Author Archives: Ashley Sims

Pip in the Deep

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The cloudless sky that is affixed above the South China Sea holds no remembrance. Memory, like CO2 and heat, is absorbed into the ocean. Pip, being at sea long enough, is now a memory. Just another greenhouse gas occluding into omniscient seawater. He notices his body straining to stay afloat as he is carried down alive to wondrous depths. Corals sway to the faint current. Reef sharks gently swirl around him, unbothered by his tender presence. The Deep breeds energy, jolting Pip with pulses of knowledge. He is aware of every world; past, present and future. Every transpiring reality surrounded him, like glowing colossal orbs. He witnesses his ancestors, cradled in the same depths, relinquishing themselves to the same transcendent orbs. Mothers weeping; ocean salinity rising. Like them, he surrenders himself into the arms of the miser-merman. These arms, that hold the finite of history, collect Pip among their hoarded heaps and cast him to the depths.

The deep swallows light and disrupts spacial awareness. It is a space for knowing everything and knowing nothing in one swift, spark of a moment. The sound of clicking is heard in the distance, or in the foreground, or somewhere in between. There is no way to tell. Pip is lost in his surroundings yet procured in his being. No longer subjected to earthly toil, to societal intolerance, Pip feels weightless under this unfamiliar immense pressure. The pressure acts as a binary opposition to oppression. It cradles his soul. That is all he can really feel, his soul. He can’t feel his legs kicking or his arms waving, or his head bobbing. He can’t feel his body being dragged onto the deck of an ancient ship. He can’t feel the resuscitation. The clicking multiplies into thunderous echoes. The water around him is displaced. A shock of white, a flash of horror, Pip’s mind slips out of consciousness.

He is awoken by the surge of a massive fluke swimming away, stirring the water around like a school of sardines. Awake in a wake and sieged by what seems to be a starless night sky, an inky cloud where light cannot invade, no matter how much oil is collected. This is the realm where whales govern, where glares do not exist. The blackness permeates Pip. It is the most blackness he has ever contemplated. It feels like home. In a world where shapes barely exist, and the sound that would usually hang upon a breeze dissipates into the cool, dense molasses, communication is seismic. Communication is haptic. Communication is electric and is now a piece of Pip’s freshly attained knowledge. His heightened senses attempt to situate him in this new world. Beings glide around him, he can feel the pressure undulating like a current as they stream past him. He is being examined, beheld, welcomed. Pip felt things he has never felt before. Physical anguish, frothy vengeance, an Ocean full of ache gyrating around him. But also, collective existence, an unshakeable kindredness, a seep of community. One of them stops in front of him, so close their noses are inches apart. Pip can make out the scaled tail that sweeps back and forth holding this… this, thing, this being upright.

“The white whale has sent you here. He is the guardian of innocence, a knight of the Ocean and the great judge of morality.” Aj’s tidal voice drifted back and forth. “He has brought you to the deep, to the wajinru. It means you are one of us, a descendant of the enslaved. Welcome two-legs. I am called Aj.” Aj bowed his voltaic head and touched it to Pip’s cnidarian soul. “O thy fish God in yon darkness, I am Pip. Have mercy. The white whale you say? The white squall. Have mercy on Pip. I was but thrown from a whale ship, shirr, shirr, forced on the hunt.” Pip rambled, his electric mind rampant. “A whale ship” said Aj puzzled. “Were you not held captive?”

“Held captive? No, we Blacks in the North are free, well shirr, if I didn’t go on that whale ship I coulda got chained up myself.” explained Pip. “The North… Blacks? What is Blacks?” Aj wonders. “Ya know Blacks, negroes, I guess you can’t see so clearly down here but, me, I’m Black. The White men they shackle us, whip us, make us work.” Pip describes in sorrow. He never did have to say it out loud. “You mean all those bodies, cast from ships, all those innocent people dead, because, because they’re black?” Aj said, the rage boiling inside of him. “Pip, what else can you tell us of these people? Where do they live, these two-legs?” “I… they, live in America. Some in the North like me, a lot in the South. That’s where you don’t wanna be. That’s where they lash you, where they hang you.” Pip’s grief welling. “America? Pip I have something to ask of you.” “Shirr, shirr.” “I Aj, hold all the grief for my people, for the wajinru, the memories, the hauntings of our past are within me and only within me. I promised my Amaba not to share these stories. Right now, we live only in the present, in togetherness. But I fear for my people. They become restless, they yearn for who they are, for where they come from. I must break my promise, if only for a few days, to fill the cavities of their souls.” Aj says spouting with emotion. “Pip, I believe this is why you are here, why the white whale brought you to us. You hold knowledge from the other world. Will you help me? Will you help me bring relief to my people?”

“O what’s this? One asks for young Pip? Thy white God has brought me here. O that glorious whale. I have never felt more alive than here in this cold, dark abyss. Shirr, shirr I will help you.” Pip replied.

The next few days, or nights, or whenever it was in this place where light does not bother to penetrate, the wajinru congregated. They collected kelp, and mud, and the skin of the dead: sharks, rays, seals. Anything to envelop them, to protect them in what they knew would be a vulnerable state. The water hummed along with their electric palpitations. The vibrating pressure comforted Pip. He was anxious, but he felt free for the first time, alive with the idea of being needed, his mind being desired. The wajinru begin shoaling by the thousands, surrounded by their miry cocoon “Are you ready?” asked Aj. Pip nodded. They floated into the center of this gyrating ball of mud and dead matter. It resembled an oceanic womb, regenerating its inhabitants to foster new life. And inside, the water pulsed like the ocean’s heartbeat. Aj and Pip hovered in the center. Aj snapped his tail to the left and all the wajinru followed suit. He communicated to them through the water. Pounding his tail, electrically transmitting every story he learned from his Amaba. Happy and sad and everything in between, all of them. While he did this Pip went around from wajinru to wajinru. They were still, debilitated with the surge of information. Pip pressed his cheek to theirs, one by one. They wept. In anger, in confusion, in fleeting joy, with vengeance they wept. It lasted days. And this was the first Remembrance.

“The Past—or, more accurately pastness—is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past.” (Troulliot)

 The past shapes the present, therefore, the past surrounds us, like an ocean. Through fiction, the past is retrieved and reconstructed. In his 1851 novel Moby Dick, Herman Melville illustrates the lack of freedom of free Black men leading up to the Civil War. Throwing Pip overboard, and his subsequent enlightenment, is an acknowledgement of the atrocities of the Middle Passage and slavery because it is a recognition of the voices and History concealed in the Ocean’s depths. One hundred and sixty-eight years later, narrative discourse, like Rivers Solomon’s 2019 novella The Deep, continues to reiterate and remember the trauma inflicted on millions of captive people that were thrown overboard. Solomon retrieves the history of people who were deliberately silenced beneath the surface of the ocean. Both of these novels employ the setting of the Ocean to frame significant historical events. In this way, the Ocean operates as an archive of the American nation. An archive that has been concealed, like a witness who has collected hush money. Just as the silence of the ocean is depended upon to exploit it, so is the silence of the trauma of slavery. Emancipation might have been enacted, but the structures of slavery still exist, and silence enables them. Reading Melville’s character of Pip into Solomon’s novella The Deep demonstrates the prevailing marginalization of Black communities from 1851 to 2019. Pip and the wajinru act as voices for the Ocean and for Black communities both on land and those lost at sea.

Pip is a symbol of American blackness in Moby Dick. Christopher Freeburg, in his essay Pip and the Sounds of Blackness in Moby Dick, argues that Pip “allows us to realize that black culture is lodged in the very heart of the novel” (52) Melville is very purposeful and ahead of his time in his usage of Pip. It is Pip’s mere presence that welcomes readers into the diversity of America. This “presence constitutes the greatest value of the novel; he is a symbol of social equality and a catalyst for altruistic insight.” (Freeburg 52) Pip is a symbol of social equality because he demonstrates its inequities. The discrimination that independent Black individuals faced leading up to the Civil War constitutes a lack of freedom. In the “Forecastle—Midnight” Melville displays the marginalization of free Black communities: While ALL yell “The squall! The squall! Jump, my jollies! (They scatter.) PIP (shrinking under the windlass.)…” (193) soliloquizes. Pip giving a separate speech after “all” speak suggests that he is not a part of the crew. The Pequod, representative of the American nation, marginalizes Pip as America marginalizes Black communities. Through Pip, Melville demonstrates how freedom for Black individuals does not necessarily mean autonomy.

The “great shroud of the sea” (624) is a chronicle of all those who have been lost to its watery bowels. Through its obscurity, the Ocean is a silenced archive. It has been used as a naturally occurring cloak concealing capitalist exploitations. In “Pip’s Oceanic Voice: Speech and Sea in Moby Dick” Jimmy Packham “recognizes the power of language as a colonial tool, something which can impose itself onto a silence (…likely assumed) that cannot speak back” (Packham 7) Imposing language onto the voiceless enables History to be altered by colonial narrative. Melville also recognizes this muteness of the Ocean: “the waves rolled by… seemed a silvery silence” (Melville 253), “white, silent stillness of death in this shark” (Melville 206), “jetting his silent spout into the air.” (Melville 595). The archival Ocean and its creatures are speechless. The silence of an archive enables History to invalidate traumas. Silenced trauma and exploitation of the past enables the continuation of trauma and exploitation. Melville recognizes that “it’s the sea’s depths that obscure any voice the sea or its creatures might have.” (Packham 7) Because the Ocean and its inhabitants are unable to advocate for themselves, Melville assigns this task to Pip. “We can understand Pip’s discourse as Melville’s… effort to find a space in language for oceanic depth” (Packham 4) Pip, who was already a medium for the marginalized, forces the reader to acknowledge that the Ocean, similar to Black communities, is under-appreciated, over-fished(worked) and a vessel for unspoken trauma. Pip “saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it.” (454) Pip “spoke it”, that is he spoke for the Ocean and against Oceanic and Black exploitation.

 Melville’s concept of whaling drives his narrative. He frames his novel on the surface of the ocean. Therefore, the whalers only comprehend the surface. Pip, who has been “carried down alive to wondrous depths” (453) learns to speak for the deep. Packham raises the idea that Pip “comes to embody the ‘strange shapes’ of the depths, his voice exhibiting an instability that recalls the fluidity of the element into which he has plunged.” (Packham 1) When Pip, who represents American blackness,  speaks for the ocean’s abyss, he transpires the annals of a young nation. Pip’s designated voices collide when Pip’s soul is thought to be “in those far Antilles” (Melville 522) The Antilles, the Caribbean, where his ancestors were thrown from slave ships not so long ago. Pip is a voice for blackness, a medium for the Ocean, and ultimately an agent for his ancestors concealed in the sea. By giving Pip this multitudinous voice, Melville advocates for those lost within a buried archive. Melville uses Pip and the Ocean to frame the nation’s historical events.

The acknowledgement of the concealed archive is the cross section for Moby Dick and The Deep. One hundred- and seventy-five-years pass, and the United States continues to exploit its citizens while it feigns perfection. It is a time where Literature rather than History must command the discourse of the trauma of slavery in order to hinder the continuation of it. The Civil War may have legally ended slavery, but as Christina Sharpe points out in The Wake, “Racism [is] the engine that drives the ship of state’s national projects… cuts through all of our lives… in the wake of its purposeful flow.” (Sharpe 3) Slavery, through marginalization, through racism, through incarceration continues to press its haunting mark onto Black society. Silence enables exploitation. Silence of neighbors, silence of mainstream media, archival silence, exploits hidden in coral reefs, are all factors perpetuating exploitation. “The means and mode of Black subjection may have changed, but the fact and structure of that subjection have remained.” (Sharpe 12) Drexciya, clipping., and Rivers Solomon, the curators of the wajinru, exemplify the need to break the silence of this continuation of slavery. Literature like The Deep, which reinterprets the traumas of the Middle Passage into the creation of a new race of merpeople,attempts to begin a process of healing. This healing arises not only by re-gifting life to these erased humans, but by telling their story; uncovering the History that was meant to be obscured by the voiceless Ocean.

In The Deep it is the Ocean depths that act as the setting for the novel rather than the surface in Moby Dick. Expanding to the abyss of the Ocean as a main setting attempts to give definition to the deep, unknown, ocean environment.  Similar to Melville, who implements a uniquely American narrative with whaling, Solomon turns to the wajinru to constitute a distinct facet of American history: chattel slavery. Connecting these two stories materializes the Ocean as an American archive. Mooring Pip into the narrative of the wajinru points to the extensive duration the issues of racial marginalization and exploitation have subsisted. Pip, who was written nearly two-hundred years ago, was an attempt to enlighten readers of 1851. However, he continues to be relevant, Pip can easily become a character in a 2019 novel. He does not demonstrate what has passed, instead he now depicts the continuity of Black American subjection. Pip and the wajinru are modern vehicles for the advocacy and amplification of the Ocean and Black communities.

Fastening Moby Dick to The Deep aimed to establish two main assertions of the books: Ocean as archive and the oppression of Black communities. Utilizing Solomon’s narrative enabled a clearer highlighting of these allegories in Moby Dick, a book with endless analyses. Both of these novels employ the setting of the Ocean to frame American historical events. They recognize the important documents held within Oceanic depths and sought to retrieve them. For it is through literature that the past is reconstructed. Literature breaks the silence that exploitation so dearly depends upon. It then became natural to transport Melville’s sea speaking character of American blackness, Pip, to the profundal realm of the wajinru. The nearly 200-year-old Pip, who was fabricated before emancipation, emphasizes the continuity of a nation that upholds slavery as his character retains relevance. Through Pip, the wajinru, and the Ocean we learn that the concealment of sunken traumas promote exploitation. The Lorax might speak for the trees, but Pip and the wajinru speak for the Sea.

Works Cited

Freeburg, Christopher. “Pip and the Sounds of Blackness in Moby Dick.” The New Melville    

           Studies, Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 42-52.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Penguin Books, 2003.

Packham, Jimmy. “Pip’s Oceanic Voice: Speech and Sea in Moby Dick.” The Modern Language

          Review, vol. 112, no. 3, 2017, pp. 567-584.

Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press, 2016,

https://doi-org.libproxy.sdsu.edu/10.2307/j.ctv1134g6v.3

Solomon, Rivers. The Deep. Saga Press, 2019.

Final Project Proposal

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I am going to write Pip into The Deep by Rivers Solomon. I believe that Herman Melville purposefully delivered Pip to his ancestors in Moby Dick. I can’t stop thinking about the intersection of Pip’s soul lost to the Antilles and the wajinru from the Deep.

Thesis:

In creating a safe space for the descendants of the Middle Passage, The Deep and its predecessors clipping. cultivate a sense of belonging for people whom have lost their terrestrial ties. No longer being tied to their old land and unwelcome in their new, History for descendants of the Middle Passage is easily alterable and erased. Using the ocean as an archive and rebirth gives a voice and reorients descendants that were once victims of an attempted erasure. Including Pip, a free working class American, into the narrative of The Deep adds a layer of connection to the descendants of the Middle Passage.

Yetu’s Empathy

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Yetu going above the surface is an unpredictable predictable Western mermaid story: A mermaid going to land, falling in love with a human. Yet, with a queer love story and a human transitioning into the world of merpeople, Solomon subverts Western mermaid stories. On page 129 Solomon writes, “This truth, that two-legs were cruel and unusual, was the most important lesson of the History” In The Deep humanity is the other, the monsters. Yetu being the main Historian of the story line is significant because her character demonstrates an overwhelming sense of empathy. With her empathy, Yetu shows the reader how to overcome monstrosity by relinquishing hatred. In contrast with Basha, who’s experience as Historian leads them to vengeance: “In the old days, when we discovered a ship that threw our ancestors into the sea like refuse, we sunk it. Now we will sink the world.” (128) Yetu’s empathy eventually leads her people to mental peace. She leaves her home, the deep, because of her empathy. It is clear that she cannot handle being the Historian because she feels the pain of her ancestors in a tremendous way. After she leaves, she gains perspective. Not just from conversing with humans, but literal perspective. “The vastness of the ocean looked so different from above, so much less comprehensible.” (77) Yetu gains a human perspective of the ocean, but more than this she shows how easy it is for humans to misread the ocean. An ocean dweller who recognizes the incomprehensibleness of the ocean when viewing its surface gives the reader perspective. How could a human ever understand the vastness, the importance, or the creatures of the ocean from their surface knowledge.

Like “The Water Will Carry Us Home”, The Deep gifts life, History, and descendants to people who experienced attempted erasure. But it also endows mermaid stories with a quality that has seriously been lacking. Throughout the semester I have been yearning for a mermaid tale that designates a human into the mer-world. A human into the mer-world as invitation, not punishment. I have been wanting this story not only for myself. I think inviting a human into a mermaid’s world will help to decentralize Christianity’s dominion over Earth.

“This time, the two-legs venturing into the depths had not been abandoned to the sea, but invited into it.” (155)

Respect for Nature

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“Ti Jeanne” presents a complete reversal of the roles typically painted of European water spirits. The Caribbean Water Spirit Maman Dlo chastises Ti Jeanne for her vanity, for admiring her reflection: “Whose that looking at herself?… vanity, vanity, my child.” Depicting the human as the one with vanity instead of the hybrid reiterates that this is a human trait. Not one that is learned from outside influences or from unnatural beings, but one that is inherent. When Ti Jeanne beholds the mother of water she is fearful. But she is not fearful of the “other”, Ti Jeanne is fearful of her possible offence to nature: “For the girl knew that punishment awaits the one who offends the forest creatures, the plants or the animals” Maman Dlo calls for the respect of nature, instead of a justification for conquering nature, like we have seen in other western mermaid stories. Maman Dlo punishes those who disrespect it. Not just the women, but the men too, “mortal men who commit crimes against the forest, like burning down trees or indiscriminately putting down animals… could find themselves married to her for life.” The Caribbean story still incorporates tales of intermarriage, like Western mermaid depictions, the men marrying the water spirit. But this intermarriage inflicts control upon men rather than the water spirit, opposed to what we have seen in traditional Western mermaid stories. The reversal of control in intermarriage reflects the reversal of the lesson from the story. Instead of asserting man’s dominion, Caribbean mermaid and water deities punish those who attempt to dominate nature. These deities reflect the value of an ecocentric society as well as the need for cultural exploration.

Reclaiming Mermaids

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Medieval Western depictions of mermaids have been used as a means to exert control over women. “Church leaders needed a feminine, dangerous, and lustful counterpart to their upstanding men. This is where mermaids came in.” (Scribner Ch.1) Christianity sculpted femininity as harmful to faith and devastator of mankind. “Their ultimate goal remained tethered to decentering the feminine.” (Scribner Ch.1) In contradiction to this tradition, Gabrielle Tesfaye’s short film “The Water Will Carry Us Home” illustrates mermaids as bearers of life. Employing an African perspective, Tesfaye challenges Western traditional operation of mermaids by using them to continue life rather than destroy it. By re-imagining the death of those killed at the hands of White Western oppressors, “The Water Will Carry Us Home” not only reclaims History, it reclaims mermaids.

star mapping 0:53
stretched ears 0:55

A key component to presenting an African perspective is the framing of the animation with Yoruban and other African ritual. The film begins with clips of Tesfaye performing living ritual. Among the many images presented, Tesfaye is found mapping stars (0:53) and baring her stretched ears (0:55). These two images hold importance because they ground non-conformational history. African astrology dates back to ancient civilizations of Africa. Modern astrology gained its foundation from African astrology. By representing astrology in the form of star mapping, Tesfaye is recognizing contributions from early African civilizations. This confirms the fact that Africans were not lacking in educational cultivation. Contrary to what conquerors of African communities have attempted to illustrate, these cultures were not obtuse or primitive. Tesfaye’s stretched ears characterize a long-held African tradition that symbolizes wisdom and status. This tradition was not only practiced among Africans. It was a widespread custom, transcending cultures globally such as: Aztecs, Mayans, Ancient Greeks, Buddhists, among others. Westerns view stretched ears as a marker for savages. In baring her stretched ears, Tesfaye persuades her audience to recognize the cultural significance. A practice that transcends cultures globally and symbolizes knowledge and power. These first notable images not only begin to ground an African perspective, but they reinstate African history and culture as universally significant.

The Orisha, Yemaya (4:20)
The Orisha, Shango 2:48
Yemaya with a split tail 4:50

Furthering an African perspective, Tesfaye presents Yoruban Gods; or Orishas in her animation. The Orishas, Yemaya and Shango, a mother and son pair, are protecting the captured Africans. Yemaya is the Orisha of the sea, motherhood, and femininity. (4:20) She gives and protects life. Shango is the Orisha of thunder and lightning, he is a source of fertility and embodies masculinity. He uses his powers to hinder the progress of the ship. (2:48) Watching these two Gods, man and women, working together to hinder the slave ship, upends Christianity’s use for mermaids. The church’s mermaid depictions strove to reduce women in order to uplift men (as reiterated by Vaughn Scribner). Presenting the god of femininity and the god of masculinity in harmony, working together to protect their people, subverts the values of the Christian God. Unlike the reborn mermaids in the film, Yemaya is illustrated with a split tail. (4:50) The Christian church utilized a split tail to represent “feminine lust and danger” (Scribner). Illustrating the Orisha Yemaya, protector of women and renewer of life, with a split tail positively represents women’s sexuality as bearers of life. In explicitly giving a god a split tail, Tesfaye is reclaiming mermaids as a positive representation of women and their sexuality.

the intended end for pregnant women 4:06
Reformation as mermaids 4:32
The third eye 4:40

“The Water Will Carry Us Home” re-imagines the brutal end that White western oppressors intended for pregnant women aboard their ship. (4:06) She re-gifts them life twice: by rendering them as mermaids (4:32) and by telling their stories. Reimagining their savage death with the formation of mermaids reclaims History by undermining their erasure. Closer examination of the mermaids after their rebirth shows that they all have a third eye. (4:40) In Yoruban culture, the third eye is the eye of the ancestors. Restoring these women as ancestors means they spawn descendants. Their genes and their stories are passed on. The dialogue of the atrocities of the Middle Passage is silenced because it is not something that society wants in conversation. It is common to cover up cruelty, especially in the case of mainstream society being the hand of that cruelty. Recreating these women as ancestors ceases the attempted erasure at the hands of the oppressor and reclaims History.

newspaper clippings 3:05
newspaper clippings 2:59
Yemaya grabs the white flower 4:58
Tesfaye throwing flowers 5:20

Throughout the film, real newspaper clippings are used to ground the animation in history. (3:05), (2:59) Tesfaye wants the audience to bear in mind that this is a historical narrative. In addition to the newspaper clippings, Tesfaye uses her ritual framings to ground the story in authenticity. At the end of the animation the Orisha Yemaya is clutching a white flower. (4:58) Then, cut to Tesfaye, throwing white flowers into the ocean. (5:20) Showing Yemaya interacting with one of the flowers that the living Tesfaye is throwing into the ocean further establishes the re-imagining into reality. Grounding the notion that this Orisha is out there as well as the emancipated mermaids. In addition, her ritual settles the account into reality when she is within the locked door. (5:45) In the beginning the live action is shown before the story is unlocked. Afterwards, Tesfaye is locked into the narrative, (5:57) suggesting the story’s reality, grounding the narrative, reclaiming history.

The last clip of Tesfaye 5:45
The doors locking her into the story 5:57

Telling the story of the Middle Passage in a digestible way operates to preserve the ancestry of people who were intended for an unrecoverable death. Lineage is continued when those thrown overboard are re-gifted with life during their mermaid transformation. Reclaiming life in turn reclaims History and narrative. Illustrating mermaids as bearers of life rather than destroyers of it upends the church’s aim to decenter the feminine. Tesfaye presents a positive representation of female sexuality with her mother mermaids. Reclamation of mermaids through an African perspective confutes the White western oppression of erasure.

Hidden by History

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In the “Sea is History” Derek Walcott juxtaposes humanity’s conventional history in relation to the ocean with biblical references. Humanity hunting for whale oil, for land, for toiling bodies. Tsunamis purging wanton cities. Piracy, progress, the separation of nations. All, like the bible, history is made of social construct; hoisted to importance to impart control and manipulate erasure. Conventional human history is not the sea’s history or earth’s history. By contrasting transcribed history to the documented bible, Walcott demonstrates how history is picked apart and molded to maintain dominance. Also tangled among the typical images of transcribed history are fragments of submerged history: “bone soldered by coral to bone” and “the white cowries clustered like manacles on the drowned women”. Hidden by history are the enslaved who never braced American soil. Those who never had the chance to seek freedom, still fettered to the ocean floor. “but where is your renaissance?” the poem asks. “Strop on these goggles, I’ll guide you there myself.” Their renaissance is tombed in coral and sand. One that could not exist because the men and women who would have constituted this renaissance have been silenced. Instead millions of minds are lain beneath sheets of lapping waves.

At first when Walcott presented the animals in his explanation of History “really beginning” I read it as the Earth’s and the Sea’s history coinciding with natural events. A representation of animals and nature being true history. But another look showed that the animals resemble the oppressor. The Clergy of flies, bullfrog voters, bat ambassadors, mantis police, and caterpillar judges. What is happening here? Are animals creating their own system, demonstrating that earth and its other inhabitants can thrive independent of us. Or are they us? An explanation that we are just animals, surrounded by sea, erecting systems of manipulation.

Re-gift of Life

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In “The Water Will Carry Us Home” Gabrielle Tesfaye re-gifts life to women who were left for dead in the Middle Passage. She re-gifts them life when she transforms them into mermaids, but she also re-gifts them life by telling their stories. The use of animation and the fantastical theme of mermaids gives a story that is painful, and because of that overlooked, a voice. The dialogue of the atrocities of the Middle Passage is silenced because it is not something that society wants in conversation. It is common to cover up cruelty, especially in the case of mainstream society being the hand of that cruelty. The theme of mermaids and continuation of life rather than death makes it less challenging to talk about, as well as share to future generations. Share to children who should, however painful, learn their people’s history. By continuing these abandoned mother’s existence in the sea, Tesfaye continues their existence in conversation for generations to come.

Tesfaye not only reclaims history but she reclaims mermaids. In other mermaid stories we have read, different cultures have used mermaids as warnings. Early Europe used them to warn of the dangers of women’s sexuality. They have been used to justify control of women’s bodies, environmental destruction, and even colonialism. To justify man’s dominion. But Tesfaye challenges traditional use of mermaids by using them to continue life rather than destroy it. Instead of a warning, Tesfaye’s mermaids are a representation of not just a tragedy, but a human tragedy. While our past mermaid stories have been about the other, Tesfaye’s mermaids are interconnected with human experience.

Depicting Omambala with a split tail furthers Tesfaye’s reclamation of mermaids. Split tails were generally used to negatively represent women’s sexuality. Giving a split tail to the God Omambala who renews life to these overboard women and children positively represents women’s sexuality as bearers of life.

Christianity’s Claims

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Christianity meanders its way through mermaid stories like an unrelenting river, unbothered by obstacles as large as mountains or as abrupt as fallen trees. The river of Christianity carries poisonous fresh water to powerful salt-laden mermaids, brackishly destroying their environment to favor its own. Crushing their spirits, but wait, they have no spirits. The overt portrayal of mermaids to want, no, to need a soul is like a sodden Stockholm syndrome. By picking up where Undine and Melusine left off, Hans Christian Andersen’s terracentric language in his reiteration of a lack of an afterlife in “The Little Mermaid” perpetuates man’s dominion over nature.

The stories of the relationships between water deities and noble men use the guise of love to convey the superiority of humanity. The little mermaid wants to enter the human world to be with her prince, but more than that, she would give up everything for one human day “to have the hope of sharing in the joys of the heavenly world.” Andersen escalates the message we learn from Undine by reiterating the ascent to heaven: “a soul that lives eternally… even after the body has been committed to the earth— and that rises up through the clear pure air to the bright stars above! Like as we rise out of the water to look at the haunts of men, so do they rise to the unknown and favoured regions, that we shall never be privileged to see.” (118) In the case of the little mermaid, Undine, and even Melusine it is not love that they are truly after, it is a soul; a pure eternal existence that is thrust above love. This supports a modern Christian’s school of thought: getting into heaven is more important than earthly love.

What distinguishes the air of superiority of man over nature is the language that Andersen uses. He describes the “clear pure air”. The air not only clear but pure. Pure and heavenly, but also pure as in unmixed. Unmixed, non-hybrid humans that can ascend to heaven. This is a clear message that breathing air, living on land is preferable than being in the ocean where the sea-folk dwell. Andersen also categorizes the deep as clear, “clear as the purest crystal” in fact, but it is the crystal that is pure, it is not pure within itself, it is not untainted by immorality as the air is. The water is mixed up, salty, contaminated and filled with hybrid, mixed creatures, where land is filled with the “haunts of men”. It is the soul that does the haunting. This precise choice of the word “haunts” gives men souls, it gives the beings above the water superiority. Andersen goes on to explain the ascent is into a “favoured region”. No matter how beautifully the ocean is presented, it is not the favored region, not compared to what is above it, and what is above that. Why is upwards always better? Because the higher you go the closer you are to heaven; and the lower, to hell. And who lives in the lowest region of all? It is not unlike the portrayal of maps. Pre-dominantly white nations/continents laid above. The favored regions, the above, have the right to conquer what is below, whether it be land or sea. Describing upward as a favored region gives men dominion to all below them. It is interesting then, that the notion of heaven, that a claim to what is above in turn gives claim to what is below. This language: “pure air”, “haunts of men”, and “favoured regions” though not earthly in a sense, is terracentric because it advocates land over the sea.

Although this is the first story that actually gives us a visual of merpeople, their culture, their architecture, their familial relationships, even their hopes, wants and dreams, the fact that they are still missing a soul, and are yearning for heaven is a greater acclamation for superiority. That the little mermaid is willing to leave her beautiful home and her whole family behind in the sea to become foam, so she can live eternally in heaven promotes Christianity’s claims to the earth. Genesis 1:26 asserts man’s dominion, stating “…and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth…” It is clear for men that they have dominion over birds, cattle, and land. But the ocean is a mystery. It is a mystery now, it was Mars 200 years ago. How could Christianity advertise their claim of a realm they knew almost nothing about, not even a fraction of what lived there. Merpeople were their answer. Depicting hybrid humans who could express a desire for a Christian soul and a “pure” immortal life finalizes the terms in Genesis 1:26. From a stone carving of a split tail mermaid, silently attempting to warn of heathenism and immoral women, to centuries later, spun into tales of earthly dominion. Mermaids: a true test and showcase of Christianity’s subservient, authoritarian followers.

It is not just the moral of the little mermaid that perpetuates the need for heaven, or the above over below, it is language. Steve Mentz puts forth the idea that terracentric language guides our way of thinking about our environment. Readjusting earthly phrases will help propagate a fonder outlook on the watery parts of our world. I would like to elevate this notion and claim that terracentric stories further influence our perception on the environment and its functions. “The Little Mermaid” has been adapted numerous times. But what we really need to be able to tear down the Christian colonization of the ocean, is not a mermaid story but a human story. In other words, not a story where a mermaid discovers and yearns for our world. A story where a human yearns for the mermaid’s world, decentralizing the Christian concept of humanity’s dominion over land and sea.

For just one human day

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In even the most seemingly innocent tales of love the soul’s entrance to heaven is held above all other conceivable morals in “The Little Mermaid”. The little mermaid wants to enter the human world to be with her prince, but more than that, she would give up everything for one human day “to have the hope of sharing in the joys of the heavenly world.” Andersen escalates the message we learn from Undine by reiterating the ascent to heaven: “a soul… that rises up through the clear pure air to the bright stars above! Like as we rise out of the water to look at the haunts of men, so do they rise to the unknown and favoured regions” (118). Notice the language, the “clear pure air”. Air being clear and pure and, in that sense, better than the ocean where the sea-folk dwell. The deep is also categorized as clear, “clear as the purest crystal” in fact, but it is not pure within itself, it is not untainted by immorality as the air is. Andersen goes on to explain the ascent is into a “favoured region”. No matter how beautifully the ocean is presented, it is not the favored region, not compared to what is above it, and what is above that. Why is upwards always better? Because the higher you go the closer you are to heaven; and the lower, to hell. And who lives in the lowest region of all? It is not unlike the portrayal of maps. Pre-dominantly white nations/continents laid above. The favored regions, the above, have the right to conquer what is below, whether it be land or sea. It is not just the moral of the little mermaid that perpetuates the need for heaven, or the above over below, it is language as well. In fact, I did it in my very first sentence: “heaven is ‘held above’ all other potential morals”. Circling back, Steve Mentz has a compelling point for the need in the shift of language.

Seeking Realms

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The theme of mer-marriage, as in the case of Undine and later the Little Mermaid, leads us to believe that water beings are seeking out sanctity as they attempt to assimilate into the human world. Even though her world is rich with beauty and “far superior to that of other human beings” Undine leaves it behind in search for a soul and an afterlife. She searches for a way to eternity, calling it an “awake to a purer life.” The recurring story of intermarriage is an attempt to sway humanity into a feeling of superiority. Merbeings are the ones who seek our world, who seek our terrestrial realm, who seek our devotion. When Undine declares that “all beings aspire to be higher than they are” as she has just entered into her marriage, it leads to the claim that man is at the top of that list. And what an assertion, that the afterlife is purer than an existence in harmony with the elements of the earth. This yearn for heaven justifies degradation of earth’s natural resources when even the elements would give up their place on it.

This promotion of superiority and eternal greatness all comes to culmination in the 19th century. A culmination that backfires. After centuries of developing the Christian pomposity of humanity, morality and command of nature through mermaid lore, the public attained a thirst for mermaids. In an industrialized world, humanity wished for a way back to nature. To live in the sea, unscathed from the moral compass of a burgeoning nation and industry. The Feejee mermaid is proof of this as it found people schooling to get a glimpse. And when they saw the bleak counterfeit they had to turn back to the world “disgusted… re-enter(ing) the coal smog of New York city’s streets. (Scribner 125) Mermaid tales attempted to lead us to the verdict that water spirits sought out our realm and our morality due to a superiority. But the narrative had an adverse effect, especially in regard to industrialism. Humans attempted to “peek into the mystical wonder” of merfolk and instead had to remain in their “black cities and black lungs.”