiced and experience through literary means. Imagining outside of the human framework is a not a binary of possible and impossible, but a stretching of awareness. Though it might be impossible to reach full union with the perspectives of plants, animals and geographical features, art and philosophy can bring humanity closer to understanding them. In “The Author of the Acacia Seeds andOther Extracts from the Journal of Association of Therolinguistics”, Ursula K. Le Guin points to the assumptions of humans through a science in fiction, allowing readers to exercise with non-human perspectives. Laura Jean McKay adds that the confrontation with animal voices would be disturbing and dangerous, especially when considering the current relationship humanity has with other animals, but The Animals in that Country nevertheless changes the reader’s awareness of animal knowledge and experience. Finally, in The Saga of the Swamp Thing, Stephen Bissette, Alan Moore and John Totleben and explore the permeable boundaries between plants, humans and other animals, inviting the reader to question the human-nature dichotomy and anthropocentrism while imagining the consciousness of other entities. Together, these texts show the value of fiction in trying to understand and represent other life forms fairly and accurately while recognising the limitations of human awareness. Striving to give a voice to nature requires both a humble acceptance of humanity’s position as a part of a larger ecosystem and a persistent attempt to approximate the ways in which other species experience a shared world.

Works Cited

Boslaugh, Sarah E.. “anthropocentrism”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11 Jan. 2016, https://www.britannica.com/topic/anthropocentrism. Accessed 25 January 2026. 

McKay, Laura Jean. The Animals in That Country. Scribe, 2020.

Haas, Cat, Laura Burgers and Alex Putzer. “Introducing the Rights of Nature in Europe.” Heinrich Boell Stiftung. 3-2-2025. https://www.boell.de/en/2025/02/03/introducing-rights-nature-europe.

Le Guin, Ursula K. “The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extra from the Journal of of the Association of Therolinguistics”. First published in The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF. https://xenoflesh.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ursula-k.-le-guin.pdf 

Moore, Alan, Stephen Bissette and John Totleben. Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book One. DC Comics, 2012. Originally published as The Saga of the Swamp Thing, 20-27, 1983-4, DC Comics.

[1] Another example of Le Guin’s ability to question assumptions come from The Dispossessed, discussed in book club 3 – the Joy of Revolution. On the planet Anarres, whose civilization is organised through anarchic philosophy, the associations with words such as “higher” and “up” are not to be “better”, since this relies fundamentally on hierarchy. Instead, to metaphorically indicate “higher” fields of study or “higher” responsibities people use “closer to the centre” or “central”, indicating that even people’s fundamental connotations with spatial terms rely on social context. Just like in “The Author of the Acacia Seeds”, this invites the reader to question their assumptions about language and the representation of the world.

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Black Box – Nurturing the Unknowable Other 

WONDROUS CALS Book Club 4 – The Future of AI – 28th of June, 2025

The development of artificial intelligence is too wide-ranging, too specific and too rapid for any outsider to follow. Moreover, even insiders cannot grasp all the progress that is made in the field. Yet even with the best access to information, the artificial intelligence that is based on the development of neural networks and self-learning technology is fundamentally unknowable, as the amount of data that these systems process is too large for a human mind to process (NRC Onbehaarde Apen). There is an undeniable mystery to how artificial intelligence makes its decisions. They are judged and nudged based on their output, which can suggest the internal workings of an AI system, but most of its steps are inaccessible for human interpretation. That it is impossible to read an AI’s reasoning in the present moment makes predictions about future AI even further removed from scientific practice. This is where literature and philosophy become increasingly relevant, as they can explore into the unknown with confidence and relevance, as they have always done.1 Studying the future of AI through works of literature can reveal the underlying assumptions, hopes and fears of humanity’s interaction with technology that is unknowable, yet shows signs of intelligence. In “EPICAC” by Kurt Vonnegut, artificial intelligence follows the tragic trajectory of a spurned lover, unbeknownst to its handler. In “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” by Ted Chiang, digital entities mature beyond the reach of their parents. Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” imagines a future where the last humans are tortured by a malevolent AI for unimaginable reasons. Finally, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy humorously argues that the logic of superintelligent AI makes its insights irrelevant for human understanding. Altogether, these works show that the future of AI works as a black box, where humans can only judge in inner workings of AI through its output and are left to speculate about the subconscious of artificial minds. Like interacting with other humans, people must learn to judge AI by its outward signifiers and teach it to act and think in accordance with humanity’s best values, aiming to bridge the fundamental unknowability between human intelligence and artificial intelligence as they do with other human minds. 

WONDROUS CALS Book Club 4 – Black Box – Nurturing the Unknowable OtherDownload
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The Joy of Revolution

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No Need to Know Where You’re Going If You Know You Need to Leave

WONDROUS CALS Book Club, 30-12-2024

Living while constantly aware of the many injustices and inequalities of modern society creates a constant strain on the minds of empathetic humans. With a developed idealism and enough education, most people find themselves wanting to change things for the better, while at the same time feeling that the task is impossible. The drive for positive change is met with the unmoving reality of an endless stream of disasters, wars, scandals and the systematic exploitation of the underprivileged. Nearly as long is the list of suggested solutions competing for people’s energy and resources. Although every solution contains some hope, there is also potential for confusion and disagreement amongst those aiming to improve the world, leading to infighting and further disillusionment. This state of alienation can lead to stasis, either through conscious withdrawal from activism for wellbeing or through being overwhelmed with the quantity and complexity of both problems and solutions. Nevertheless, many feel a drive to resist the status quo, even if they do not know exactly how to create a better alternative. Through an exploration of resistance across Bea Wolf, “Bartleby the Scrivener, a Story of Wall-Street”, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Dispossessed, the qualities of positive, self-assertive and joyful revolutionary action become clear, leading to an outlook that harnesses the energy of outrage to create a communal yet personal path towards changing the world. Even though it is an almost self-contained impossibility to imagine a future outside of the confines of this present, fiction allows for the bravery and confidence to defy the harmful elements of oppressive structures and set out on a path of resistance that is productive, shared, energised and rises beyond a cycle of repression. When the alternatives to an unjust world are not fully realised, compassionate and joyful revolution nevertheless allows for the setting of a new course that makes improvements possible while remaining open to course correction.

Bea Wolf, the retelling of the classic saga Beowulf by Zach Wienersmith and Boulet, shows the fighting of evil through the protagonist Bea Wolf. Like all other main characters, she’s a child who revels in adventuring, feasting on candy and soda, and resisting the pull of adulthood and adolescence. The joy of this resistance is visible in every panel where the young heroes are asserting themselves, whether it is through the building of the treehut called Treeheart, the liberation of animals from a farm or the discovery of toys, candy and water balloons (23). The joy of the revolt against the drab of society is threatened by the antagonist Grindle, an adult neighbour of Treeheart who symbolises all that is boring and stale in adulthood (29). His terrifying power is to age anyone he touches, so that “those who felt Grindle’s finger grew old – fog-eyed and furrow-faced” (33). The battle against Grindle shows the children’s resolve to hold on to fun as a weapon against the conformity, armed with foam-bolt guns, balloons and catapults (52). However, Grindle manages to defeat them: “Ten kids turned teenaged, tired-eyed, ever-texting. Eight turned middle-aged, aching, anxious, angry at the internet” (53). As Grindle manifests the children’s worst fears, the ageing magic shows the power of society to incorporate rebellion into the status quo. It is impossible for the warrior children to resist the inevitable growing up, but moreover, they are turned into bland, uninspired people who are unoffensive to Grindle’s sensibilities. They no longer enjoy life, just like Grindle, the “baron of boredom” (32), who can only find a static contentment in a perfectly cleaned and quiet house, but finds no happiness there. His overwhelming might causes the remaining children, including Roger, their king, to despair. During this “midnight of mirth” (59), they see no possibility to continue their resistance against the status quo, mirroring the hopelessness felt by many in the face of a relentlessly pessimistic world.

This paralysis is dispelled when Bea Wolf comes to Treeheart to offer her help to Roger. Just like in the saga of Beowulf, she is the mightiest warrior of the area and brings hope to a kingdom terrorised by a monster. Bea Wolf’s courage and past feats convince the children that parties are possible again, and in defiance of Grindle’s destruction, Roger throws another feast, showing the inspiration that can come from a figure that embodies idealism with joy. The children’s happiness is apparent in their star-pupilled eyes while they gorge themselves on a mountain of sweets (140), further illustrating the playfulness of both their revolution against Grindle’s killjoy overseeing and the story as a whole: reworking an ancient English text to be about children is in itself a joyful, fun act, infusing all of the weighty words and stylistic features of the original Beowulf with a humorous undertone. Bea Wolf, the text, resists the expectations and rules of literary conformity as Bea Wolf, the character, resists the confines of Grindle’s joyless conventionality. Challening him to a duel, she says “Make no more clouds. I have drawn rainbows here.” (148). Rainbows here symbolise the colourful and boundless state of play of the children, but also hint that the supreme state of the world after the revolution is a dreamlike, idealised world, not fully defined, but nevertheless felt and partially realised whenever people live their lives full of idealism. Trying to see behind Grindle’s spectacles, she instead sees only “a joy-void, empty as vacuum” (149), underlining how he has no goals or suggestions for positive change, but only strives to undo any threat to the status quo. He does not fight for anything, but fights against the fun of the children. When Bea Wolf manages to rip Grindle’s tie, he shrinks to a child himself, and becomes harmless. The symbolism of the tie as a representation of corporate conformity and adulthood emphasises how even Grindle, as intimidating and powerful as he is, is only a pawn in the larger forces trying to suppress the joy of the children. This becomes even more clear as Grindle flees to his mother, who is foretold to bring renewed darkness to the victorious children at the end of the story. However, the feats of Bea Wolf are handsomely rewarded by the just king Roger and become part of the mythology of the children, celebrating the day she overcame the oppressive neighbour who stifled their fun. In the end, Bea Wolf showcases the excitement of adventure that is the core of many stories, where heroes overcome great odds, to inspire a spirit of resilience against the monotony of every-day life. The children’s perspective on Beowulf demonstrates that the hero’s courage can be combined with the joy of children’s play to defy overwhelming odds, creating a part of an ideal world in the here and now, even when there is no outline for that ideal.

A similar appeal to joyful resistance is described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Despite the pain and harm that are inherent in the setting of the insane asylum, the revolution against the regime of the authoritarian nurse Ratched by Randle McMurphy is focused on humour, fun and rambunctiousness, which shows how their can be joy in revolution even if the rebel is ultimately destroyed. The story of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is told by Chief Bromden, one of the patients at the asylum who suffers from paranoid delusions and traumatic memories. Like most of the patients, he is docile and insecure, which is further exacerbated by the fear they feel because of the Big Nurse’s tyrannical treatment. Under the guise of care, she humiliates the patients to remain in control of the institution, enlisting the help of the aides and manipulating the doctors to enforce her will. Through the process of group meetings, she maintains a facade of political representation, but her overbearing directions to staff and patients leave her in total control of the ward. Harding, one of the patients, even says: “All of us here are rabbits (…). We need a good, strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.” (Original italics, 64). The metaphors of rabbits and wolfs illustrate the hierarchy and helplessness that are fostered in the asylum under the Nurse’s rule, but also show that Harding is aware of the dangers this poses. After all, all rabbits can be torn to pieces by the predator, and they have no hope of defending themselves. However, despite the obvious unhappiness in the ward, nurse Ratched has convinced everyone there that the problem is with themselves, and that all of their discomfort is the right path to improvement. Resisting her is not only futile, but shameful self-sabotage.

Like in Bea Wolf, the situation changes with the appearance of the hero. In this case, Randle McMurphy arrives at the asylum, where he hopes to avoid the more uncomfortable punishment of prison by being treated as a “psychopath” (13), which he is told is “a guy that fights too much and fucks too much” (13-14). Even before the other patients see him, they hear his voice, loud and uncompromising, indicating that his political will will not be dominated. Immediately, it becomes clear that his charisma is a threat to the routines of the asylum. However, his most powerful tool for disruption is symbolic of the joy of revolution: it is his loud and genuine laugh.

Nobody can tell exactly why he laughs; there’s nothing funny going on. But it’s not the way that Public Relations laughs, it’s free and loud and it comes out of his wide grinning mouth and spreads in rings bigger and bigger till it’s lapping against the walls all over the ward. Not like that fat Public Relations laugh. This sounds real. I realize all of a sudden it’s the first laugh I’ve heard in years. (12)

His laughing is a shock to establishment, but also to the oppressed “rabbits”, who are at first confused and later emboldened by it. His laughing is not just an act of expression, but part of a larger attitude of playfulness and self-assertiveness. “Even when he isn’t laughing, that laughing sound hovers around him, the way the sound hovers around a big bell just quit ringing – it’s in his eyes, in the way he smiles and swaggers, in the way he talks” (12). The laughing represents an attitude of resistance, a signal to the world, enforced by the simile of the bell, that something has arrived or something needs to change. In being apologetically himself, enjoying himself despite the setbacks, he upsets the meticulous and oppressive order built by the systems of the Big Nurse. Where she has worked to reduce everything particular into a part of a large machine, mirrored by the narrator’s delusions of a mechanical Combine that eats away at every piece of individualism in the United States, McMurphy is a unique and personal element, inviting the other patients to assert themselves and express their own voices. This is not an unconscious act. McMurphy instinctively despises despotism and uses the language of the rough environment he has grown up in to analyse power structure of the asylum. He calls nurse Ratched a “balls-cutter” (60), an example of a type of person who rules over people unfairly. He recognises this type of person from outside the asylum: “Seen ‘em all over the country and in the homes – people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to” (60). He calls it “going for the vitals” (60), the life force, which is why his life energy is such as threat to her control. He encourages the others to fight back and stand up for their desires, such as watching the baseball game on television despite the change it requires to the routine, and takes them on a fishing trip where they can experience the outside world through danger, fun and contact with women.

When McMurphy’s resistance becomes powerful enough to inspire change in others, Chief Bromden realises it is because he has remained himself despite the outside forces that push people to conform. Despite the never-ending resources of society directed to submit the rogue elements, McMurphy keeps true to his character and enjoys it as well as he can. Bromden says:

There was times that week when I’d hear that full-throttled laugh, watch him scratching his belly and stretching and yawning and leaning back to wink at whoever he was joking with, everything coming to him just as easy as drawing breath, and I’d quit worrying about the Big Nurse and the Combine behind her. I’d think he was strong enough being his own self that he would never back down the way she was hoping he would. (…) He’s what he is, that’s it. (…) He’s not gonna let them twist him and manufacture him. (161).

Nurse Ratched tries all her tricks and succeeds in subduing him for a while when she threatens his chances of being released. The threat to his future freedom makes him less belligerent and even makes him accept the nurse’s domineering for a while. However, the friendship he has built with the others patients makes him rebel for their sake when he realises that they cannot fight back without him. His last big ploy is to sneak into the medicine supply and throw a midnight drinking binge in defiance. When the Nurse threatens all of them with severe consequences, she singles out one of the patients, Billy Bibbit, and uses her ultimate weapon over him: to tell his mother of his behaviour. This sends Billy into such a frenzy that he kills himself, which nurse Ratched hounds over McMurphy until he attacks her a final act of revolution before he is taken for a lobotomy that turns him into a “Vegetable”, comatose. Bromden realises McMurphy “made me big again” (287), but also sees how he pushed himself beyond what he could for the sake of his friends on the ward (319). While the Nurse uses his catatonic body as a warning to the others, Bromden considers what McMurphy would have done: “he wouldn’t have left something like that to sit there in the day room with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system” (322). Determined, he kills his friend with a pillow before using his renewed strength to break out of the ward and start a new, free life. Although Bromden does not know what to do, he has learned he cannot abide by the dehumanisation that has limited him so far. His life after the asylum will be an alternative to the subjugation he has felt his whole life, even if he does not know what that life will look like, yet. Bromden’s defiance ensures that despite McMurphy’s demise, he still inspires change. His revolution had no defined goal that he tried to achieve, but was born from his recognition of the unethical treatment of himself and others around him. There is tragedy is McMurphy’s fate, but the resilience and attitude with which he defied the regime of the Big Nurse lives on in the other patients. The story of McMurphy’s sacrifice focuses on Bromden’s escape, and the ring of his laughing will echo throughout many of the lives of the patients, showing how not even death can still the ring of McMurphy’s revolution.

In contrast to the bold resolution of Bea Wolf and McMurphy, Bartleby, the hero of Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener: a Story of Wall-street, does not revolt through action, but through inaction. Nevertheless, his determination and self-sacrifice mirror both heroes, and though his revolution appears to have no goal except resistance, he presents an alternative to the status quo by means of his quiet, polite refusal to cooperate. When he first enters the scrivener’s office run by the narrator, he is described as “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn” (9) – hardly the description of a figure who is bound to overthrow the social order. However, after initially working well, Bartleby refuses to assist in an errand with the singular phase “I would prefer not to” (10). The narrator is startled into acceptance by the hurry of his business and the politeness and oddness of the phrase, and when Bartleby refuses more and more work later on, it becomes clear from that “his decision was irreversible” (12), despite his gentle and meek attitude. Although the Narrator says he would have fired Bartleby if there had been any “uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner” (10), his manner instead dissipates all his tools of reasserting the hiearchy. In fact, it undermines his confidence in his own perspective: “when a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other side” (12). Though the only violence or force that Bartlebly has employed is to be “violently unreasonable”, it is enough for the narrator to make him question his usual responses to insubordination. When Bartleby refuses to work at all, and even turns out to live in the office, the narrator resorts to the absurdity of moving his offices instead of setting Bartleby out of door (27-28). Here, the ungraspable power of Bartleby’s revolution becomes apparent, and in the absurdity of the situation, humour is revealed. When Bartleby is promptly sent to prison by the next tenant, the narrator cannot help but be entangled in Bartleby’s fate, and tries to make his imprisonment as comfortable as possible by paying a “grub-man” (32) to see him well-fed. However, Bartleby refuses to eat, dying soon after, leaving the narrator disturbed and guilty, feeling endless pity for Bartleby (34). Thus, without doing anything, Bartleby has upset the status quo at the heart of Wall Street.

In essence a tragic tale, the enigmatic nature of Bartleby allows for a wild range of readings, leading from those of civil disobedience, as set out by Melville’s contemporary Henry David Thoreau, to existentialist dread or an absurd joke. In any case, despite any communicated goal being achieved, Bartleby succeeds in withstanding the expectations of Wall Street, symbolising the churning productivity of the 19th-century United States, which closely resemble the Combine as imagined by Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Bartleby has no strength, charisma or community to provide him with the power to overthrow the system he finds himself in, but the quiet yet undeniable statement that he “would prefer not to” draws an ultimatum that causes a revolution in the people around him. The cast of side characters takes over the use of the word “prefer” (20-21), even though one of them, Turkey, considers it a “queer word. I never use it myself” (21). The hierarchy of the office is overthrown, and though the narrator remains in control of the others, nothing he can imagine sways Bartleby. His ultimate summation, “you must” (22, original italics) yields no result, showing the absurdity of language acts and power structures in the face of blatant refusal to accept them. On the whole, Bartleby the Scrivener shows another face of the revolutionary hero by deconstructing the tools of the ruling class and countering them with gentle self-assertion. Bartlebly’s death, like McMurphy’s sacrifice, is not to be interpreted as losing the battle for self-determination. In fact, both resist past the point of death, showing that their revolution remains after their lives end.

Imagining a world after the revolution, Ursula K. Le Guin imagines two parallel worlds in The Dispossessed. When a revolutionary movement on Urras becomes a serious threat to the establishment, they offer the barren twin planet of Anarres, where the revolutionaries build an anarchist-communist community that, centuries later, brings forth the hero of the book, Dr. Shevek. Dr. Shevek is an outsider in both societies, but continues to strive for the best of both through he conviction that following his ideals is ultimately for the common good of both worlds. Although his urge to criticise both governments brings him into conflict, he feels he cannot do otherwise. The society of Anarres is based on the teaching of Odo, an activist from Urras that sparked the revolutionary movement. One of the central works of Odo, Analogy, works around the central metaphor of cells in a larger body. In it, society is compared to an organism, where individuals are its cells. This means that for society to flourish, individuals must be willing to work together for the well-being of the greater whole, which sometimes includes sacrifice. When discussing the state of their twin planet Urras, Shevek’s friends discuss how their society is afraid of “infection” by Urras’s corruption (43). Bedap, one of the friends, comments that “in a sick organism, even a healthy cell is doomed” (43), describing that there can be no ethical living in a society with unethical values or practices. This shows how the revolutionary and analogical thinking of Odo informs the perspective of the inhabitants of Anarres. Shevek strives to be a healthy cell, true to himself, in a healthy organism, which is how he and his friends perceive the world they work in.

However, the cell has another meaning in The Dispossessed, representing the restraints of imprisonment. This double meaning is woven throughout Shevek’s growing up, first started when his class is taught about the phenomenon of prisons, which do not exist on Anarres. In their youthful curiosity, Shevek and his classmates find a place that can be locked and imprison a volunteer to investigate this concept that is so foreign to them. After a night of imprisonment, during which the boy suffered from diarrhea, they all become sick with the idea of prisons and never speak of their experiment again (40). When one of them brings it up with others, they do not understand what he is talking about. Later, when Shevek travels to Urras, the concept of imprisonment becomes relevant again, as he is not allowed to travel from the university grounds except under supervision. He learns of modern revolutionaries and soldiers being imprisoned in the country he is staying in and reflects back on the boundaries that control people, both on Anarres and Urras. When he returns to Anarres, his thinking has changed. He now perceives the restrictiveness of collectivism on Anarres more consciously and can give words to the feelings of unease he has experienced his whole life. The double meaning of the cell is explored by Shevek explicitly when he reflects on his duties to society and his desires as an individual:

He recognized that need, in Odonian terms, as his cellular function, the analogic term for the individual’s individuality, the work he can do best, therefore his best contribution to his society. A healthy society would let him exercise that optimum function freely, in the coordination of all such functions finding its adaptability and strength. That was a central idea of Odo’s Analogy. That the Odonian society on Anarres had fallen short of the ideal did not, in his eyes, lessen his responsibility to it; just the contrary. With the myth of the State out of the way, the real mutuality and reciprocity of society and individual became clear. Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice – the power of change, the essential function of life. The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind. (333)

Shevek realises through the analogy of the cell that his duties and desires are not opposites, but align in bringing the best to his community. As long as his desires do not hurt or exploit the world around him, following his intuitions and thoughts are the best means to contribute. A society that forbids this, even out of the idealism of Odoniasm, has changed the concept of the cell as a metaphor for healthy individuals into the cells of a prison, with walls that cannot be broken, another central metaphor of The Dispossessed. This distinction Shevek makes between sacrifice and compromise is the core of the fates of McMurphy and Bartleby. Both sacrifice their lives in pursuing their uncompromising spirit of revolution, which shows why they succeed despite their demise.

Ursula K. Le Guin is most explicit in her commentary on revolution, since The Dispossessed centers around the theme of individual responsibility to the common good. Where Bea Wolf, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Bartleby the Scrivener all represent larger struggles against machinal oppression through individual revolution, The Dispossessed is explicitly about the social structure after the revolution. Its central lessons are that revolution is never finished and that every individual bears the responsibility of resisting structures that imprison people. When Shevek joins his old friend Dulap in a meeting of the Syndicate of Initiative in order to try and reopen Anarres to people from Unarres, the prejudice and habits of the Annaresti resist any change that might threaten the status quo (350-359). When the discussion derails into accusations towards Urrasiti “propertarians” and Shevek personally (358), he formulates his goal with the reopening of the settlement, which is to oppose the restrictions on Anarres:

“You see”, he said, “what we’re after is to remind ourselves that we didn’t come to Anarres for safety, but for freedom. If we must all agree, all work together, we’re no better than a machine. If an individual can’t work in solidarity with his fellows, it’s his duty to work alone. His duty and his right. We have been denying people that right. We ve been saying, more and more often, you must work with the others, you must accept the rule of the majority. But any rule is tyranny. The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and survive. We are not subjects of a State founded upon law, but members of a society founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution. ‘The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin.’” (359)

The language of evolution and survival mirrors Odo’s Analogy, but his insights have moved against the dogmatic Anarresti who force each other to conform to the rule of the majority. Revolution is not static, but ongoing, and it is every individual’s duty to resist opression, even if it is oppression in the name of shared betterment. This spirit of revolution, the individual’s dedication to justice, can be found in all the heroes of resistance: Bea Wolf, McMurphy and Bartlebly. They all resist as individuals, upsetting a status quo that limits, because it works as a “machine”, or as the Combine described by Bromden. Agents of machination and conformity can be explicitly evil, such as Grindl, or well-meaning, such as the narrator in Bartleby, but no individual should allow the rigidity of tyranny. Every individual is responsible for resisting oppression. Shevek, Bea Wolf, McMurphy and Bartleby all show paths that are true to their own spirit and successfully overthrow and undermine coercive and exploitative power structures, even if they do not always know how to define the ideals they are striving for. This shows that it is not necessary to have settled on a definitive solution to social problems before action can be initiated. In fact, it shows the opposite. Revolution against oppression is the duty of every individual, who can resist in the manner most suitable them. It is through the struggles of individuals that new alternatives become accessible to larger groups, who must then embody these alternatives in their own revolutions, sharing change until oppression has been eliminated.

As revolution is never finished, and the fight against oppressive power structures is perpetual, it is essential to find joy and freedom in revolution. In order to resist the constant threat to people’s freedoms, literature can picture heroes and revolutions that show the successes and sacrifices necessary to achieve the best possible world and thus inspire a spirit of joyful revolution in its readers, even when the end goals of revolution are difficult to imagine. Zach Wienersmith and Boulet show the determined rebellion of legendary children in their fight against Grindle, the agent of conformity and oppression, by flaunting their adventures and indomitable playfulness. They do not aim for a particular goal, but they recognise the restriction of their freedom and happiness, and break the hold Grindle has over them by playing, feasting and expressing their courage. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest shows that rebellion can inspire change in even the most timid and downtrodden people when McMurphy’s laughter and outrageous behaviour free Chief Bromden from the insecurities and inhibitions that have been imposed on him by a dismissive and cynical society, represented through him overcoming the Combine and escaping from the ward of Nurse Ratched. While Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener seems a melancholic tale of a broken individual, Bartleby nevertheless embodies the same spirit of resistance when he asserts his right not to do what he is asked. His end is without compromise, allowing him to show the absurdity of the society around him. Finally, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed shows that even after the revolution has led to “an ambiguous utopia”, every individual is still responsible for being true to the ideals of freedom for everyone while contributing to the community. Together, these works show that what is required of everyone is not to know where their revolutions lead, but to persist, joyfully if possible, in refusing to accept a world that is not yet a healthy organism for every cell to live in.

Works Cited List

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Viking, 1962. Berkley, 2016.

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed. Harper Collins, 1974. Harper Voyager, 2011.

Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street.” The Piazza Tales, 1856. Melville’s Short Novels. Norton Critical Edition, 2002.

Weinersmith, Zach and Boulet. Bea Wolf. First Second, 2023.

Other Sources

Beckett, Samuel. Endgame. 1957.

Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” 1928. A Room of One’s Own and the Voyage Out. Wordsworth Classics, 2012.

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English Non-fictie Tekst Tekst-overig Text WONDROUS CALS Book Club

Preparing Against War: The Absurdity of War Narratives


WONDROUS CALS Book Club 2, 29-06-2024

The experience of war is impossible to convey. The pain, the sensory input and the emotional duress are too much for words to express. Literature can only capture very little of the intensity of war, but it cannot leave war untouched. There is an unresistable urge in survivors of war to share their experiences and try to convey the horrors of war, even when language falls short. This urge to speak the truth about violence struggles with a dual desire: to convince the outsiders of war that the death and destruction is not justifiable, but also to convince those that survived that their suffering can be justified. War entails meaninglessness, because people’s lives will be reduced to collateral damage in a struggle between factions, but suffering cannot be meaningless if people need to maintain a will to endure. Consequentially, war stories inject meaning into conflict, ranging from the heroism of individual soldiers and the nobility of fighting for one’s country to the necessity to carry the burden of violence or the wisdom in striking first. These attempts to impose meaning on war are the dominant voice in war representation, but their meaning is not true significance, but justification. The desire to make war appear as more than suffering and despair thwarts logic, rationalising the unjustifiable. Meaning dies in a war, but stories are born. In response to this phenomenon, writers that attempt to deconstruct the heroism imposed on war take different approaches to combat the twisted logic that leads to and prolongs war. World War One poets such as Wilfred Owen seek to reveal the reality of war to a propaganda-numbed homefront. Writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller undermine the notion of war heroes with parody and sharp criticism of the glorification of veterans. Writers like Han Kang, Simone Weil and Martin Amis aim to scrutinize the logic used to defend wars and expose the fallacies that result from violent thinking. Together, they show that war is inherently absurd and cannot be given true significance. In order to prevent the loss of meaning that comes with war, humanity has to resist the simplistic narratives and dangerous pseudo-logic of war heroism as well as notion that war is inevitable by fundamentally choosing to not prepare for war, but against war.

War has been a presence in history since the beginning of its representation, usually with a focus on the glorious victories. This reveals the desire to impose an idealised version of conflict, where heroes can emerge from the bloodshed having gained more than they have lost. The virtues of the war hero vary across time and space, but often include courage, selflessness, nobility, idealism, superior power and strategy, charisma or leadership and the willingness to sacrifice. Although many of these qualities are also celebrated outside of violent conflict, they are a necessary component of the representation of war, because they impose meaning on the suffering that was endured. From the legendary exploits of the heroes in Homer’s Iliad to the modern blockbuster, war becomes a proving ground for protagonists to show their comraderie, strength and valour. It almost makes it appear as if war is worth the pain. However, the “old lie”, as Wilfred Owen calls it, which claims it is sweet to die for one’s country, is opposed by the realities of suffering. Owen’s picture of the soldiers in “Dulce et Decorum Est”, stumbling through trenches, leaves no room for idealised heroism:

Bent- double, like old beggars under sacks

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

These soldiers have been broken by the war, despite their strength and love for country. Later, when the gas attacks hit the trenches, they scramble for masks, but one of them is too late. The speaker describes his death, seen in “all my dreams”, where he is “guttering, choking, drowning.” The details of his death, “the white eyes writhing in his face” or the “blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”, make it impossible to look away from the suffering of war to the supposed heroism. The poem ends with the claim that if people could see and hear the suffering of soldiers dying at the front,

(…) you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desparate glory

The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est

Pro Patria Mori.

Owen brings together the narrative of heroism with the realities of war and shows they cannot co-exist. Heroism is imposed onto war from the outside, hoping to instill bravery and readiness for war’s logic in new recruits and those at home. The meaning that is instilled in war is an illusion, a lie, for the sake of the nation’s ideals and hopes during a war.

A similar disillusionment can be found in the novels Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Both of the authors were in the American armed forces during World War II and use their own experiences to deconstruct the mythologising of American soldiers in the World War and by extension heroism in all wars. In both cases, the main characters are feeble, confused, afraid and moved by forces around them instead of by their own will. The cast of characters around them contains charicatures of every possible weakness found in humanity, such as the spineless cruelty of Roland Weary in Slaughterhouse Five or the selfishness, greed and hypocrisy of Milo in Catch-22. The war is portrayed as a chaotic mess of ineffectual attempts to destroy each other, with the only redeeming factor of the endless suffering that it is simply how things go. The motif of “so it goes” repeated after every death in Slaughterhouse Five, from the fire bombing of Dresden to the death of a fizzled drink, externalises the responsibility of Billy Pilgrim, the main character, and all other human beings, for the way things are. This is emphasised by the perspective of the Trafalmadorians, alien beings that perceive time not linearly, but all at once. There is no causality if all of time is always present. It remains ambiguous whether these aliens are a figment of Billy’s imagination, a result of his PTSS or an actual factor in the reality of the novel and possibly outside of it, but their perspective is the only solace provided to Billy Pilgrim after experiencing the horrors of the Second World War and continuing to face death and suffering afterwards. There is no heroism when all suffering and death is inevitable, but there is no need for guilt or shame, either. War and death are parts of existence that the Tralfamadorians would never deny, but spend as little time as possible concentrating on. A Trafalmadorian says to Billy: “There isn’t anything we can do about them, so we simply don’t look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments – like today at the zoo. Isn’t this a nice moment?” (117) Without the ability to perceive all of time at will, humans instead ignore the harsh realities of war by weaving stories around them, unconsciously or consciously.

In Catch-22, the tragedy of war is mostly experienced from a distance, as the characters are part of an American Air Force base in Italy and are sent on endless missions to bomb the enemy and support their allies. In Catch-22, heroism is inverted by showing the responses of a wide range of characters to the violence of the war, with not a single character able to approximate the heroic ideal of fiction and ideology.John Yossarian, the main character, is caught in the paradox called Catch-22. The constant life-threatening danger of the flights makes it obvious that anyone who still flies is insane, which would allow the doctor at the camp to keep them off the flights. However, as soon as they ask to be grounded, they are no longer insane, because the only sane response to the mortal danger and violence of deadly missions is to want to stop. When that happens, the doctor cannot keep them grounded on the basis of insanity anymore. “If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.” (52). This twisted logic, where insanity and the normal human response to death are necessary, inverted components to the war machine, show how war narratives rely on undermining common sense. In addition, Yossarian’s fear and resistance to self-sacrifice provide a more human picture than the sterile ideal, allowing audiences to feel both an urge to ridicule and a pang of sympathy. This applies to the entire menagerie of pilots, officers and crew, whose flaws and suffering illustrate the wide range of responses to the instution of war, which nevertheless grinds on, destroying lives when no one seems to want to. When Yossarian has been hospitalised again, he is psychologically analysed by Major Sanderson, who accuses him of many unhealthy dispositions: “You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions! (…) You’ve been unable to adjust to the idea of war. (…) You have morbid aversion to dying. (…) You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don’t like bullies, bigots, snobs and hypocrites.” (448) The reader understands that these are normal, benign behaviours in a mind untouched by war thinking, but in Catch-22, as in war, the normal world is flipped upsidedown. Everyday virtues and instincts are pathologies in times of war, revealing that an idealised soldier cannot be a sane human being outside of a war context. Beyond the army base, “mobs with clubs were in control everywhere” (477), showing how those Italians and Americans who have adapted to war mentality are abusing those who haven’t, uninterrupted by people like Yossarian, who are too afraid to interfere even though they know they should (475). Behind the parody and absurdity, Catch-22 presents a bleak picture of a world at war, incompatible with the image of heroes and glory. Both Slaugterhouse Five and Catch-22 show that the image of war heroes does not align with the brutalising grind of modern warfare. War is not glamourous. It is impossible for people to maintain honour and dignity during war, because war reduces people’s lives to immaterial accidents or tactical assets to achieve victory. No character can rise above the dehumanisation synonymous with war.

The notion that violence can be used and mastered is criticised incisively by Simone Weil in 1939, when she writes “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force” (original French: “L’Iliad, ou le poem de la force”), hoping to alter the way warmongers see their chances in war. Violence is not a one-way tool for submission, but enslaves and reduces its users, as well, as they become increasingly passive channels for self-perpetuating violence. In her essay, Weil first defines “force” as “that x that turns anybody who is submitted to it into a thing” (3). Violence turns a “man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him” (3). However, it can also be more subtle, as she provides examples of those who are enslaved and threatened, who lose their autonomy. She identifies this in the Iliad as people are paralysed by fear, submit to threats and violence or become pawns, lackeys, playthings or slaves to those who use force against them. However, her warning is also to those who would consider themselves the master of violence. There are no real heroes in the Iliad, she claims:

The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before man’s flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagines it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to. (3)

War is the ultimate power of objectification. On the side of the victims, humans are reduced to objects by limiting their ability to act freely. On the side of perpetrators, Weil shows that violence ultimately reduces them to automatons who cannot escape the violence they have used against others: “Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it” (11). They will be victims, one day, or lose themselves in an endless struggle to prevent that situation. Their reasoning, their self-perception and their view of the world will be consumed by violence, until there is no alternative or other perspective. Weil writes: “The conquering soldier is the scourge of nature. Possessed by war, he, like the slave, becomes a thing, though his manner of doing so is different – over him too, words are as powerless as over matter itself. And both, at the touch of force, experience its inevitable effects: they become deaf and dumb” (26). This way, they are lost to force, completely swallowed by war. There is no space for heroes in war. In the end, violence rules people.

The way war reduces people to things is visible in the writing of Vonnegut and Heller, but is also acutely explored by Han Kang in her novel Human Acts. Through a range of perspectives on both sides of the conflict, Kang portrays the violent suppression of the 1980s student revolt in Gwangju, South-Korea, and shows the long-lasting effects on Korean society. The physical pain and emotional trauma endured by the characters renders them almost catatonic, even years after the events occured. After earlier protest were suppressed through martial law, students protesting the martial law were attacked by the army, who were instructed to act with maximum force to discourage further protests. Han Kang describes how students, bystanders and family members are beaten, tortured and killed, specifically with the goal to reduce the uprisers to nothing. Jin-Su, one of the students who is captured and tortured, realises that they are underfed, humiliated and tortured for this reason: “We will make you realise how ridiculous it was, the lot of you waving the national flag and singing the national anthem. We will prove to you that you are nothing but filthy stinking animals. That you are no better than the carcasses of starving animals.” (126). This utter dehumanisation is designed to delegitimise the calls for justice and freedom that were at the basis of the protest, but also to undermine the notion of basic equality. Soldiers that were rewarded for excessive violence during the Vietnam War are again rewarded bonuses when they surrender themselves to “especially brutal actions” (141), encouraging a lack of self-control and autonomy on both sides. The characters in Human Acts are broken by the enduring legacy of violence and are unable to move on, either through the results of the inflicted torture, the unresolved mysteries of disappeared family members or the persisting censorship of the violence commited. In their different ways, they demonstrate how people are “turning into a thing” (Weil 3), destroying all the dignity, reason and potential of human beings through violence. These are the “human acts” of the title, when people become one with force.

The catatonia, apathy and reduction of human autonomy is visible in Slaughterhouse Five, Catch-22 and Human Acts, both during and after the wars they depict. Under the pressure of violence, in order to protect the mind, people become apathetic and distance themseles from their situation as a necessary means to survive. The pain and turmoil of constant threat of death makes people unable to see into the future and find a path towards peace. As Weil describes it: “The mind ought to find a way out, but the mind has lost all capacity to so much as look outward” (Weil 23). Being unable to look outward, people become the pitiable figures shown in these anti-war novels, where both perpetrators and victims are unable to control their situations or themselves.

This apathy and helplessness is mirrored by the modern audiences outside of war, witnessing the suffering through modern media, but unable to act in meaningful resistance to the violence they perceive. Even though the degree of suffering is incomparable, with those in war zones suffering from the acute dangers of war, the effect displays similarities: crisis fatigue is a reduction in autonomy under a barrage of pain and suffering experienced vicariously. Since there is an endless stream of war urgently communicated through the news, people find there is simply too much to care and worry about. As the suffering from a single war is already too much to consider or communicate, there being multiple wars at any given time, and war being far from the only category of crisis, it is no wonder people have a tendency to switch off after having seen too much suffering, especially if they consider compassion to be limited (Robson). There is also another important notion that increases a submission to apathy: the idea that wars are inevitable. If nothing can be done to prevent war, it allows for a justification of inaction and resignation.

Given the historical record, war indeed appears omnipresent and unavoidable, as is also affirmed by the Trafalmadorians in Slaughterhouse Five. However, it is worth questioning this logic, as it part of the narrative of warmongers and dictators. The inevitability of war too often precedes an argument for starting or prolonging a war. If war cannot be avoided, it is best to strike first and achieve the best possible situation. Martin Amis, describing the language used in military writing about nuclear war, summarises their style while painfully exposing its senselessness:

In the can-do world of nuclear ‘conflict management’, we hear talk of retaliating first; in this world, hostile provocative, destabilizing nuclear weapons are aimed at nuclear weapons (counter-force), while peaceful, defensive, security-conscious nuclear weapons (there they languish, adorably pouting) are aimed at cities (countervalue). (10)

In this twisted language and logic, “refusing to cooperate” (Amis 10), the absurdity of trying to discuss war through a coherent, positive perspective becomes apparent. However, in the discussions on the possibility of war, it is only through Mutual Assured Destruction, where the threat of complete annihilation is the only thing preventing an initiation of war from one party, that stability can be created. However, Amis provides the syllogism of Failed Deterrence: “’He, thinking I was about to kill him in self-defence, was about to kill me in self-defence. So I killed him in self-defence.’” (16). This logic is often seen as unavoidable, where only naive idealists would believe anything could be different. However, the reasoning rests on the flawed assumption of war-logic, where the fighting has already ruined thinking, empathy and choice, rendering human agents into a thing. The suffering experienced in wars can also create cynicism, leading people to accept war as an unavoidable consequence of human nature. In Human Acts, one of the tortured survivors asks:

Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves this single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered – is this the essential fate of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable? (140)

This outlook is understandable, even likely, when looking at the unending suffering visible in the world. Peace is precarious and conflict escalates with an astounding force, almost impossible to resist. Heated arguments and wounded pride are more than enough to initiate war, let alone the misunderstandings and mistakes that are bound to occur in a complex system such as Earth. From that perspective, the suffering of war might never be gloriously overcome, so the ideal is reduced to a stoic and realistic endurance of wars that occur, with a specific mode of thinking that will aim to reduce the length, brutality and scope of wars that cannot be stopped, even if that includes starting wars.

However, war isn’t inevitable. Admittedly, under current circumstances, it would be naive to claim that everlasting peace is possible, but this is due to a conceptualisation of humanity and an organisation of physical reality, both of which can be changed. Claiming that war is inevitable is avoiding the responsibility of preventing it. People are to blame for making the decisions that lead to war. In Catch-22, Yossarian realises that there is blame on everyone involved in the world as it exists when he is blamed for the death of Nately by his lover:

It was a man’s world, and she and everyone younger had every right to blame him and everyone older for every unnatural tragedy that befell them; just as she, even in her grief, was to blame for every man-made misery that landed on her kid sister and on all other children behind her. Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all. (465).

Submitting to the idea that war cannot be stopped or prevented is to continue the “lousy chain of inherited habit”. It is not war that is inherent to humanity, but conflict. When people can re-imagine their language and reasoning to account for ways of resolving conflict that need not escalate to war, it becomes possible to consider a world where peace is much more strongly guarded against the impulses that generate war. This includes resisting the false narratives and broken logic of war. Bringing meaning into peace is essential to make war avoidable. This can be achieved by bringing the appropriate responses to the clichés of warmongers. Life matters. War is illogical. Remember every war should be stopped. Consider the costs of war and never consider them acceptable. Weapon oneself against the rule of violence by staying a person, armed with logic, compassion, reason. Humanise all victims, not only the ones that resemble us. Prioritising some wars over others is part of a loss in significance. War is not justifiable, but defence is necessary. In short, do not prepare for war, but prepare against war.

It will remain necessary to train soldiers and stock weapons and ammunition as long as there are aggressors with weapons, which will be for a long time, if not forever. Still, they must not be prepared for war, they must be prepared against war, educated on the deterioration of meaning during battle and infused with the most powerful weapons against the loss of autonomy: critical thinking, compassion, understanding of and appreciation for different perspectives. In Human Acts, one of the students, Jun-Li, speaks about this to a professor investigating the violence: “I never let myself forget that every single person I meet is a member of this human race” (141). In the novel, this carries the double load of sympathy and fear. After all, humans committed all the atrocities Jun-Li experienced. Still, it embodies the necessity for a constant protection of meaning, exchange and the recognition of others that lies at the core of a preparation against war. Han Kang also speaks through Ms. Lim, another witness of the massacre, who voices the need for meaning at the foundation of war stories: “We needed the national anthem for the same reason we needed the minute of silence. To make the corpses we were singing over into something more than butchered lumps of meat.” (181). The representation of war should always serve to prepare against war whether through the restoration of dignity, the approximation of the suffering endured or the examination of the falsehoods and glorification of war heroics. Considering the tragedies of war, it is essential to reduce the grip force has over humanity, and the stories told about war are essential in resisting it.

The absurdity of war can be explored through a range of perspectives. Wilfred Owen exposes the lies of war propaganda, whereas Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller deconstruct the image of the war hero and Han Kang aims to show the depth of suffering that abounds in violent conflict. Simone Weil and Martin Amis address the absurdity of war logic to refute the cynical view that war can be justified. In all cases, the absurdity of war is impressed on the reader, even if the reader cannot know the pain and trauma directly. Every attempt to reach those outside of war without succumbing to the narratives of glorification and justification helps in preparing against war in the future. Authors and readers need to constantly work to restore meaning to the senselessness of suffering, while resisting the pull to invent meaning in the act of war. When stories do not work to make war more likely, but to make humanity better equipped to resist war, it becomes possible to imagine a future where war is no longer considered an inevitability, but a grim reminder of the dangers of stories.

Works Cited List

Amis, Martin. “Unthinkability.” Einstein’s Monsters. 1987. Vintage, 2003.

Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. 1955. Vintage, 2011.

Kang, Han. Human Acts. 2014. Translation Deborah Smith. Granta Publications, 2016.

Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce et Decorum Est”. The War Poets: An Anthology. 1992. Parke Sutton Publishing, 2015.

Robson, David. “The Big Idea: Is Compassion Fatigue Real?” The Guardian, 2-2-2024.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five. 1969. Dell Publishing, 1991.

Weil, Simone. “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force.” Original: “L’Iliad, ou le poem de la force.” 1943.

Other sources

Alexievich, Svetlana. The Unwomanly Face of War. 1985. Translation Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Penguin, 2018.

Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. 1938. Penguin, 1974.

Homer. The Iliad.

Categories
English Non-fictie Tekst Tekst-overig Text WONDROUS CALS Book Club

“Uncrossable River”: the Forces and Choices of Loneliness

WONDROUS CALS Book Club 1, 30-12-2023

The feeling of loneliness is not most prominent when one is alone, but when proximity or intimacy is expected, yet absent. Loneliness is therefore most strongly felt in social contexts, where distance is not physical, but emotional. Feeling isolated or unaccepted can stem from different sources and manifest across a variety of mediums, such as language, experience, background and identity. The pain of loneliness within the family sphere, where a natural and loving connection is the norm, is a common theme across literary works. In their attempt to capture the universal patterns in loneliness within the family, stories such as Margaret Atwood’s “Widows”, Banana Yoshimoto’s “Kitchen”and Kurt Vonnegut’s Lonesome No More examine both the individual choices and the inescapable forces that create people’s isolation in one of the most intimate social units. Despite people’s unique existential experience, which separates even the most close-knit families, the uncrossable divide between individuals need not be a inevitable source of loneliness if families choose to recognise the limitations of sharing experiences, while still showing acts of care and intimacy.

In Margaret Atwood’s “Widows”, the reader is let into the hidden perspective of a widow, whose decision to not send her honest letter shows her hopelessness in communicating across the divide of experience. Nell, the writer of the letter, describes how she lives in isolation after losing her husband, Tig. She is concerned with cleaning up and spending time with other widows, all “a little obsessive” over the death scenes of their life partners (214). Intimate and candid, the letter is touching and generates sympathy and understanding for Nell, but she says: “ I don’t intend to share any of this with you. I don’t want you calling my younger friends and relatives in a state of concern and telling them something must be done about me.” (213-4) Assuming, perhaps rightfully so, that she will be misunderstood when opening up, she decides not only that it would be unwise to share her true state of being, but also that Stevie and others would never be able to understand. She decides unilaterally that Stevie’s attempts connect are “well-meaning”, from a “kind heart”, but ultimately pointless and insincere: “You asked me how I was doing, another social pleasantry. No one wants an honest answer to that one.” (213) This demonstrates how her isolation, caused by her unique experience of widowhood, is reinforced by her conviction that others would not understand her and would be better of not knowing her true feelings.

Even among her fellow widows, or “those who have lost their life partners” (214), Nell feels she cannot safely express herself, indicated by her refusal to tell anyone that she feels Tig is still present in an inexplicable way. After her husband’s death, she is aware of a “prescribed grieving process” that she is expected complete, to “come out the other end, all cheery and wearing bright colours and loaded for bear” (213). The expectation of her environment is that after a due mourning period, she will move on and stop to “cast a pall” (215). However, she is convinced she will not come out of mourning, which she tells the readers, but not Stevie:

No. Because it’s not a tunnel. There isn’t any other end. Time has ceased to be linear, with life events and memories in a chronological row, like beads on a string. It’s the strangest feeling, or experience, or rearrangement. I’m not sure I can explain it to you. And it would alarm you unduly if I were to say to you, ‘Tig isn’t exactly gone.’ (213)

Two essential divides between Nell and Stevie become apparent here: Nell’s perspective on the world, her experience, which she cannot communicate, and the idea that Stevie would be alarmed, which leads Nell to conclude that she should not even attempt to communicate. Together, they isolate her by reinforcing each other. Stevie cannot learn to respond effectively to something they don’t understand and might never understand, because Nell has already decided to the attempt will be futile.

This double isolation is not exclusive to Nell and Stevie, but is part of Nell’s unique situation, isolating her even from other widows. This leads her to seal the uncrossable divide of experience with her decision to not attempt any crossing. She states that the other widows would not appreciate her saying her honest thoughts out loud. However, she phrases this not as a choice, but as an impossibility: “I could not have said, ‘Don’t be silly. Tig is still here.’ (…) So we keep such notions to ourselves, we widows.” (216) It is a fact of widowhood that their experiences are kept silent and solitary. Even among people with similar experiences, it remains impossible to utter the feelings Nell experiences, generalised to all widows. They cannot connect across the difference in experience which separates them, even among themselves or when invited to by relatives.

Similarly, in Banana Yoshimoto’s “Kitchen”, the reader is shown the most intimate loneliness experienced by the main character, Mikage Sakurai, who is plagued by the feeling that every human being is ultimately alone. After the death of her last remaining family member, she feels an isolation that she links to an endless absence of light:

When my grandmother died the other day, I was taken by surprise. My family had steadily decreased one by one as the years went by, but when it suddenly dawned on me that I was all alone, everything before my eyes seemed false. The fact that time continued to pass in the usual way in this apartment where I grew up, even though now I was here all alone, amazed me. It was total science fiction. The blackness of the cosmos. (4)

This blackness and sense of being alone persists even when she is offered unexpected help by Yuichi Tanabe, a young man who knew Mikage’s grandmother from the florist he worked at. He invites her to come stay with him and his mother, and bemused by the self-assuredness with which he proposes this, she accepts. Although comforted by their well-lived kitchen, she still feels profoundly lonely. “Usually, the first time I go to a house, face to face with people I barely know, I feel an immense loneliness. I saw myself reflected in the glass of the large terrace window while black gloom spread of the rain-hounded night panorama. I was tied by blood to no creature in this world.” (10). However, despite Mikage hardly knowing Yuichi and his mother, Eriko, she feels welcome to stay there, and the change of atmosphere brings some relief. Staying the night on the sofa, she thinks: “Wrapped in blankets, I thought how funny it was that tonight, too, here I was sleeping next to the kitchen. I smiled to myself. But this time I wasn’t lonely.” (16) Although Yuichi and Eriko do not try to discuss Mikage’s sadness with her or claim to know what she’s going through, their presence and the quirky positivism of their lives helps to quell some of Mikage’s loneliness.

Over the next half year, Mikage is allowed to live with them, slowly recovering from her depression and becoming a part of their family. Their continued recognition of her pain and unyielding support is symbolized by the relationship with the kitchen. Mikage’s focus on the kitchen as a place of comfort becomes transformed as she starts to cook for the Tanabe family, a quintessential act of care that is the only payment they require for her staying there. Where before, the kitchen was the only place Mikage would not feel completely alone, it now channels the acts of reciprocity that can cross her sadness, because these acts are unspoken and a natural part of daily life. The meals she prepares are treasured by the whole family, and cross Yuichi’s emotional aloofness and the distance to Eriko’s dazzling night life. It allows Mikage to feel connected to these people she barely knew, to the point that she experiences the intimate moments of their life in the apartment. For example, one morning she sees Eriko water the plants, and listens to her talk about her past life, when, before the transition into becoming a woman, her wife died of cancer. There is a mutual acknowledgement that these experiences are impossible to convey fully, yet:

Her hair rustled, brushing her shoulders. There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can’t bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that. Still, enveloped in the twilight coming from the west, there she was, watering the plants with her slender, graceful hands, in the midst of a light so sweet it seemed to form a rainbow in the transparent water she poured. (41-2)

Despite the recognition that Eriko’s former life and the suffering it brought are inexpressable, both Mikage and Eriko find happiness in the fact that the other person is present. The respectful understanding that the other person’s pain is their own does not prevent connection. In fact, it allows Mikage to feel part of a family, each with their own suffering and unspeakable experiences.

In part 2, “Full Moon”, Eriko’s death creates a divide of sadness between Yuichi and Mikage that threatens to disconnect them. However, despite the knowledge that the feeling of isolation might never be understood, acts of kindness and closeness still manage to keep them together. Mikage has moved out of the Tanabe apartment and has become a chef’s assistant when she belatedly learns that Eriko has been killed by a confused admirer. Yuichi, at first unable to inform Mikage because of emotional distress, finally calls her. Mikage’s first response is to come over, stay the night, and make dinner for him the next day. Again, proximity and an effort to care are the core of the response, even though Mikage is aware that the loneliness they both feel is impossible to share. She dreams:

Yuichi and I are climbing a narrow ladder in the jet-black gloom. Together we peer into the cauldron of hell. We stare into the the bubbling red sea of fire, and the air hitting our faces is so hot it makes us reel. Even though we’re standing side by side, even though we’re closer to each other than to anyone else in the world, even though we’re friends forever, we don’t join hands. No matter how forlorn we are, we each insist on standing on or own two feet. (66)

Their actions are limited by the events of their lives and the forces both inside and outside of them. On the outside, societal expectations and jealousy are voiced by a classmate of Yuichi, who urges Mikage to stay away from Yuichi (72-74). There have been rumours and complaints about her living in his apartment before, and they cannot become romantically involved because of the forces inside them: the grief and pain they both experience in their individual ways. They are unable to connect fully, kept apart by their unique suffering, even if it overlaps. Later, when Yuichi has fallen asleep after the extravagant dinner, Mikage breaks into tears: “Of course it wasn’t over having to wash all those dishes; I was crying for having been left behind in the night, paralysed with loneliness.” (67) The loneliness is not resolved by their mutual attempt at reconnection. Their individual feelings of grief prevent them from finding solace in each other.

However, Mikage overcomes the forces and emotions that keep Yuichi and her apart through a symbolic act of care, literally crossing a dark and unfamiliar distance to deliver a hearty meal to Yuichi, who has isolated himself. After their shared dinner, Mikage is asked to join her employer on a culinary journey to Izu. She agrees to go, overwhelmed by the grief she feels herself and the pain she feels from Yuichi. Hoping to put distance between pain and themselves, both Mikage and Yuichi travel away from Tokyo and find themselves in lonely inns, separated from everyone else. Having eaten little, Mikage leaves the inn late at night, and orders a katsudon meal. Waiting for her meal, she decides to call Yuichi, but realises “I had felt as if Yuichi were in some other world, at the other end of a telephone line. And that other world was darker than the place where I was. It was like the bottom of the sea.” (89) The distance between them seems endless, but still, Yuichi picks up, and Mikage says she “closed her eyes, just listening to that voice I missed so much. It was like lonely waves against the shore.” (90) These three images all emphasise the distance between them, revealing how even though they are as close as family, as close as lovers, their individual experiences separate them as the bottom of the sea and the shore.

After they hang up, Mikage eats the katsudon which is “outrageously good” (92). Then, she feels a single opportunity to cross the divide:

At that moment I had a thrillingly sharp intuition. I knew it as if I held it in my hands: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off in different directions. In that case we would forever remain just friends. I knew it. I knew it with absolute certainty. (91)

She finds herself at a crossroads, where she could decide to act or to surrender to the hopelessness she feels: “Now I felt really alone, at the bottom of a deep loneliness that no one could touch. People aren’t overcome by situations or outside forces; defeat invades from within, I thought.” (92)

Motivated by this realisation, she orders an extra serving of the katsudon and hails a taxi to drive her through the icy night, to the inn Yuichi is staying. Since the inn is closed at night, Mikage climbs the back wall in order to reach Yuichi’s balcony. When he lets her in, she offers him the food, but it does not initially work to cross the divide. “Suddenly all the time we’d spent together, even the fact that we’d lived in the same place, seemed like a far-off dream. Yuichi was not in this world now. His cold eyes frightened me.” (98-9) Despite their physical proximity, they have not come closer across the gap of loneliness. It’s only after Yuichi’s sees the cut Mikage suffered while climbing to his balcony, and he finally starts to eat the katsudon, that they become closer. The efforts Mikage has made remind both of them of “more family memories” (100), which finally dissolves the barrier between them. Mikage thinks back to the details of living together and remembers:

When was it that Yuichi said to me, “Why is it that everything I eat when I’m with you is so delicious?”

I laughed. “Could it be that that you’re satisfying hunger and lust at the same time?”

“No way, no way, no way!” he said, laughing. “It must be because we’re family.” (100-1)

Notably, the concept of family becomes defined not through the absence of loneliness, but through the shared living through loneliness, recognising that each of the two has felt their own unique pain, and still still continuing to care for each other. Crossing the distance between the two inns represents the effort of trying to imagine the other person’s experience, even though Mikage is aware she can never know exactly what Yuichi is feeling. It’s not through the understanding of the experience, but the understanding of the distance that she shows her care for Yuichi. In response, Yuichi, not because he feels understood, but because understands the distance Mikage crossed for him, has a hope for returning to a shared life. After Mikage has returned to her own inn, and later finishes her work journey, the story ends with Yuichi promising to pick up Mikage from the station, another act of kindness and care that shows an effort to cross physical distance to represent an effort to communicate across the uncrossable divide between two people.

In both “Widows” and “Kitchen”, the untranslatable experiences of the main characters emphasise the forces that separate people, which are outside of human control. No matter the effort, Nell could not share her experiences with Stevie, nor could Mikage and Yuichi make each other know how they feel. The choices the characters make follow the acceptance that they are fundamentally alone, unable to cross the river, but where Nell has decided that others aren’t interested in her story and that any attempt at communication is therefore pointless, Mikage manages to see the worth in the attempt. The imagery of an uncrossable river and the depth of the sea both emphasise the distance between characters, even if they are part of a family. Though the river cannot be crossed, acts of care and kindness can come across, and through a recognition of the unknowable emotions in others, awareness of people’s situation can bring comfort and proximity. It requires an open mind, mutual effort and emotional proximity to communicate across the divide. This is what family is, in essence: staying together despite the divide. This explains why the combination of loneliness and comfort is often felt among blood relatives, where the divide might be big due to wide difference in personality, history and experience, and yet a connection always persists. Loneliness that rises from feeling the divide is common. Loneliness felt at the idea that the divide is uncrossable is common, too. Yet the feeling that comes from the persistent attempts at communication, the willingness to stay together and keep in contact even when the experiences can never be translated, is a sense of family.

In Lonesome No More, Kurt Vonnegut describes a bleak future where the narrator, Wilbur, runs to become the president of a splinted United States of America through one essential campaign promise: to eradicate loneliness by providing everyone with a family. In typically absurdist Vonnegut fashion, this is achieved by a “simple and workable anti-loneliness plan” (112): giving everyone a new middle name of a “noun, the name of a flower or fruit or nut or vegetable or legume, or a bird or a reptile or a fish, or a mollusk, or a gem or a mineral or a chemical element – connected by a hyphen to a number between one and twenty” (114). Everyone with the same name is of the same family and everyone of that group with the same number is a sibling. This way, every inhabitant of the United States would have “ten thousand brothers and sisters” and “one hundred and ninety thousands cousins (113). Although there is a plethora of disasters to overcome, with fluctuating gravity, the Green Death and civil war, the extended families create a shift in the way people see themselves and others. For example, when one family vehemently against war, Wilbur has a sudden insight. “I realized that nations could never acknowledge their own wars as tragedies, but that families not only could but had to.” (149). The proximity that is enclosed in the idea of family does not solve all problems, nor does it make every person understood, but it succeeds in awakening people’s best intentions towards large groups of people. Wilbur, who is half of a twin that becomes a telepathic genius when they are touching, is another symbol of how proximity and intimacy are able to transcend the divides between individuals, even if after their communion they do not remember their shared experiences. Through these extreme examples, Lonesome No More also reinforces the idea that the essence of family is the continued effort to care for another person across the many barriers between individuals.

In conclusion, the feelings of loneliness that occur within families are the result of a variety of forces and choices. Through different life experiences and different personalities, people’s inner lives are fundamentally unknowable and untranslatable, even if they are related or live in a shared space. The attempt to communicate across this uncrossable divide seems futile, as is concluded by Nell in “Widows”. She expects others to shun her for having the idea that her late husband is still present in some way and therefore censors her sincere expression of loneliness by not sending her original letter. She is unable to communicate and therefore chooses not to try. In contrast, “Kitchen” shows how despite the emotions and grief of losing family members being overwhelming and ineffable, the continued decision to care for each other and attempt to share proximity can prove enough to dispel some of the loneliness that can occur. Though the metaphorical river between people is uncrossable, even among family members, the acceptance of this divide should not discourage the attempt at mutual communication, but should inspire a kind of exchange that is open to the wisdom that one cannot know exactly what the other is experiencing. If this acceptance is combined with continued care and proximity, the loneliness within families can be assuaged across the uncrossable.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. “Widows”. Old Babes in the Wood. 2023. Doubleday, New York.

Yoshimoto, Banana. “Kitchen”. 1988. Translation: Megan Backus. 1994, Faber and Faber.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Lonesome No More. 1976. Vintage, 2008.

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A House Made One

Deze pagina is een thuis voor het manuscript van A House Made One, een novelle die ik schreef tussen 2017 en 2021. Hoewel ik een aantal Engelstalige uitgeverijen heb benaderd, heb ik nog geen plek gevonden om de novelle uit te geven.

A House Made One is een utopische novelle die plaatsvindt in een tijd en plaats waar mensen gedwongen zijn samen te leven in grote Houses om lange winters met onafgebroken regen te doorstaan. Het gaat over een tiener die door de extreme jaargetijden leert om een meer verantwoordelijk en volwassen onderdeel te worden van zijn House. I schreef A House Made One om te onderzoeken hoe onderwerpen als identiteit, liefde, gemeenschap en zelfontwikkeling zouden veranderen in een context die radicaal herinterpreteren van menselijk samenzijn toestaat. Ik wilde een omgeving bedenken waar mijn hoop voor positieve interactie tussen mensen wordt aangemoedigd in plaats van de situatie in onze wereld, waar ze zo vaak worden ontmoedigd. In een samenleving met eenvoudige technologie maar verfijnde socialen structuren stel ik me een wereld voor waarin polyamorie, genderidentiteit en gemeenschappelijk eigendom geen grote obstakels zijn, maar juist worden geaccepteerd als de best mogelijke antwoorden op de vraag van menselijk overleven.

Het verhaal volgt Beru, zeventien jaar oud, die zich gedraagt zoals tieners zoals ik ze ken uit mijn lespraktijk. Echter, omdat de regels van zijn wereld anders zijn, kunnen lezers een ander perspectief op menselijk gedrag verkennen. Bekende drijfveren in een onbekende wereld staan lezers toe om een verbinding te voelen met de karakters terwijl ze zich kritisch kunnen verhouden tot een alternatieve maatschappij dan de onze. Door een heel jaar met Beru mee te leven kunnen lezers zich voorstellen welke keuzes zij zouden maken in de vallei van het House of Turtle en die vergelijken met hun keuzes in hun eigen leven.

Dit is een uitnodiging om de eerste vijf pagina’s van het verhaal te lezen. Mocht je meer willen lezen, laat het me dan weten. Ik stuur graag de rest van het manuscript naar je op en ben benieuwd wat je ervan denkt. Als je een connectie hebt met een uitgeverij of iemand kent die mogelijkheden voor uitgave met mij wil bespreken, zou ik erg dankbaar zijn voor elke stap die het project verder brengt. Mocht er interesse zijn in een Nederlandse versie, ben ik van harte bereid een hertaling te ondernemen.

A House Made One

by Wessel Fledderus

1
Beru looked out across the lagoon and felt the breeze lift a few strands of hair. This is what summer should be like, he thought. This is what life should be like. He consciously turned to his senses in sequence. He felt his weight pressing on a smooth rock, he felt his pantoons breathing loosely around his legs and he felt the drops of sea water dry on his shoulders. He heard the younglings chatter and pile rocks on each other, he heard the creatures around them make their sounds of complete comfort and he heard the waves overturning on the beach. He saw people devoted to their tasks on the beach, the sparkling waves in the lagoon and the horizon turning a deep green where it met the spotless sky.
This was what life should be like. Why could he not imagine how he had felt only two moons ago, when he felt everything was pointless and life should have been ended before it turned to misery? He struggled to remember the thought process, but could not grasp the steps he took then. He fought to evoke the feelings of that time, to drag them out into his current situation and face them here, where he would certainly destroy them forever. He visualised the endless rain and the grey faces, but to his current eye, they seemed distant, even slightly pleasant.
On the beach, an unage apprentice had found a particularly pretty shell. A nearby seal slowly lifted its head. People gathered and he could hear their cries of excitement all the way on the cliff. The shell would be on display for everyone in her house to see. She was not from his house. The Whales, he thought, or possibly the Crabs. He tried to make out the faces, suddenly excited. Maybe Trucia would be there, too. That was the reason he was here in the first place.
“Beru, we need you.”
The voice was torn, but friendly. Aless beckoned him.
“The first layers have been built. I want you to inspect them and perform judgment while I hand out the firstmeals.”
“Naturally, master elder.” Beru wasn’t always a committed apprentice, but he appreciated the task he had managed to claim today, so he made sure to appear zealous and capable. He rose and moved towards the miniature rock foundations the younglings had made, acknowledging the effort they had put in. After every foundation, he performed judgment with a kind smile. He was aware of the influence he had over the younglings, who were only between five and ten winters, and he felt the disaffected gaze of Aless, who would perform judgment on his performance upon her return to the house.
After he was finished, the younglings eagerly chomped down their firstmeal while clustering in small groups. The noise of the sea resounded around them and they looked around leisurely. Beru watched them while he ate, reaffirming that he was lucky to be caretaker today. Aless and Berth seated themselves next to him.
“They are doing well,” Berth said. She was a strong woman with short, dark hair, known as one of the best builders of the house. Beru appreciated her, but rarely spoke to her. She was demanding of herself and others, something that made her unpopular with Beru and other unaged.
“If they maintain this discipline when they grow up, our house will be secure and prosperous,” Berth looked from the piles of collected rocks to the younglings. “It warms my bones.”
“They certainly worked hard. They must have been impressed with your example this morning.” Aless was an older woman, with a tenderness that contrasted her cracked face and voice. Her grey hair was put up in a complicated pattern, an artistic variation on the traditional hairdo for the elderly masters. She had been caretaker as long as Beru could remember, treating the ill and supervising the young already when Beru was a child himself.
Berth turned to Beru.
“Your judgments were kind and wise, but you need to refine your builder’s eye. I hope you will join one of my classes before autumn comes.”
“It would be my honour, Berth.”
He hoped that would be enough to stop the discussion there. He was willing to learn, but not ready to spend his days underneath the House if there was a chance to be close to the sea, with a chance to see that girl again. He noticed a feeling swell in his chest. Summer was too good to be spent on foundations.

After the task was completed, Aless and Berth started to prepare to take the younglings back to the house. The younglings were excited to be relieved of their duties and were already planning their afternoon playing.
“Will you join us, Beru?” asked Aless.
“No, master elder. The others will soon be here and I would like to make the most of the sun’s abundance today.”
Berth grinned and started walking, saying: “The young are full of energy, but lack direction. Enjoy your sunsoaking, Beru.” The younglings followed her, not quite aware of what she had said, but enjoying the words at Beru’s expense. As they headed for the House, they started a children’s marching song. Aless nodded to Beru and said: “Enjoy the day. Maybe you can find some new followers for our House, too.”
Beru froze at the cheek of her remark. It always surprised him how his elders could think so lightly of contacting the other Houses and selecting potential lovers, in whatever form. To Beru, nothing could be more important or more daunting. His heart pounded with the realisation that everyone must be aware of his friends’ intentions. If Aless could mention it so casually, it must mean the whole house was talking about it. Even his father.

He quickly left for the beach, where soon there would be a congregation of unaged from all nearby Houses. Usually, there would be close to fifty, depending on how the tasks had been divided in the morning. They would swim, sing and sleep in the sun, perform feats of strength, skill and agility and outwit each other wherever possible, hoping to attract others to them. It was exhilarating and a constant source of new connections. Last year, Beru had become interested in Trucia, a girl from the House of Caiman, but she had only been to the beach during her tasks this summer, never afterwards. Maybe today.
He was already radiating heat when his friends arrived. He heard Cibastian first, as always. Cibastian’s voice was rich and playful, a result of Cibastian’s tendency to talk to everyone, all the time. During winter, he would be the last to run out of stories. During summer, he would be the first to have new ones. He was bold and impulsive, which used to upset Beru, who had always been more pensive. However, during the previous summers, they had discovered they complemented each other well, not least when contacting unaged from another House.
Cibastian was talking to Lear, which was mostly clear because there was no retort to Cibastian’s outrageous boasting. If Beru was pensive, Lear was positively introverted. He was Beru’s oldest friend and Beru’s mother never failed to mention how they spent long winter days sitting together playing their individual games, apparently satisfied to be in each other’s presence. Lear always thought before he spoke, or thought at length and never spoke at all. He was a serious, focused worker who did not change his mind readily. He treated others with a distant respect that could put people off. It certainly had required Beru’s repeated reassurance to convince Cibastian that Lear appreciated him enough to tolerate him around.
Beru heard a thump in the sand and felt some specks hit his face.
“Hello, Cibastian,” he said, without opening his eyes. “I’m happy you’re here.”
“Are you ready to gather some followers? I’m confident our House will be full of the prettiest girls soon.”
Lear’s raspy voice noted: “It will have to be soon. I think the rain might start today.”
Beru opened his eyes, shielding them from the sun. He looked at the clear blue sky and had to look between his eyelashes to look for clouds. Before he could find words for his predictions, Cibastian spoke.
“Nah, you’re being too pessimistic. It will be a wonderful day full of sun and sweetness. Look, Beru, I made some tokens for those girls from the House of Whale.”
Beru sat up. The tokens were a series of carved pieces of wood, held together by strings. They were decorated with elaborate patterns, which traditionally conveyed a personalised message explained when it was given. Cibastian’s tokens were promises of love, understanding, physical prowess and comfortable living. The symbol for laughter was in there four times.
“Where did you find the time to do all this? You’ve been on the beach constantly.”
“Clever task choice and setting of priorities,” Cibastian grinned. “I’ve been minding the elders, mostly. I let the others do the hard work while I entertain them with some talking. You know… They appreciate it. None of the aged are going to ask me to something time-consuming when they see an elder man thrilled to be in conversation about his own conquests at the beach.”
Lear frowned.
“Come on! Finding the best followers is important!”
Some others from the House of Turtle had arrived with Cibastian and Lear. There was Sissaly, a girl of seventeen winters and her sister, Offil, two winters younger. Then there were a few younger unaged, for whom this was their first summer away from the supervision of the aged. They were mostly occupied with each other and hardly interacted with the other Houses, although they sometimes challenged each other to games of skill or strength.
Slowly, groups of people were gathering on the beach, some four tens in total. People started swimming, talking, playing games and making music around the beach.
“Come, Beru, time to go. See you after, Lear. Good luck with Tymas.”
Cibastian dashed off. Lear squinted. Beru rose and put his hand on Lear’s shoulder. “He means well, Lear. I told him you spoke with Tymas regularly, so he jumped to the conclusion. Should I talk to him?”
“No matter. I don’t mind.”
“See you later, Lear. I’ll come see you when the first games are over.”
Lear nodded.
Beru turned to the part of the beach marked for rockthrow and started ploughing through the sand.
“She’ll be there,” Lear said.
Beru smiled and walked on.

With a sense of self-awareness, Beru arrived at the rockthrow. Some girls were throwing now. The rounded, marked stones lay in a pile close to the throwing line, which was marked by wooden poles. Cibastian was chattering away to Guerry, from the House of Crab, while they both crossed their arms in a display of simulated disinterest. Two other boys from the House of Seagull, Tymas and Rodderic, sat in the sand, speaking in low tones.
Beru recognised Yesther and her friend Jodi, both seventeen winters, from the House of Crab, who were watching the current thrower with disdain. She was clad in a noticeably revealing set of clothes, revealing the curves around her hips when she moved, which usually led to appreciation and condemnation in equal measure. There was a younger girl cautiously eyeing her while holding her own rock. He did not know either of them. Two more girls were watching the game, although Beru noticed they were more interested in the other audience members.
Disappointed that Trucia wasn’t there, he let himself fall down into the sand and started working it into shapes while he watched the rockthrowing absent-mindedly. He flicked through his memories of Trucia on the beach, some from last year, some from this year, before he’d had time to go there himself. Trying to paint every detail of her face in his mind, he struggled to find words to categorise her features and was unable to explain why he thought her to be beautiful. Wavy hair, deep blue eyes, sharp bones softened by her smile – these things he could capture, but they did not explain his fascination. A cheer rose from the audience as Yesther launched her rock, comically somersaulting into the sand, landing close to Cibastian, who smiled warmly. Beru felt his lips tighten. Would other girls do such things to win him over? Would Trucia?
At the start of last summer, Beru had shared some games with her. Two winters younger than him, it had been her first summer at the beach. She had boldly approached him and challenged him to her first game, taunting him by saying he would be shamed forever if he would refuse the dare of a newcomer. She was talkative, active and free. At first, Beru had trouble understanding her, because she seemed to behave erratically, alternating intimacy, mockery and distance with jarring switches. As summer progressed, he had become comfortable with her drive for breaking expectations and they were locked in a never-ending contest of wits where she attempted to surprise him and he attempted to grasp her motivations before she had uttered them.
When summer drew to a close, she had shocked him by revealing her feelings of admiration and appreciation to him as a matter of fact, a natural given. They had even kissed, once, secluded from the others on a walk in the forest. The last days of summer were filled with tumultuous emotions so that when the rains came, he had not said what he needed to.
His winter was therefore engrained with a constant inclination in his thoughts. His desire to be outdoors, in the sun, on the beach, and active, became intricately mixed with his desire to be around Trucia. Spending the measureless days of frigid downpour carefully articulating his feelings towards her, he feared his conjured scenarios would disconnect from reality.
When spring came, he had made the twofold decision to express all his winter’s worth of pining, pondering and pronouncing, and also search the reality of summer for signs that would completely deflate his dreams. Alternating between dedicated initiative and practical consideration, he managed to remain indecisive to the extent that his own response to seeing her would be a surprise to him.
A shadow moved onto his face. Cibastian hauled him to his feet. “Our turn, my friend.”
Tymas and Rodderic joined them. They declared a game of distance, rather than precision or skill, Cibastian’s favourite. While he moved to throw first, Beru heard voices approaching. He turned, too eagerly, he thought, and spotted her walking hand in hand with another girl, flanked by two more girls and boys holding hands. Beru almost dropped his rock.
“Go on, Beru.” Cibastian pulled him towards the poles. Two of them had already thrown, with decent outcomes. Determined to make an impression, Beru flung his rock past both of them. Cibastian cheered and declared legendary strength while hanging around his shoulders. Beru heard nothing as he met Trucia’s eyes. His mind came to a momentary halt and then questions poured down. Did she see his throw? Was it good enough? Had she changed since last summer? What if she was only attracted to girls? If only she would smile, he could stop worrying.
She faced him with eyes more blue than he remembered. The moment stretched. He noticed her new necklace with a carved wooden figure pointing down her chest. Strands of hair waved across her neck.
She smiled. He felt his body tremor.

Their initial greetings were comically casual, but Beru was pulled back into the game by Cibastian before he could decide what to do. Half the unaged from the House of Crab moved on, but Boryn asked to join the game and the rest stayed to watch. Beru felt split in two, divided between full attention on Trucia and remaining a normal person participating in a game of rockthrow. Every time he looked towards the audience, Trucia stood out like a full moon in a starry sky. He felt so drawn to her that he wondered whether he could hold his balance.
“It seems you’ve spent all your skill on that one throw, Beru.” Cibastian mocked him with a flourish of muscle. Muttering arose from the audience, as always when Cibastian performed in public. Beru wished he could do the same.
“You’ve spent it all on posing, Cibastian,” Rodderic scoffed. “You’re doing worse than Beru.”
“It’s all part of my ploy. You’ll never see it coming.” Cibastian’s face mirrored a demon mask, accurately.
“They will if you tell them, kelp brain!” Yesther roared from the side. The girls in the audience laughed freely. Beru was transfixed by the sound of Trucia’s laugh.
“Maybe it’s a double bluff,” Trucia said above the din. “Maybe he’ll lose miserably to confuse all of us.”
Tymas was ready to throw.
“That would not be a surprise at all.” His voice was relaxed while he body tensed. With admirable form, he launched his rock five feet further than even Beru had. Sounds of awe rose all around. If anything was to be won by this endeavour, Tymas had just won. Cool, capable and clever. Mud. Beru felt outclassed.
Then, Cibastian jumped on Tymas.
“Congratulations, Tymas! You’ve won a hug from the most attractive unaged at the beach.”
Both fell flat in the sand as the crowd cheered and Yesther jumped onto the both of them.
“Here I am, then!”
Beru looked back at Trucia, who stared straight at him with apparent communication. Beru felt his body respond before his mind did. He walked over and offered his hand, involuntarily, yet fully conscious.
“Shall we sit by the water for a bit?” His voice was resolute, a little lower than usual. Thankfully.
“Just the two of us, Beru? Are you sure?” She took his hand. “You might not remember how I vowed to harass you whenever I am close.”
“Oh, I remember. You just never managed. More practice, maybe.”
They walked away from the fray that had moved into the lagoon to a spot a little further away.

Beru was aware of the sound of the surf and the noise of those nearby, but it was dull compared to his hard-hitting heart. There was no silence, but the space between words was daunting. He felt Trucia’s eyes on him, but whenever he had mustered the resolve to meet them, they dropped to the sand below their feet.
“How come you’ve not come to the beach before?” Beru asked with strained casualty.
“I was ill for a while. My parents wouldn’t let me leave.” Trucia turned to him. “Were you waiting for me?” It was meant to provoke.
“Yes. Either you have trouble remembering last year or you’re just combing for compliments.” He sunk into the familiar exchange and felt his insides float.
Trucia smiled. “Maybe I was less impressed than you were last summer.”
Beru took a few steps, feigning deep thought.
“It does seem like a dream. Maybe I imagined all of it.”
Trucia mirrored his serious expression. Beru continued.
“I must have imagined that time when we came to the beach with our feet covered in cuts and bruises because we had stayed at the beach too long the day before and had returned when it was too dark to see.”
Trucia nodded, seriously, like a concerned parent.
“And I must have imagined that time when we were challenged to a double duel and Cibastian and Yesther fell over before we had made contact.”
A small smile fluttered on Trisha’s lips.
“And I must have imagined that time we pretended to be siblings for two days and we managed to convince even Cibastian…”
Trucia’s smile burst into laughter.
“All those glances we exchanged and all the times I could hardly contain myself and he didn’t notice…” She fell silent as she looked at Beru’s solemn face. She sat down demonstratively.
Beru dropped next to her, cross-legged, his eyes on the horizon, his right side tingling with Trucia’s proximity.

(end of page 5)

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Publicatie: De Kwistige Reynearde

Het online literaire tijdschrijft De Kwistige Reynearde heeft het verhaal “De Schatkamers” geplaatst in hun eerste editie. Trots en enthousiasme vervullen mij. (Het is nu alleen veranderd naar tijdschrift Landauer…)

Kijk nu hier, want ze hebben hun website veranderd!

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Tekst Tekst-overig Uncategorized

Creative Writing – Dialogue

In 2008, I took a Creative Writing course during my bachelor’s English. Here’s assignment 4: Dialogue.

 

Assignment 4 – Domestic dialogue

LB: Wow, you see that kid over there? She’s a genius!
OB:  I am driving a car, Philip.
LB: She is the best! I’ve never seen anyone skip rope like that! I wish I could do it.
OB: Philip, you are a 43 year old male.
LB: I don’t care, it was amazing.
OB: I don’t think I can ever be proud of you if your deepest desire is to skip rope.
LB: I didn’t say it was my deepest desire.
OB: …
LB: Did you notice I had my hair cut?
OB: Yes, I did.
LB: … So what d’you think?
OB: I think it fits you.
LB: Why do you say that?
OB: Because it is polite to say that.
LB: So you don’t like it?
OB: I am not an expert concerning haircuts. You know that.
LB: I just asked if you like it. You don’t need expertise for that.
OB: …
LB: Do you think the ducks are back yet?
OB: They usually return in March.
LB: I just hope they took another month off in Africa. I really hate those ducks. Oh no!
OB: What is it?
LB: Do you think I’ll see those ducks when I go to Tunisia this winter?
OB: I consider it highly unlikely.
LB: It would be strange to see them over there. Perhaps they are much more friendly if they are enjoying themselves. Everyone seems to be friendlier if they are on a holiday.
OB: Do you want to hand over the flowers this time?
LB: No thanks, I have bought something myself.
OB: You’ve never done that before.
LB: I know, but isn’t it great I did now? I bought a necklace at one of those small jewelry stands downtown.
OB: Those are not jewelry stands. They only sell small pieces of metal. Did you check if it is made of nickel?
LB: No, I didn’t.
OB: You didn’t. Do you want to poison our mother?
LB: What? Of course not.
OB: She is allergic to nickel. You ought to know such things.
LB: I was just trying to be nice.
OB: You do not have to be nice. You have to be thoughtful. It would not be the first time you hurt Mother.
LB: What?! What did I do?
OB: You didn’t show up on her wedding anniversary. You didn’t come to her choir performance and you didn’t send her a card for Francis’ birthday.
LB: A card for Francis? He’s a turtle!
OB: Mother cares about it, so you should at least do something.
LB: I’m not gonna send cards to every turtle Mom’s got! I don’t even know half of their names.
OB: You should try to learn them.
 

 

OB: I told you you would hurt Mother.
LB: I already said I’m sorry. I feel miserable enough as it is, so please stop talking about it. I’m sorry!
OB: That is not going to bring Fred back to live. You should not have told her. We could have bought another one.
LB: I may hurt Mum, but I will never lie to her.
OB: She would not be crying now if you had lied.
LB: It would have hurt her a lot more.
OB: No, it wouldn’t. She would never have known and she would only be a bit worried about her missing turtle until we had found a new Fred. Lying is not a bad thing if you prevent hurt.
LB: You know I don’t agree with that.
OB: That’s the reason I am telling you this. You should try to change.
LB: Into a liar.
OB: Into a sensible adult, keeping his mother from hurt.
LB: …
OB: Yes, Mother? …  It’s in the fridge … No, just take it easy, we’ll start cooking. Let’s start.
LB: What are we going to make?
OB: It looks like it will be some kind of casserole.
LB: I can do that, no problem.
OB: Everybody can make a casserole.
LB: What does it matter, as long as we can make one now?
OB: Can you hand me the recipe?
LB: Why would you want to use it? We can make our own recipe.
OB: I don’t want to risk the failure of our supper.
LB: Mum would deviate from the recipe, you know.
OB: Yes, I know, but Mother is a good cook. We’re not.
LB: At least put in some extra mushrooms.
OB: It says three mushrooms on the recipe, so three mushrooms it will be.
LB: Why do you think Mum has bought an entire box?
OB: To make another one later on. We’ll stick to the recipe.
LB: I give up. I feel like I’m talking to a wall.
OB: Please turn off the radio. I can’t focus like this.
LB: Oh come on, you don’t mean that.
OB: I do mean it.
LB: How can a little music prevent you from cooking? You don’t need your ears for cooking. At least, I never use them.
OB: Just be nice and turn it off.
LB: Hey, here’s that song that you used to like. We bought the record for your birthday. Yeah, I remember! We danced all evening. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.
OB: …
LB: We even climbed on the roof and sung it there. Then Mum got mad and got us down. That was fun.
OB: It’s a miracle we didn’t get hurt. We should never have done it.

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Tekst Tekst-overig

Creative Writing – Setting

During my bachelor’s, I followed a short course in creative writing in 2008. This was one of the assignments:

 

Assignment 2 – Setting (2017 edit)

I often go for a trip near my house. I live by the water, along a network of narrow waterways. These waterways were dug to harvest turf and are separated by thin, very long islands. The islands are filled with wild plants and trees, so you can’t see any further than the ditch you’re in. I hide from the world behind these curtains. No audience can see me here. Everyone may be looking at me when I leave my house, but here I am alone and I can do what I want without being rated by the critics of the world.

I like the silence of the ditches. Especially the far north-eastern edge is deserted. The only sounds are the echoes of another lone boat or the eerie laughter of a duck. When it rains, the drops create a distant murmur. It is the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.

There are many boats still lying in the docks here, but they haven’t been cleaned for a long time. No one ever goes near this edge, because someone was murdered here two years ago. The police are still investigating the area, or at least that is what they tell everyone. I have never encountered anyone here, let alone a team of pathologists.

The boats and docks are camouflaged into the rest of the landscape, changing their white colour to greens and browns. People used to spend their free days around the harbours in summer, swimming and lying in the sun. Now the plastic slides and picnic tables are falling apart. The sheds containing barbecues and towels have turned to a monotonous green.

It is winter now. I prefer this season to summer, even though it is cold, cloudy and frequently rains. In summer, half of the ditches are filled with slick speedboats and luxurious yachts on their way to the lake. The noises of the boats and its passengers are intensified by the echoes. The smell of petrol, sweat, sun block and burned meat is inescapable. I rarely go for a trip in the summer.

The engine softly grumbles when I slow down. A few ducks stare at my vessel and bob up and down on the waves I create. I glide past a small boat called ‘Rising Star’. One window is broken and the front is largely beneath the surface. Near the rudder a seagull has its nest. It swears at me as seagulls always do.

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Non-fictie Tekst Tekst-overig

Untranslatable Silence – The Power of Silence in Coetzee’s Foe

Written in 2010, during the master programme Western Literature and Culture, for the subject Literature Across Cultures.

Wessel Fledderus – Unstranslatable Silence – The Power of Silence Coetzee’s Foe