Tag: WONDROUS CALS Book Club

Listen to the Other

Listen to the Other: Emptiness in Colonial Narratives

As the violent exploitation of people and environments is repugnant to most individuals, colonialism requires a powerful narrative to maintain industrial scale. By dehumanising the oppressed Other and dismissing natural systems as worthless, European powers conditioned their population to resist the urge to empathise and question the ethics of colonialism. From within this framework, the notion of bringing civilisation and progress to empty territories and hollow individuals was used to justify violence, oppression and indoctrination. Through works such as The Rabbits by Shaun Tan and John Marsden and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the lens through which colonisers view their colonised subjects is made apparent and questioned. The erasure of inherent value of the Other is destructive to both the colonial subject and the coloniser, since the persistent denial of other perspectives and the suppression of doubt forbids development and mutual exchange. Postcolonial works such as “The Ultra-Black Fish” by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Notebook of a Return to My Native Land by Aimé Césaire show how the restoration of plurality and recognition of humanity and worth in colonised areas is necessary to deconstruct the narratives of colonisation and foster a world view resistant to exploitation. Through these works, the undermining label of metaphorical emptiness imposed on the Other are exposed as an essential component of colonialist frameworks, and the efforts to recognise the fullness of other cultures and ecologies are shown to be a powerful antidote to systemic oppression.

Joseph Conrad’s seminal Heart of Darkness convinces European readers of the suffering inflicted by colonialism, but focuses on the perception its white characters have of Africa as an empty slate. Its portrayal of the misery of black colonial subjects is poignant, but impersonal, leaving them as a distant Other regardless of how seriously it portrays the effects of colonialism. Marlow, the white captain tasked with finding the mysterious Kurtz, representative of the white colonial master, describes Africa and Africans as a clean slate, ready to be improved by Western influence. Marlow reveals that he loved maps when he was a child, especially for the “blank spaces” (8). He describes the African coast as an “enigma” (15). When he sees a French man-of-war shooting at the jungle, he says: “In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.” (16). The motif of emptiness is continued when he travels by boat up the river Congo: “Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.” (41). By now, Marlow struggles to communicate the overpowering sense of enormity of the land with his perception of this place as empty. He is faced with evidence that contradicts his education. This ambiguity is also present when he says: “We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance” (43). They can imagine to be the first in an empty world, but there is something to inherit, something that came before, which cannot be denied. It is a fancy. In other words, the ideal of an empty Africa is refuted by the facts, but Marlow’s perspective of colonial exploitation does not allow him to see this clearly. Thus, the narration he provides, through the motif of emptiness, propagates the narrative of colonial superiority.

Similarly, the people Marlow meets in Heart of Darkness are made empty. Marlow recognises their suffering, and sometimes their humanity, but cannot see past the narratives he has been told. For example, he describes chained criminals as having “that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages” (18). Similarly, a dying enslaved person, almost indistinguishable in the darkness, has eyes which are “enormous and vacant” (20.). Despite his outsider perspective, which allows him to question the colonial endeavour, he cannot bring himself to see these people as equals. As Chinua Achebe has said, Heart of Darkness treats black colonial subjects as backdrop to a white man’s suffering. “Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as a human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind?” (“An Image of Africa”, 2713-2714) The colonised are hollow shells, without inner realities. Marlow, representing the European colonial vision, cannot bring himself to recognise the humanity, even though he comes close. It is frightening to him to recognise the shared humanity across the colonial separation, so he recoils from the thought. Readers are left to see the limitations of Marlow and wonder about their own colonial programming.

Criticism of Heart of Darkness as a racist text centres around the distinction between Marlow and Conrad himself, which underscores the extent to which even those critical of colonial exploitation view the world through the lens of their cultural environment. In “An Image of Africa”, Chinua Achebe claims Heart of Darkness can only be a canonical text due to the twisted perception that still persists about Africa and Africans, including the “the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world.” (“An Image of Africa”, 2714) He does not believe there is a significant distinction between the views of Marlow and Conrad, despite noting the framed narrative as an attempt at distancing (2712). Achebe writes:

Students of Heart of Darkness will often tell you that Conrad is concerned not so much with Africa as with the deterioration of one European mind caused by solitude and sickness. They will point out to you that Conrad is, if anything, less charitable to the Europeans in the story than he is to the natives, that the point of the story is to ridicule Europe’s civilizing mission in Africa. A Conrad student informed me in Scotland that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz.” (“An Image of Africa”, 2713)

This defense of Conrad’s work is convincing as a literary argument, but becomes complicit in the reduction of a whole continent as backdrop for one white mind. Though Heart of Darkness is indeed a bitter condemnation of colonialisation, it seems mostly concerned with the details of a deteriorating colonist’s mind, where the suffering of the colonised is merely the cause of the more interesting unravelling of Western civilization inside an individual. Marlow’s ambiguous compassion for the Other is examined, but as Achebe writes, Conrad does not present an alternative to the colonial view, which means he cannot separate himself from Marlow’s prejudice:

But if Conrad’s intention is to draw a cordon sanitaire between himself and the moral and psychological malaise of his narrator his care seems to me totally wasted, because he neglects to hint, clearly and adequately, at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters. It would not have been beyond Conrad’s power to make that provision if he thoughts it necessary. (“An Image of Africa”, 2712)

There is a thorough unease in Heart of Darkness, but without explicit condemnation of the colonial perspective Marlow cannot escape from, Conrad does not escape the colonial lens himself. However, whether Conrad was able to easily rid himself of this perspective and present an alternative version of Africans as fully human is debatable. There is respect for some individuals in Heart of Darkness, but they are invariably stereotypes, like the fireman on the boat. Whether a stylistic choice or a product of Conrad’s limited worldview, the discussion about Conrad’s ability to recognise Africans as human confirms how colonial narratives perpetuate themselves by eliminating alternative narratives.

The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan shows the effects of the colonisation of Australia through the central animal metaphors of rabbits and numbats, which represents the English invaders and the aboriginals, respectively. Through the shifting of composition and visual weight, they represent how the perceived emptiness of the continent is replaced by a drained emptiness after the rabbits have plundered the land. The images representing pre-colonial times show large stretches of land, filled with patterns and shapes, that are contrasted by the narration and numbat characters that capture attention. The reader is invited to glance over the majority of the page as inconsequential, as if surveying an empty page. However, there is meaning to these large sections, though they do not feature in the story at first. There is history, life, culture and diversity in the largely mono-colour lands, reflecting a subtle and rich ecosystem and society that is not visible at first sight. When the rabbits come and claim more and more of the page, they trample on the empty space until their infrastructure has consumed everything. Their ruthless fixation on their own sense of efficiency and success is symbolised by cogs, representing progress and industrialisation, prefab buildings made with neatly fitting puzzle pieces, and chimneys that blight the air with productivity. Their designs are sharp, hooked and symmetrical, and the rabbits themselves look confined in their clothes as well as their customs, and are visually identical despite an obsessive attention to status through uniforms. This juxtaposes with the rounded shapes of the numbats, who are free in their own space. After colonisation is complete, a different emptiness remains, gray and dead, with the final page almost completely black. The perceived emptiness of the unspoiled continent has been drained of resources and has become an actual emptiness, devoid of life. Similarly, the remaining numbat is presented alone, without the culture which surrounded him before, now made hollow with regret and misery.

Both Heart of Darkness and The Rabbits criticise colonial exploitation through a dual portrayal of the suffering of the original population and that of the colonisers. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad shows how effects of persistent dehumanisation on the black population, but emphasises how this effects the white invaders. The journey into the heart of the Congo becomes metaphorically darker, not only because Marlow perceives himself further and further from the light of white civilisation, but also because he comes closer to the darkness that lives inside the heart of colonisers. Marlow says:

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it, not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea – something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…. (7).

The “idea” is the narrative of progress and empire that is required to keep colonisation going. However, Marlow realises that the”blank spaces” (7) he described earlier, “a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over” (9), had become “a place of darkness” (9). Denying others their humanity has a profound effect on the humanity of colonisers, which becomes corrupted and fragile. The violence they inflict on others is mirrored by the destruction of their own sense of self. An admirer says of Kurtz: “This man suffered too much. He hated all this, and somehow he couldn’t get away.” (70). It is impossible to commit atrocities and remain convinced of one’s superiority, yet once within the colonial machine and frame of mind, it is difficult to escape. Kurtz’s famous final quote reveals how underneath the facade of progress and moral superiority, nothing remains. He has become an empty figure, faced with the pain he has inflicted without believing in the narrative that justified it. What remains is “The horror! The horror!” (87). When Marlow returns to the coloniser’s capital, he can no longer believe in its glorious myths: “I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams.” (88) He has become disillusioned and no longer believes in the ideals he was once fed to justify the suffering imposed on others. However, nothing has replaced it. Similarly, the empty landscape of the last pages of The Rabbits shows a single white rabbit leaving the city and entering the wasteland, where he sits in the emptiness opposite the numbat. The narration has taken on two colours, suggesting the voice of the numbat is now joined by the voice of the rabbit. Together, they lament that nothing remains: “The land is bare and brown and the wind blows empty across the plains. / Where is the rich, dark earth, brown and moist? Where is the smell of rain dripping from the gum trees? / Where are the great billabongs alive with the long-legged birds?” (25-28). During the process of extermination, the rabbit has also lost its inner life and is left without hope, shared culture and spirit. The rabbit’s city, clean, white and in Marlow’s words “sepulchral”, has become emblematic of the emptiness projected on the continent before their arrival. Both Heart of Darkness and The Rabbits expose the mutual destruction of coloniser and colonised, revealing that the process of dehumanisation and the narrative of empty lands and empty minds to be harvested leads to true emptiness by destroying the original culture and ecosystems.

The transition from colonial to post-colonial is the transition to listening to the voices of the colonised. In essence, reading the counternarratives of the oppressed is recognising their humanity and their perspective. Instead of taking the words of the colonisers as definitive, post-colonial discourse includes new vantages and experiences, even if they are inscrutable to a western audience. With these voices represented in literature, society could find narratives outside of the colonial mindset and restore humanity to the oppressed. An example of postcolonial writing comes from Victoria Adukwei Bulley, author of “The Ultra-Black Fish”, which uses connected imagery to discuss the effects of colonialism indirectly. The poem discusses the presentation of a species of fish, new to the scientific knowledge of the west, that defies categorisation and analysis due to its ultrablack nature. “Instead of hauling up the deep-sea crabs she had been / searching for, her net produced a fang-toothed fish that / wouldn’t show up in a photograph.” The contrast between darkness and light is used similarly to Heart of Darkness, where the unknowable depth of the seas functions as the heart of the foreign. In this poem, the Other is a different species, invisible from the vantage point of the scientist, called Karen for its connotation of white and entitled womanhood. (Osmanski). The darkness in the sea resists being known just as the white coloniser could not know Africa or Africans.

Held, later, in a tank
under two strobe lights, the fish became a living black hole,
with no discernable features beyond the opacity of its
silhouette. As though it had cut itself out of the image & left.

However, Adukwei Bulley presents this defiance not from the perspective of the white adventurer, but shifts the perspective to the black fish. The poem changes words by crossing them out, removing the word “discover” from the text. Moreover, the fish is portrayed as well-adjusted to its own world. They “contribute to the darkness by adding themselves to it” and “their existence / alone is evidence that, invisible as they may be to others, / they are by no means strangers to themselves”, and though it can only be known by its “silhouette” and contours, Adukwei Bulley conveys between the lines that the fish’s life in its own world is equally rich and meaningful as the white, light world that took it from there, except it has not forcefully taken others out of their world. Presumably, Karen would immediately perish at the native depth of the fish, just as the fish is suffering now that it is taken out of its habitat. The metaphorical connection to the Atlantic slave trade and the abduction of people from their own world and their own practices, across the darkness of the ocean, adds to the significance of the deep ocean being unknowable. It is an exclusive space for the black experience, now, which the light of science can only partially understand. The fish acts by defying categorisation, “as though it had cut itself out”. This is not a passive effect of the colonial perspective, but an active resistance, just as stories of resistance among the enslaved are examples of taking themselves out of the picture of the coloniser’s gaze. The rewriting and irony show that even though a white audience might not fully understand the depths of black experience, their perspective is inherently valuable and worthy of attention. Centering the experience, agency and autonomy of the “ultra-black fish” is a strong example of rewriting the perspective of colonialism to include the other, demonstrating that recognition of the unknowable is an alternative of the frame of empty minds and lands.

The willingness or unwillingness to hear the perspective of the colonised is a motif throughout both colonial and postcolonial works. In the end, extending humanity to others is recognising their way of seeing, understanding and expressing things, even when this is not accessible for outsiders. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart demonstrates how presenting colonialism from the perspective of the colonised allows for recognition of equality, even if the experience of the colonised is not fully translatable. Achebe presents life in pre-colonial Nigeria without apology, leaving Western readers to learn about things that are outside of their own sphere, such as the language, the food, the wrestling traditions and the village structures, which emphasises the fullness of life before colonisation. It is the antithesis to the emptiness that is perceived in colonial thinking. In “Africa’s Tarnished Name”, Achebe calls this a tradition which “has invented an Africa where nothing good happens or ever happened, an Africa that has not yet been discovered and is waiting for the first European visitor to explore it and explain it and straighten it up, or, more likely, perish in the attempt” (27). Things Fall Apart presents evidence of the complexity and meaning in an African locale and inside a group of African people, demonstrating a small part of humanity across the continent. In contrast to Heart of Darkness, the people are not a backdrop, but living representations of a culture and place, as well as individuals with flaws, strengths and unique identities. His analysis of “Conrad’s famed evocation of the African atmosphere in Heart of Darkness” is that is “no more than a steady, ponderous, fake-ritualistic repetition of two antithetical sentences, one about silence and the other about frenzy” (“An Image of Africa”, 2709). Both are examples of emptiness: the absence of sound, and thus meaning, or the presence of sound, but still without meaning. Achebe presents a society full of meaning, even if this meaning is not immediately apparent to Western readers. This offers readers the challenge to engage with a culture that might not be their own, while inviting them to be open to the meaning they might not see at first, or might never fully understand. The end of the novel, after the suicide of Okonkwo, the protagonist, shows how most colonisers did not extend this humanity, since the the final words are those of a white commissioner who views the suicide as a footnote in his abstracted descriptions of African cultures:

The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.” (Things Fall Apart, 2708-2709)

The tone has shifted from inclusive of the concerns of Okonkwo and his fellow villagers, presenting their language and customs as worthy of attention, to the reductionist perspective of the Commissioner, who considers this “material” about “primitive tribes”. The life of Onkonkwo, portrayed in all its nuance and complexity throughout Achebe’s novel, will be cut to an interesting paragraph, since details need to be cut out. In contrast to Andukwei Bulley’s ultra-black fish, which cuts itself out, Okonkwo is cut out by the coloniser. It leaves the reader with the feeling of desperation that many must have felt when their stories were mangled by the coloniser’s perspective as undeserving of equal attention. As Achebe wrote in “Africa’s Tarnished Name”, the crucial difference between people like the Commissioner and the reader becomes “the presence or absence of respect for the human person” (37). The bitter ending of Things Fall Apart presents Achebe’s thesis that recognition of mutual humanity is essential to prevent oppression, while also reinforcing the idea that extending this recognition is made impossible by the narratives that reduced the Other to resources and curiosities to justify exploitation.

Another famous postcolonial voice is that of Aimé Césaire, whose long-form poem Cahier d’un retour au pays natal or Notebook of a Return to My Native Land achieved a transformation of the perspective with which the Martinique population sees itself and how the French former colonisers viewed their former colonies. By asserting agency and demanding to be heard, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land changed “Negrophilia”, an exoticised view of Black cultures, to “Négritude”, a self-asserted voice of Black identity which became essential in decolonising the Carribean colonies. Césaire famously created a French voice rich with meaning from many sources, “[r]anging in tone, syntax, and vocabulary from the extremely sophisticated to the most colloquial and slangish” (Notebook, 53). In Mireille Rosello’s introduction, she challenges the notion that Notebook is inaccessible to uneducated Black readers by stating it is equally inaccessible to French intellectuals, since the allusions move from the French and classical literary canon to plants, myths and scenes that would be familiar to Martinicans, but not to Western elites (54). As Achebe in Things Fall Apart, the unapologetic use of words and cultural referents that are unknown to European readers, Césaire demands attention for meaning that was dismissed under colonial narratives and proves that the perceived emptiness of pre-colonial and colonial communities is a persistent delusion. This delusion must be resisted, as the narrator of the Notebook says: “but no I will not be content with the unequal sun anymore” (133). As the poem swells in intensity, Césaire employs the repetitive power of anaphora to claim autonomy. On page 131, the narrator describes the old Black “sitting-down négridom”, but then shifts to

unforeseenly standing

standing in the hold

standing in the cabins

standing on deck

standing in the wind

standing under the sun

standing in the blood

standing

and

free

(131)

The imagery of ships binding down the enslaved is replaced with imagery of people standing in the freedom, outside in the wind and sun, with the final image the blood at their feet. Because it is ambiguous whether this blood is of the enslaved or the enslavers, the final image is combines compassionate and acknowledgment of the suffering with the fury of revolutionary righteousness. Similar anaphoras are used with the verb “give” (133) and eventually “rise” (135), both asserting that the Black narrator has something to bestow on the world, in this case in the shape of the wind, and working to rise along with the Dove. Along this crescendo, there is also the plea for the wind to “embrace me into furious we / embrace, embrace US” (133-5). This is where the dehumanised are returned into recognition of equals before everyone, as well as humans in the world. The “furious we” demands justice and respect, but the embrace shows humility, expects warmth and intimacy. The oxymoron of a furious embrace by the world combines the outraged appeal to fair treatment with the wish for the kindness of inclusion. Thus, Césaire completes the demand of the otherised person to be recognised as human, replacing the delusion of emptiness with an overflowing expression of meaning and worth that every individual has.

In conclusion, the dehumanising narratives of the colonial mindset often take the form of reducing prospective colonial land and people as empty, eliminating the worth and meaning of existing cultures and ecologies to prime them for replacement with the coloniser’s values. This emptiness reduces the richness of cultures to barbarism and the alternative perspectives of the Other to worthless silence or frenzy. This lens is required to inoculate the colonisers against empathy, but The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad show that the violence and oppression of colonialism also annihilate the coloniser alongside the colonised, creating an existential and ecological emptiness in the process. To restore humanity to the colonised, listening to their perspective on their terms is crucial. “The Ultra-Black Fish” by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Notebook of a Return to My Native Land by Aimé Césaire are all texts that present counternarratives of colonised or formerly colonised voices, emphasing both the required humility that comes with accepting a Western perspective might not understand and the presence of meaning in perceived emptiness. The minds of those who were Othered are affirmed as human, with elements that are unknowable, but also relatable, recognisable and enriching. Listening to the voices of people who are culturally or personally distant and developing the curiosity, patience, skill and humility to engage with them on their terms is the responsibility of everyone. This practice is what prevents the dogmas of colonisers, protecting both the supposed superior and supposed inferior from the emptiness that results from violent exploitation. Reading literature is a vital act of resistance against the narratives of dehumanisation and one way of preventing future suffering justified through reductionist lenses. By finding meaning and value in what is presented as empty, readers will not accept the eradication of people and places they do not understand yet. Instead, they will seek to fill the void by learning to listen to other voices.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. “Africa’s Tarnished Name.” Another Africa, 1998. Penguin Modern, 2018.

—. “An Image of Africa.” 1977. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Eigth Edition, Volume 2. 2006. 2709-2714.

—. Things Fall Apart. 1958. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Eigth Edition, Volume 2. 2006. 2624-2709.

Adukwei Bulley, Victoria. “The Ultra-Black Fish.” 2022. https://granta.com/three-poems-victoria-adukwei-bulley/

Césaire, Aimé. Notebook of a Return to My Native Land. Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. Édition Présence Africaine, 1956. 1995. Translation Mireille Rosello and Annie Pritchard. Introduction by Mireille Rosello.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. 1899. Penguin Classics, 2007. Introduction by Owen Knowles.

Marsden, John and Shaun Tan. The Rabbits. Lothian Children’s Books. 1998. 2012.

Osmanski, Stephanie. “What Is a Karen? A Comprehensive Guide to How the Meme-Name Went Viral and How to *NOT* Be One.” Parade. 19 February 2025.

https://parade.com/author/stephanieosmanski

Tags English, Tekst, Tekst-overig, Text, WONDROUS CALS Book Club

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Giving a Voice to Nature – Humility and Curiosity

Post author By Wessel
Post date January 28, 2026
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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.

Tags Non-fictie, Tekst, Tekst-overig, Text, WONDROUS CALS Book Club

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

The Joy of Revolution

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 19^th-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.

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

Works Cited

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