As the human race continues to progress over time in terms of technology and more information is gathered from areas that were previously never seen or documented, it leaves the people with less room for interpretation leading to a decrease in spiritual and emotional connection with the environment through folklore and mythology. While one may believe that in order to achieve a universal connection between cultures, a single, monolithic system or ideal must be created and accepted by all, this very mentality has led to indigenous deities and spiritual figures in general to become altered or in other cases completely eradicated. In the Penguin Book of Mermaids, the topic of diversity as it relates to deities (more specifically merfolk) is discussed and shows how it is human nature to want one solitary answer or spirit to represent a place (like the sea) that is meant to be shapeless, undefined, and in constant movement.

The portrayal of the mermaid has been discussed throughout the course and although almost every depiction includes a common physical characteristic with the half-fish and half-human body, the difference in regards to how mermaids were “used” to convey a message varies significantly from region to region. This opposition to the idea that the mermaid is supposed to be a universal symbol that has the same meaning in every depiction is not only discussed in Cristina Bacchilega and Marie Alohalani Brown’s The Penguin Book of Mermaids, but emphasized in the text when referring to the folklore of the indigenous in the Caroline Islands located in the Western Pacific, “These kind of interactions express an understanding that merfolk and water spirits are part of an animated universe, the powers of which are neither good nor evil but must be respected” (16). It is the actual diversity that is present in merfolk that gives the reader an insight of what the culture believed in spiritually and morally and as it is said, there was not a true definite answer to what certain native tribes from around the globe believed the merfolk to be, but what they were certain of is that they should be honored and respected, just as one were to respect the seas.

Variety is needed in literature just as much as it is needed in the environment and although it has been mentioned all throughout the course that the European depiction of the mermaid is what is normally accepted by modern society to be the illustration they are more familiar with, the central idea of their stories tend to incorporate more warnings through the symbolism, “Within a European context, mer-wife plots vary, but at the outset they often hint at or showcase the maidens difference, and they rarely have a happy ending” (Bacchilega and Brown 16). Now as previously mentioned, without diversity as it relates to literature and the environment, the creative tales that personify the elements of nature would essentially have the same central idea and the same message if all of the deities and nymphs from various parts of the globe would have been merged with religious figures.

What is astonishing however is the fact that even in today’s society, the idea that the mermaid has but one depiction – European features with a fish-like tail that is symmetrical – is a concept that is still confusing considering the various indigenous tribes that had their own depiction of the mermaid (tribes in North America, Africa, South America, etc.) which they designed with features similar to them, and of course, nothing like the European depiction of the mermaid. This idea that the majority of people believe that there is a single artistic of the mermaid was proven to be true after the release of the remake of “The Little Mermaid” which was the topic of the 2022 article, “Disney’s Black mermaid is no breakthrough – just look at the literary sub-genre of Black mermaid fiction” where the appearance of the live-action Ariel caused a tremendous amount of controversy (a public outcry that I vividly remember). The mermaid is meant to be dynamic and not supposed to fall under a category or label, but despite the countless variations of mermaids that exist, the film was still met with criticism largely due to the appearance, “The fact that Disney’s portrayal of a nonwhite mermaid is controversial is due to 150 years of whitewashing” (Pressman). Further showcasing the effects that follow when an equal amount of cultural representation in regards to folklore is not respected or practiced in society; other cultures’ mythology ends up being altered to appear vastly different or forgotten over time.

If the paintings included here are analyzed and the historical context behind these are not to be considered, one can already see two distinct differences…differences that completely change the way one can interpret the art if nature is considered. In the Mami Wata “poster” the deity has a combination of a somewhat blank expression, and look that is supposed to display conviction. However, this is not the most significant detail of the painting that sets it apart from the Waterhouse painting. The contrast that is clearly visible is that in the Mami Wata depiction, the deity is embracing the natural; calm and collected as the serpent has traveled all over the body. In comparison, the mermaid in the painting by Waterhouse, the water spirit is facing away from the waters, facing away from nature, and all the while combing her hair. With these distinctions between the two mermaids, this can then be used to demonstrate what could be lost if two cultures are merged which is certain lead to some aspects being lost in translation. While more exposure can result in more people connecting through religion, syncretism does not always have a perfect mixture of native folklore and prominent religions, “In most cases, the driving factors behind covert syncretism are either the intentional preservation or unintentional maintenance of indigenous cultural beliefs or practices that find inaudible expression in mainstream belief practices” (Thinane 2023). Although this is an oversimplification of syncretism that is done discretely, it is still relevant as it relates to the depictions of merfolk.

Folklore is meant to be tailored to a societies specific set of beliefs and traditions which can then make other communities understand what different cultures used to (or continue to) admire, respect, or follow. But when various distinct mythological tales and figures are merged this results in later generations losing touch with the unique stories their ancestors believed in or showed consideration for which will eventually lead to those said stories and spirits being forgotten or altered to the point where they share no resemblance to their original depiction.

Work Cited:

Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown, editors. The Penguin Book of Mermaids. Penguin Books, 2019.

Pressman, Jessica. “Disney’s Black mermaid is no breakthrough – just look at the literary subgenre of Black mermaid fiction.” The Conversation. 2022. https://theconversation.com/disneys-black-mermaid-is-no-breakthrough-just-look-at-the-literary-subgenre-of-black-mermaid-fiction-194435

Thinane, Jonas. “Uncovering Covert Syncretic Holy Water among ANPCs in South Africa.” Religions, vol. 14, no. 9, Sept. 2023. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org.libproxy.sdsu.edu/10.3390/rel14091139. Accessed 17 Dec. 2025.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, The Little Mermaid, we see life from under the sea through the youthful and curious eyes of the little mermaid. Several of her experiences are enhanced through the use of color, descriptive nature, and her connection to nature, such as the one she has with her garden. The little mermaid’s garden is what grounds her in her environment, rooting her existence in her natural world, which also serves as a place for her to find emotional comfort and refuge. The recurring use of the color red throughout Andersen’s story is used as a literary device to flag transformation, danger, and perhaps the most obvious, love. As red is also the color of human blood, the repetitive use of red indicates the little mermaid’s anticipation and desire to join the upper world, and be one with the humans. It is important to look into the use of the color red throughout the story because we are able to better visualize and understand the emotional turmoil and pain that the little mermaid endures, almost always being described right before huge life altering events, marking transformations within her life as she has always known it, towards the unnatural state of being human. 

From the beginning of the story we are introduced to the little mermaid’s living quarters, which naturally included the color red, “In front of the palace was a large garden with bright red and dark blue trees, whose fruit glittered like gold, and whose blossoms were like fiery sparks […]” (Andersen, Pg. 109), the color first being mentioned in yet another pivotal place in the little mermaid’s life, the garden. The little mermaid had a garden where she planted, “[…] red flowers that resembled the sun above […]” (Andersen, Pg. 109), as well as, “[…] a bright red weeping-willow beside the statue […]” (Andersen, Pg. 109), the white marble statue being of a handsome young man, reminiscent of the young human prince that the little mermaid would eventually meet, and fall desperately in love with. One could perceive the sun, not to mention its color, as a sign of her blossoming into her womanhood. Opening herself to lust and desire, which holds symbolic meaning within the marble statue of the man, given that this statue is one of the only items that she claimed, meaning it held a deeper meaning to her. An important thing to note as well is how the red weeping-willow that she had planted beside the statue represents the tears the little mermaid would never be able to shed around her love, the prince, as she was incapable of expressing her emotions through tears, “[…] the mermaid heaved a deep sigh, for tears she had none to shed” (Andersen, Pg. 125), since mermaids were not able to cry. The weeping-willow, besides the garden as a whole, being an outlet for her emotions, frustrations towards her reality of not being a human, and absent ‘tears’ to shed.

While there are several occasions within the story where red marks the beginning, a revelation, or the end of a factor within the little mermaid’s life, there seems to be three main points in which the color red served as a mark for a big change or development within her life. The first occasion being her introduction to her soon to be lover, the young, handsome prince celebrating on a ship on her turf, the sea. When the little mermaid had reached the age of maturity at fifteen, her grandmother allowed her to rise to the surface where she then saw and became enamored by the prince, frightened, yet pulled in by a scenery engulfed in the color red, “She had never seen such fireworks before; large suns were throwing out sparks, beautiful fiery fishes were darting through the blue air, and all these wonders were reflected in the calm sea below” (Andersen, Pg. 114). She had been so entranced by the young prince to the point where, “ […] the little mermaid could not take her eyes off the ship or the handsome prince” (Andersen, Pg. 114), her first introduction to desire, giving into her sexuality, yearning for a being she found attractive at a time where she was now deemed as sexually mature within the context of mermaid society’s standards. This trance had continued till the eventual shipwreck where the prince had almost drowned, and the little mermaid had saved him, bringing him towards the surface where, “The sun rose red and beaming from the water, and seemed to infuse life into the prince’s cheeks” (Andersen, Pg. 115). The color red here signifying the beginning to what will be the start of emotionally tolling circumstances for the little mermaid. 

Secondly, following the little mermaid’s introduction to the young prince was her seed of curiosity, which had been planted and nurtured by the love she had for the prince, was beginning to grow wildly. This yearning and wild curiosity was reflected within her garden post-prince revelation, “Her only consolation was to sit in her little garden and to fling her arm round the beauteous marble statue that was like the prince; but she ceased to tend her flowers, and they grew like a wilderness all over the paths, entwining their longs stems and leaves […]” (Andersen, pg. 116), the wild nature of her garden embodying the current state that she found herself in, anxious and conflicted over a man who she doesn’t even know, yet would go to great lengths to meet, “ I would willingly give all the hundreds of years I may have to live, to be a human being […] and to see the beautiful flowers, and the red sun” (Pg. 118). This wild state of mind that the little mermaid found herself in was fueled not only by the prince, but by other details she had become aware of. While on a search for the prince after an in on his whereabouts on the surface, she saw within the prince’s palace, “In the middle of the principal room, a large fountain threw up its sparkling jets as high as the glass cupola in the ceiling, through which the sun shone down upon the water, and on the beautiful plants flowing in the wide basin that contained it” (Andersen, Pg. 117). The little mermaid seeing the large fountain, the contained plants, and the sun all were the final sign for the little mermaid to give herself the green light to continue onward with the beginning of her transformation into becoming a human. While the little mermaid tended to her own garden below the sea, she also realizes that she is also capable of bringing the life she knows at sea, on land given the details within the prince’s palace that match her life at sea.

Lastly, after much heartbreak, emotional turmoil, the revelation to her that her prince would never truly love her like a different maiden, “She would be the only one that I could love in this world’ but your features are like hers, and you have driven her image out of my soul” (Andersen, Pg. 125), the little mermaid has called off this internal battle she has built within herself, alone, in silence, and had decided to end his life in order to regain back hers back at sea. True to form of the story, in order for the little mermaid to return to her natural state, she must follow the sorceresses advice to use blood of the prince, “[…] warm blood shall besprinkle your feet, they will again close up into a fish’s tail, and you will be a mermaid once more […]” (Andersen, Pg. 128), the same sorceress who had helped her turn into human form. As she approached the prince, “The little mermaid lifted the scarlet curtain of the tent […] She gave the prince one last, dying look, and then jumped overboard, and felt her body dissolving into foam” (Andersen, Pg. 129). As the final selfless act of her love she ended her life, and allowed the prince to carry on his life with a partner who wasn’t her. The scarlet, or red curtain, like the closing curtain at the end of a play on stage, symbolized the end of her life rather than of the princes’. One can see consistently throughout the storyline how Andersen’s use for color helped shine significant moments within the life of the little mermaid. Whether it showed up within small details such as the colors of the flowers within her garden, or the blood from the prince she would need to transform yet again, red served as a beautifully descriptive marker. While the meaning behind the color may not have been consistent within each use in the story, the marker or change, transformation, or death held great power. 

The color red throughout the whole story serves as a clear flag for any change, warnings, or signifiers of death which are added in several parts of the little mermaid’s transformations and changes, ultimately leading to her death. If we take a look at the color red as a whole within the context of the present day, the symbolic meaning behind the color still stands today with a handful of modern adaptations. For example the color red signifying a stop at a cross walk, a stop sign at an intersection while driving, an individual being referred to as a red flag, red as a low battery indicator on smart phones, etc. These meanings have evolved over time through different contexts and with different needs than the ones the little mermaid and other characters would have faced within the time period where they existed within Andersen’s story. Color can provoke emotions, but most importantly can work as a visual aid, especially within literature as was made clear throughout the evolution of the story. In the journal, The Color Red Attracts Attention in an Emotional Context, this point is made clearer and emphasizes how within Andersen’s story, while Andersen may have chosen the color red to signify certain emotions and markers, it simultaneously alerts its readers while representing the little mermaids changes and warnings throughout her own life. As a modern day individual would agree, “The color red is known to influence psychological functioning, having both negative (e.g., blood, fire, danger), and positive (e.g., sex, food) connotations” (Kuniecki, et al.), themes that were prevalent throughout the story, consistently proving that throughout history like in the little mermaid, red holds power. 

The main theme throughout Andersen’s story is the little mermaid undergoing transitions and her desire for not just a man, but a deeply unattainable man that she can not gain access to without enduring pain, and jumping through several hoops to get there. This uphill struggle to love, or in achieving anything as a female character is reminiscent of the female experience today. The little mermaid symbolizes the pain that women, aside from mermaids, endure throughout the course of their lives. For many women the feelings and emotions of pain and suffering, or any others relating to that, are the blueprint for almost any woman’s experience from child birth, menstrual cycles, menopause, etc. To be a woman is to endure pain, yet one endures it without much of a choice, however the little mermaid had a choice and chose to take on the pain that it means to transform into a woman as she spoke with the sorceress, “You will retain the floating gait:no dancer will move so lightly as you, but every step you take will be like treading upon such sharp knives that you would think your blood must flow”(Andersen, Pg. 121), which she would refer to as “sufferings”. The little mermaid endured the same kind of pain human women face, but through a different context, in her case transitioning from the sea to survive on land. Regardless of her physical state of being, the little mermaid still undergoes a different transition turning of age and is finally deemed ready to go out onto the surface of the ocean and explore the world outside of what she already knows. One could assume that she may have entered the stage of her life where a menstrual cycle is now a part of her life. As a woman’s right of passage into womanhood, starting to seek out the possibility of a partner like the prince.

While red can be a signifier of negativities, for the little mermaid it is a factor that fuels her attraction for the young prince. Since red can vary from different types of meanings, “[…] red does not always signal hostility or danger. Among many species (e.g., primates and fish), red is an evolved biological signal of attractiveness” (Kuniecki, et al.), a color that we see surrounding the little mermaid’s desires. This correlation isn’t inherently human, not limiting the little mermaid from experiencing attraction related to the color. One instance of this would be with the white marble statue that she placed within her garden that was surrounded by red flowers as she had planted the red willow beside the figure within her garden. In fact, her desire was intensified by this biological need given that, “In humans, women and men wearing red clothes are regarded by the opposite sex as more desirable” (Kuniecki, et al.). We can see her actions being directly influenced by the color red as the story continues, pushing her closer to the prince, although at the beginning it was for the most part an unrequited love, “The sun rose red and beaming from the water, and seemed to infuse life into the prince’s cheeks, but his eyes remained closed. The mermaid kissed his high polished forehead, and stroked back his wet hair; she fancied he was like the marble statue in her garden, and she kissed him again […]” (Anderson, Pg. 115). As the color red washed over him the little mermaid’s attraction for him grew with the push of her own curiosity regarding who he was and how to save him in that moment. 

The aspect of attraction is clear given her new innate feeling to be desired now as a mature and grown mermaid. The little mermaid is first adorned in a modest and pure manor by her grandmother when she first turned fifteen, “‘Well, now that you are grown up!” said her grandmother […] ‘let me dress you like your sisters.’ And she placed in her hair a wreath of white lilies, every leaf of which was half of a pearl; and the old dame ordered eight large oyster shells to be fastened to the princess’s tail, to denote her high rank” (Andersen, Pg. 113). Considering that color holds symbolic meaning, the grandmother pushed this look of purity, virginity, and innocence, all of which oppose everything that red symbolizes. The little mermaid, true to form, preferred the color red to be adorned in as she endeavored her new journey, pushing the narrative of her preference for lust and to be desired, “Oh! How gladly would she have shaken off all this pomp and laid aside her heavy wreath – the red flowers in her garden adorned her far better – but she could not help herself” (Anderson, Pg. 113). Her contradictory nature is not out of rebellion, but is coming from a perspective of an individual who has now blossomed into her womanhood, and is actively seeking to distance herself from her innocence, moving closer to the next biological step of being ‘deflowered’. Looking through the antiquated lenses of the roles of a woman during the time period like the one the story takes place, a woman’s role is also to be of service to a man and serve as a vessel to bring children into the world. While she was told of her sufferings and what her conditions would be as a woman she asks, “‘But if you take away my voice,’ said the little mermaid, ‘what have I left?’ ‘Your beautiful form,’ said the witch, ‘your buoyant carriage, and your expressive eyes. With these you surely can fool a man’s heart’[…]” (Andersen, Pg. 122). The little mermaid subjected herself to a lifelong pain with what seems like nothing other than the purpose to reproduce with her beautiful carriage of a figure, perfect for reproducing, yet not capable of expressing her own needs. Giving into her own needs had led her to lose her ability to gain her desires on her own terms. 

The story of the little mermaid is a great display of emotion and transition through the creative use of the color red as a literary device, but is also a direct reflection of the female experience. Through our color sensitive lenses while reading the story, the little mermaid serves its readers as a figure of the hardships the female body endures throughout their lifetimes, the same way that she faces pain and emotional hardship. The color red, while it may not hold a consistent symbolic or emotional meaning, is a powerful choice in Andersen’s story as it helps convey the experience the little mermaid goes through to his readers, and will continue to offer them different perspective to view color, nature, and its connection to the natural world not only in a terracentric way, but including the ocean. 

Work Cited:

Kuniecki, Michał et al. “The color red attracts attention in an emotional context. An ERP study.” Frontiers in human neuroscience vol. 9 212. 29 Apr. 2015, doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00212.

Bacchilega, Cristina and Marie Alohalani Brown. The Penguin Book of Mermaids. Penguin Books, 2019.

The article “the Mermaid” featured in the “Penguin Book of Mermaids”, originally published by the New York Herald in 1842, detailed mermaid sightings from the 18th and 19th century. This article, which was made in response to the sensation of P.T Barnum’s Fiji mermaid, marked a period in which the fascination with mermaids coincided with the conflicting politics of racial superiority, scientific advancement, and imperial colonization. This is seen in the articles juxtaposition of description between two detailed sightings, The “negro” mermaid in 1758 France, and the Asiatic mermaid in 1775, London, as well as the author’s prefatory emphasis on the theory of evolution, for the possibility of mermaids, as de-evolved humans, existing. This is relevant in understanding that the Feejee mermaid hoax, and others like it, were believed because of the United States and Western Europe’s involvement in imperialistic colonization throughout the globe, as well as the enslavement of Black Africans in the south; as a result of the trans-atlantic slave trade. Due to these involvements around the globe, the public was primed to believe in these hoaxes and supposed sightings. The combination of new-fangled science and mythos characterized the close of the Enlightenment and the beginning of the  Romantic era in which this fascination with the freakshow mermaid took place, and western nations capitalized on the public interest of the exotic and oriental to assist in the support for imperialism and subjugation of people of color, by continuing the public’s regard of black and non-white people as backward, and exotic, through the mermaid. 

Two of the mermaids described were living freakshows, unlike Barnum’s Feejee mermaid mummy. In 1758 a black mermaid was “exhibited at the fair of ST. Germain” and is described as such: “It was female, with ugly negro features. The skin was harsh, the ears very large, and the back parts and the tail were covered with scales(p.243).” Besides this physical description, the mermaid was kept and fed in a tank where it swam with “seeming delight(p.243)” despite its being caged.

The second live exhibition described took place in London 1775: “It was therefore an Asiastic mermaid. The description is as follows: –Its face is like that of a young female– its eyes a fine light blue– its nose small and handsome– its mouth small– its lips thin, and the edges of them round like that of the codfish–its teeth are small, regular and white–its chin well shaped, and its neck full …it’s breast are fair and fall …the belly is round and swelling(p.243-244)

The sheer difference in these two descriptions makes a stark comparison between the races of these two creatures, one is black and the other is assumed to be white or asian (from the Aegean sea). Despite both being hybrid creatures, there is a clear preference in regard to beauty, which mirror European beauty standard of whiteness, thinness, and desired sexuality (having small breasts). However, The negro mermaid is described as ‘ugly’ and harsh, where the asiatic mermaid is described as ‘handsome.’ Although both creatures came from the deep, the description of their features clearly maps onto them human ethnicities, and mirrors the societal beliefs that different ethnicities are the result of a species divide. 

Science at the time was motivated, along with global expansion and imperialism, by the difference between races or ethnicities to categorize and validate the subjugation of other humans. Such explanations of racial difference would have come from the understandings of science at the time, such as phrenology and naturalism, which heavily favored whiteness. The connotations of the negro mermaid are also discussed by Vaughn Scribner who states that this article’s descriptions were influenced by the sentiments on biologically supported racial difference: “early modern Europeans concentrated on African women’s supposed ‘sexually and reproductively bound savagery’ – especially notions of their abilities to constantly suckle their various children – in order to ultimately turn to ‘black women as evidence of a cultural inferiority that ultimately became encoded as racial diference(115).” Thus, the author of the Mermaid continues to perpetuate the black mermaid’s sexualized features as vulgar in comparison to the petite and elegant description of the Asiatic mermaid. 

To preface the arrival of the Fiji mermaid in England, where “our citizens and the professors  of natural history especially” would have had the opportunity to verify the existence of “this animal,” the feejee mermaid, The author suggests that the mermaid may be the “connecting link between fish and the human species(241)” in the same fashion that the “ourang outang” was discovered to be the “connecting link between the human and animal race (241).” Although the Theory of evolution would not be published by Charles Darwin until over a decade after this frenzy, scientists at the time were still concerned with ideas of evolution and human and animal history, specifically the divide or ‘missing link’. Vaughn Scribner writes in his book “Merpeople: A Human History”, about freakshows and fantasies, and the scientific and philosophical discussions that framed the obsession with freakshow mermaids during the 18th and 19th century: “As with other creatures they encountered in their global travels, European philosophers utilized various theories – including those of racial, biological, taxonomical and geographic difference – to understand merpeople’s and, by proxy, humans’ place in the natural world.” Naturalism favored the missing link theory, and along with Phrenology, worked to provide context to the biological superiority of white people over people of color.

The juxtaposition of descriptions of the mermaids in “The Mermaid” article, points to a cultural shift in the mermaid’s symbolism in popular culture as no longer strictly a myth, but as a means of discussing racial differences. As ideas about racial superiority expand with the shifting boundaries of race relation in the west, so do views on the wilderness. The insecurities of western society become mapped onto the bodies of its mermaid, just as the needs of an increasingly industrial society become mapped onto the ‘wilderness’. This shift between fear and admiration of nature is discussed by William Cronon in “The Trouble with Wilderness Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Cronon discusses this shift in consciousness during the eighteenth century, wherein the wilderness goes from the sidelines of what is considered civilized to the new found call to protect nature from human influence, and keep it in pristine condition:

“As late as the eighteenth century, the most common usage of the word “wilder-ness” in the English language referred to landscapes that generally carried adjectives far different from the ones they attract today. To be a wilderness then was to be “deserted,” “savage,” “desolate,” “barren”-in short, a “waste,” the word’s nearest synonym. Its connotations were anything but positive, and the emotion one was most likely to feel in its presence was “bewilderment” or terror(10).” 

By the nineteenth century however, with the increasingly romantic notions about the preservation of the wilderness, “even as it came to embody the awesome power of the sublime, wilderness was also being tamed-not just by those who were building settlements in its midst but also by those who most celebrated its inhuman beauty(12).” Wilderness, though it came to be valued in all its glory, and preserved within national parks and reserves, still existed as a space experienced and altered by humans and their proximity, thus even within these spaces wilderness is not truly wild. 

This perspective of the wilderness as valuable is included in conversation with the freakshow, negro, and asiatic mermaid, because they represent the divide in what comes to be considered good and bad and ‘other’. A wilderness devoid of humans created a space in which only the wealthy and privileged were able to afford interacting with nature, conveniently after Europeans had colonized and removed indigenous populations to secluded reservations. The exclusivity of wilderness retreats, and reserves, excluded Black and indigenous people of color, and coincided with the way mainstream western society implemented segregation between white and BIPOC communities. The mainstream media influences what is considered valuable, and just as the romantic interest in the sublime declared the wilderness as valuable, it also positioned white mermaids(white women) as more desirable, beautiful, and civilized, in comparison to black mermaids (black women, people of color). Wherein the asiatic mermaid was positively regarded despite being a hybrid creature; it’s supernatural qualities and beauty being emphasized, the negro mermaid was diminished and othered through it’s blackness.

This account of mermaids is a reflection of its time, and the beliefs of mainstream society influenced how non-human creatures were regarded based on desirability, racism, and the limitations of knowledge and science. ‘The Mermaid’ presents a documentation of the social upheaval experienced during the 18th and 19th century, and this article on mermaid sightings in which the race and gender of these mermaids are emphasized was a means of not only sexualizing the female body, but of using the exotic and the supposed vulgarity of African women to uphold racism and white superiority, at the expense of and subjugation of black bodies, viewed by the masses in freakshows as a pass time.

Works Cited:

Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown. “The Mermaid.” The Penguin Book of Mermaids. New York, New York, Penguin Books, 2019, pp. 241-244.

Scribner, Vaughn. “Three: Enlightened Experiments.” Merpeople, Reaktion Books, Limited, 2020.

William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness” (1996)

John R. Gillis’s essay “The Blue Humanities” and Derek Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History” both argue, in different ways, that if we want to understand the world, its history, environment, and even our own lives, we have to learn to look at the ocean. Gillis shows that modern culture and scholarship have long treated the sea as background, even though it shapes nearly everything on land. Walcott goes further and says the sea is the place where history, especially Caribbean and African diasporic history, is stored and hidden. Taken together, these texts support the claim that humans must turn toward water if they want a fuller understanding and appreciation of the rest of the world.

Gillis opens “The Blue Humanities” with a clear contradiction: “Although fully half of the world’s people now live within a hundred miles of an ocean, few today have a working knowledge of the sea.” People crowd the coasts, but do not really understand the water they live beside. He quotes sea explorer David Helvarg, who writes, “More is known about the dark side of the moon than is known about the depths of the oceans.” The comparison to the “dark side of the moon” makes the ocean sound like an alien world, but Gillis’s point is that this “alien” world covers most of our planet and touches our daily lives. Our lack of knowledge is not a small gap; it is a major blind spot.

Gillis argues that the emerging field he calls the “blue humanities” is a response to this blind spot. It is based on the simple idea that “history no longer stops at the water’s edge.” For a long time, historians, artists, writers, and scientists have treated the edge of the sea as a boundary: history and culture occurred on land, while the oceans lay there as a passive backdrop or a “highway” between “real” places. Gillis notes that “even oceangoing explorers were more land than ocean oriented; they used the sea merely as a highway to get to the next landfall.” He calls earlier exploration “a discovery more by sea than of the sea.” In other words, people used the ocean to reach land, but did not try to understand the sea itself.

According to Gillis, that attitude is changing. He describes how archaeology has “moved offshore, revealing previously unknown aspects of prehistory that had been lost to rising sea levels.” Anthropology, which “got its start on islands,” now pays attention to “the seas between them.” Maritime history, once focused on ships and ports, “is now concerned with life in the ocean itself” and is “rapidly merging with marine biology.” Historians and scientists are beginning to treat the sea as “a three-dimensional living thing with a history, geography, and a life all its own.” This is the core of the blue humanities: if we want to understand human history, we must include the sea as an active part of that story, not just a surface to be crossed.

Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History” shows what this looks like from another angle. Where Gillis says history must extend beyond the water’s edge, Walcott says that for some peoples, history has always already been in the water. The poem opens with blunt questions:

“And where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory?”

These are the usual signs of history in European tradition: monuments, battles, martyrs, “tribal memory” recorded in documents, stone, and ceremony. The speaker answers:

“Sirs,
in that grey vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.”

The repetition “The sea. The sea” forces us to stop and treat the ocean as the real subject. Walcott calls it a “grey vault,” which suggests both a tomb and a treasury. To say that the sea “has locked them up” implies that the ocean holds the evidence of history but keeps it hidden from the usual ways of seeing. When he concludes “The sea is History,” he collapses the distinction Gillis makes between land-based history and sea as background. For the Caribbean and for the descendants of enslaved Africans, the ocean is not just where history happened; it is where history remains.

Gillis also connects the sea to large-scale human and environmental history. He points out that some global historians now argue that “our globe is dominated by one great seamless body of water, covering seven-tenths of the planet’s surface and affecting weather, climate, and life on land as well as at sea.” If water covers most of the Earth and drives climate and circulation, then any serious understanding of “the rest of the world” must start with the oceans. Gillis also recalls that early modern voyages taught sailors about ecology before the word even existed. As he summarizes environmental historian Richard Grove, mariners “discovered the damage that invasive species of plants and animals could do on small islands around the world.” These ocean voyages produced “the first glimmerings of ecological thinking.” Again, if we want to understand ecology, empire, and globalization, we need to follow the paths that ships took and see what the sea carried.

Walcott rewrites this oceanic history in biblical terms. Instead of discussing ecology or empire directly, he retells familiar religious stories as episodes in the history of slavery and colonialism, and he locates them in the sea. He describes the beginning of this history not in Eden, but in the Atlantic:

“First, there was the heaving oil,
heavy as chaos;
then, like a light at the end of a tunnel,

the lantern of a caravel,
and that was Genesis.”

The “caravel” is the small ship used by European explorers. Calling its lantern “Genesis” turns the start of transatlantic exploration into a new creation story, one that results not in paradise but in conquest. Walcott then folds in the horror of the Middle Passage:

“Bone soldered by coral to bone,
mosaics
mantled by the benediction of the shark’s shadow,

that was the Ark of the Covenant.”

The “Ark of the Covenant” is traditionally a sacred container of divine law. Here, it is a mass grave. Bones have been “soldered” together by coral, forming “mosaics” on the sea floor. Sharks cast their “benediction,” a dark parody of religious blessing. Walcott turns the ocean floor into a kind of underwater church, but one built out of human remains. This scene fits Gillis’s description of how, for centuries, people thought of the deep sea as “a dark dead zone that trapped all that sank below the surface, never revealing its secrets.” Walcott insists those “secrets” are not empty; they are the literal bodies of the enslaved, and they are central to Caribbean history.

Both Gillis and Walcott stress that our relationship to the sea is heavily shaped by imagination and art. Gillis notes that “large numbers of people know the sea in other ways, through the arts and literature.” He reminds us that “from the beginning of the nineteenth century, fiction has been imagining undersea worlds that explorers were unable to reach.” Rachel Carson, who helped found modern marine science, was “inspired by the arts and literature,” and wrote that humans were destined to return to the sea “mentally and imaginatively.” In Gillis’s view, “we have come to know the sea as much through the humanities as through science.” Paintings by Turner and Homer, novels like Moby-Dick, and what he calls “ecoliterature” all help people picture the sea as more than just a shipping lane.

Walcott’s poem is exactly that kind of imaginative work. Instead of giving us statistics or maps, he invites us into an underwater tour. At one point, he directly instructs the listener:

“strop on these goggles, I’ll guide you there myself.
It’s all subtle and submarine,
through colonnades of coral,

past the gothic windows of sea-fans
to where the crusty grouper, onyx-eyed,
blinks, weighted by its jewels, like a bald queen;”

The command “strop on these goggles” is both literal and symbolic: to see this history, we need new equipment and a new way of looking. The “colonnades of coral” and “gothic windows of sea-fans” turn the seafloor into architecture, echoing churches and cathedrals. Walcott later confirms this when he writes that “these groined caves with barnacles / pitted like stone / are our cathedrals.” For him, the sea’s caves and coral reefs are not just natural formations; they are cultural spaces, full of meaning, like the monuments that the opening questions asked about. This is what Gillis means when he writes that modern culture has given the sea “a higher aesthetic power” and turned it into “a fountain of images and metaphors.”

Gillis also describes a major shift in how Western culture thinks about the sea. Before the nineteenth century, he says, attitudes toward the oceans “were more utilitarian than aesthetic.” The sea was “dangerous and repellant, ugly and unfit for literary or artistic representation.” Most people saw it as a route to somewhere else, not a place worth attention in itself. He writes that early fiction and painting were “surprisingly impoverished when it came to the oceans themselves,” focusing on “ships and the skills of the men who manned them, with the sea itself almost an afterthought.”

Then, in what Gillis calls “the second discovery of the sea,” beginning in the late eighteenth century, the sea became a source of beauty, terror, and insight. He explains that the “sublime, previously associated with mountains and forests, came to be associated with wild water.” Thinkers like Joseph Addison wrote of the “agreeable Horror” of storms at sea. Edmund Burke found the sea a better “tonic for mind and soul” than the land. By the industrial age, even people living far from the ocean began to use it as a way to think about their own lives. Gillis notes that “human beings living on land nevertheless prefer, in their imagination, to represent their overall condition in the world in terms of a sea voyage.” Thomas Cole’s painting The Voyage of Life and the spread of nautical metaphors illustrate this. The sea becomes a way to talk about birth, aging, danger, and hope. One writer he cites says that at the seaside “man can muse and meditate” better than “in any inland scenery.” Flood tide suggests “childhood and youth,” ebb tide “old age,” and the horizon “tells of a steadfast future, an immutable eternity.”

Walcott’s poem also uses the sea to think about time and meaning, but he refuses to separate the ocean’s beauty from its violence. When Gillis writes that some people began to seek “wilderness” in the sea, Walcott reminds us that this wilderness is full of bones. When Gillis notes that the sea became a symbol of eternity and “a secular promise of life everlasting,” Walcott shows how that “eternity” is haunted by those who had their lives cut short. Near the end of the poem, after moving through “Emancipation” and the rise of towns and churches, “the spires / lancing the side of God / as His son set, and that was the New Testament”, Walcott undercuts the idea that official events and faith alone make history. He writes of Emancipation as “jubilation, O jubilation / vanishing swiftly / as the sea’s lace dries in the sun.” Just as foam disappears on the sand, so too the initial celebration of freedom fades. He adds, “that was not History, / that was only faith.” Real history, for him, is harder to see.

The poem ends with a description of nature on land, flies, herons, bullfrogs, fireflies, bats, mantises, caterpillars, ferns, rocks, and then this striking line:

“and in the salt chuckle of rocks
with their sea pools, there was the sound
like a rumour without any echo

of History, really beginning.”

The “salt chuckle of rocks” and the “sea pools” show that even on land, the sea is present. The sound is “like a rumour without any echo,” which suggests something being told, but not yet recorded or repeated. When Walcott says this is “History, really beginning,” he implies that true history has only started once we begin to listen to these faint, ocean-linked traces, the rumours, the underwater mosaics of bone and coral, the “grey vault” of the sea.

Gillis makes a similar point about how late this realization is. He calls the emergence of the blue humanities “a belated recognition of the close relationship between modern western culture and the sea.” He writes that “the sea became a mirror that landlubbers used to reflect on their own condition,” and he notes that “even as actual involvement with the sea diminished, its symbolic and metaphorical presence increased.” He also stresses that “most of our encounters with [the sea] are at a distance, by way of the illustrations and stories of our childhoods.” Rachel Carson, for example, “was smitten early with images of the sea, but did not really become acquainted with it until adulthood, though she never really learned to swim.” For “millions, if not billions” of people, the sea “lurks in the imaginations” of those “who will never test its waters.” Gillis ends by saying that “the manner in which this occurred and the significance it holds for modern culture and society is only just beginning to dawn on us. This is the domain of the blue humanities, open, like the sea itself, to further exploration.”

Walcott’s poem can be read as part of that exploration. It shows what happens when we take seriously the idea that the ocean is not empty, but full of history and meaning. It gives specific content to Gillis’s broader claims. Where Gillis writes that the deep sea was long seen as “an unfathomable abyss, impenetrable and unknowable,” Walcott fills that abyss with slaves’ bones, shipwrecks, Port Royal’s destruction, and underwater “cathedrals.” Where Gillis says that “pristine nature, now in short supply in industrialized heartlands, found refuge in the oceans,” Walcott reminds us that this “pristine” ocean is also a graveyard. Where Gillis describes the sea as a source of metaphors for life, tides, voyages, and horizons, Walcott uses those same metaphors, but grounds them in the concrete history of colonial violence and survival.

Both “The Blue Humanities” and “The Sea is History” push us toward the same conclusion. If we keep treating the ocean as a blank, as just scenery or a route between “real” places, we will misunderstand not only the sea, but also the land, our histories, and ourselves. Gillis shows that the ocean shapes climate, ecology, migration, trade, literature, and art. Walcott shows that for entire peoples, the ocean is the main archive of their suffering and resilience. To understand “the rest of the world,” we have to learn to read the water, scientifically, historically, and imaginatively. Only then, as Walcott puts it, does “History, really beginning” become possible.

In David Walcott’s “The Sea is History,” the poem’s extensive use of biblical allusions and oceanic imagery exposes how human history, no matter how powerful it seems, is ultimately temporary and easily forgotten on land, a claim that aligns with Eric Paul Roorda and Steve Mentz’s critiques of terracentrism by revealing the human mistake of centering our worldview on land-based narratives instead of recognizing the ocean as the deeper and more enduring archive of human experience. 

First, in “The Sea Is History” by Derek Walcott, the poet portrays the ocean as an archive of cultural memory by referencing Biblical and historical knowledge, thus revealing how man-made monuments and stories are temporary but can be preserved within the ocean which carries an enduring record of human history. By connecting biblical narratives with the ocean, Walcott shows that the sea exposes and carries the realities that Scripture and monuments often spiritualize or brush over, revealing history’s buried truths.

“Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?” (ln. 1).  Walcott opens with a challenge. He asks where the remnants of man-made creations can be found once they are long gone, to which the reply is, “The sea / has locked them up. The sea is History” (ln. 3-4), thus establishing the foundation of the poem where the sea is portrayed as a vessel containing historical knowledge and depth. 

Walcott’s challenge to monuments can be further understood through Eric Paul Roorda’s concept of terracentrism, as written in his introduction to The Ocean Reader, which describes the deeply ingrained human fallacy to center history, meaning, and value on land-based narratives rather than those of the ocean. As Roorda explains, “Those who have considered the watery majority of the planet on its own terms have often seen it as a changeless space, one without a history. Because the Ocean can’t be plowed, paved, or shaped in ways the eye is able to discern, it has seemed to be a constant, while the land has changed drastically over the centuries” (Roorda 1).  Here, he explains how because terracentrism shapes human worldviews, and thus how humans record and remember the past, only easily visible, changeable, and human-created spaces such as monuments, cities, and other land-centric features are considered significant in the recording and studying of the world’s history. On the other hand, and as Roorda described, the ocean is often wrongfully perceived as empty, unchanging, or merely an insignificant backdrop to human history, being dismissed as a geographical feature due to the fact that humans cannot easily perceive the true change and cycles it goes through, for example all of the ocean’s changes and contents are submerged and not visible to humans. So, land becomes the default perspective for the recording of history and thought, enabling humans to feel powerful and create a sense of achievement through tangible structures and borders meant to endure for long periods of time. Monuments are thus significant to humans because they provide something tangible as well as stability, and they are able to be claimed and controlled, which are qualities that are valued within land-based thinking. In contrast, the ocean is fluid, constantly moving, and impossible to fully claim or control, which prevents it from conforming to the fallacy of a terracentric worldview. Even the engineered “names” that humans give to parts of the ocean, like the Indian Ocean or Atlantic Ocean, in an attempt to divide and control them into different entities, does not take away from the fact that the ocean is factually and permanently one large body, or how “seawater travels widely and endlessly across these artificial geographic markers” (2) no matter how many futile attempts humans make to tame it. Roorda mentions how as a result, histories associated with the sea are often overlooked or erased, not because they lack significance, but because they cannot be easily understood in a society that only fathoms land as a site of importance. Walcott’s line that “the sea has / locked them up” (ln. 3-4) directly rejects the assumption that history must be visible on land to be valued. Instead, the poem exposes how terracentrism limits historical knowledge because it correlates permanence with truth and dismisses what cannot be controlled or owned. The ocean’s lack of stability and clear borders undermines the power of monuments as the most reliable mediums of remembering history, revealing that what humans choose to remember is shaped less by a true appreciation for historical depth and more by means of power, control, and comfort in understanding. Thus, Walcott’s opening lines do much more than merely introduce the sea as a setting for the poem, but rather they challenge the very logic by which humans define history. By positioning the ocean as a true vault of monuments, battles, and martyrs, Walcott’s work aligns with Roorda’s critique of land-centered history and exposes the human mistake of looking at land-based narratives over fluid, ocean realities. Through this lense, Walcott’s poem can be read as a poetic refusal of terracentrism, insisting that history exists and is held not where humans have tried to anchor it, but where it has been forgotten or allowed to endure beyond human control and perception.

Walcott continues by chronologically describing Old Testament books of the Bible. He first describes Genesis, then Exodus, then the Song of Solomon, then Lamentations. By shifting from book to book specifically in chronological order, the work shifts from a mere poem to more of a story with a sequence of events, similar to human history. Walcott is further emphasizing the representation of the ocean as a continuous timeline containing such history and depth. For example, in his representation of Exodus, Walcott writes, “Bone soldered by coral to bone, / mosaics / mantles by the benediction of the shark’s shadow” (ln. 13-15). This could be referring to the famous Exodus story of Moses delivering the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. In doing so, he parts the Red Sea just in time for the Israelites to safely escape, but the waves come crashing down on the Egyptians in their wake, thus drowning their pursuers. The imagery of coral and bone being soldered together imply a connection between elements of the ocean and the land/humans, and the specific usage of the word “soldered” implies permanence, as if they are permanently connected in history. The usage of the word “mosaics” also provides relevance as that form of art consists of several small pieces fitted together to form a larger picture. In this context, the different, small remnants of the past and history held within the ocean are more that mere bits of debris, but rather the parts that make up larger history if put together. In this story, the bones and bodies of the Egyptians lie among the coral and water, forever preserved by the blessing, or “benediction of the shark’s shadow,” in the sea. The poet uses this popular biblical story to materialize the death and the religious story. The ocean becomes not a metaphor but an archive of bodies, holding the truths that triumphant narratives erase. The biblical reference paints the ocean as an archive and it exposes the gap between Scripture’s symbolic story and the physical reality the sea remembers. 

The human tendency to trust land over ocean as reliable grounds of history can again be explained through Eric Paul Roorda’s Ocean Reader and critique of terracentrism, which reveals how familiarity and control shape what humans consider meaningful because it is more comfortably understood. The ocean resists human control and thus, human-written narratives. It does not organize history into neat beginnings and endings or preserve events in ways that may be skewed or untruthful. As a result, humans are more comfortable trusting land-based narratives and perspectives because they align with familiar structures of meaning and authority that society is conditioned to value and view as necessary, while distrusting the ocean because it does not contain those rigid structures. Walcott’s depiction of Exodus directly confronts this bias that Roorda introduces by separating the biblical story’s symbolic, land-based narrative from the ocean’s physical holdings of bodies and bones, and thus objective memories. Where the Bible frames the drowning of the Egyptians as a necessary step in the divine escape, the ocean preserves the physical remains of that event without religious interpretation or meaning. The ocean refuses to be manipulated by human-written agendas or narratives and instead shows only the objective truth, and it does not allow humans to distance themselves from or justify suffering. Raw histories are not turned into metaphors, but rather held within coral, bone, and sediment, as Walcott describes. By trusting land and religious propaganda over the ocean, humans try to protect themselves from confronting the full weight of historical truth and violence. Roorda exposes humans’ selective attention to the ocean as he writes, “They relentlessly hunt sea creatures, taking 90 million tons of fish from it annually. They use it as a highway, with 100,000 ships at sea right now. They study it, find inspiration in it, play on it, and fight over it” (Roorda 3). Humans rely heavily on the ocean for transportation, food, and cultural inspiration, yet ironically exploit it and selectively choose to ignore the need to care for the ocean. Walcott further adds to the conversation of human selectivity as a fallacy in perspective, showing that what humans dismiss as unstable or lacking in history is in fact the space where history is preserved the most honestly. In doing so, the poem along with Roorda’s work reveal that human reliance on land-based narratives is not rooted in the desire for truth, but in comfort, control, and the need to tell stories that affirm human values.

 In Walcott’s representation of the Song of Solomon, a book about marriage and poetic love, he flips the romantic narrative with descriptions of “white cowries clustered like manacles / on the drowned women, / and those were the ivory bracelets / of the Song of Solomon” (ln. 20-23). The poet’s mention of drowned women chained with manacles could be referring to the slave trade where many slaves died in transportation overseas, once again associating human and ocean elements by comparing cowries to the chains. The typically beautiful and romantic images of “white cowries” and “ivory bracelets” represent bondage, definitely not poetic love, in this poem. By flipping the theme of the Song of Solomon, Walcott is contrasting Biblical stories with historical reality, or idealistic love versus slavery. The ocean preserves the bodies, and therefore real history. The poet thus paints the ocean as not only a mere vessel that preserves stories, but also harsh truth, no matter how buried. 

After chronologically describing Lamentations, Walcott shifts his poem to the New Testament with the lines, “the spires /  lancing the side of God / as His son set, and that was the New Testament” (ln. 56-58).  Biblically, the New Testament begins with the emergence of Jesus Christ, who was crucified. The imagery of spires piercing the “side of God” is reminiscent of how when Jesus was on the cross, Roman soldiers pierced his side with spears to see if he had died yet. The images of God’s son setting can have a double meaning. It can represent Jesus, the son, dying on the cross, but also the sun literally setting, thus bringing about a new day in history and narrating an end and beginning simultaneously. Waves enact “progress,” not because they advance but because they erase and renew with every break, and they become the mechanism and vessel through which human stories are submerged and remade. This pushes the biblical imagery toward a reflection on historical time itself, how events are layered, repeated, forgotten, and preserved beneath the surface. Walcott characterizes these sequence of events as “waves’ progress,” once again connecting the sea to human history and stories. The pun on “son/sun” links Biblical narrative to the natural flow of time, suggesting that endings and beginnings, written through the imagery of crucifixion and sunset, are layered within the ocean’s depths. Waves enact “progress” not by moving forward but by continually erasing and rearranging the world’s surface, mirroring the ongoing process by which human histories and stories are written, buried, and re-told.

Walcott’s rejection of linear progress through the image of waves is further explained by Steve Mentz’s concept of how language is a key factor in terracentrism. In the preface to Ocean, Mentz argues that terrestrial thinking is too limited, a problem caused by the language that humans use, for example “progress,” “ground,” and “field.” “Progress” assumes that history moves in a straight line toward continuous improvement or resolution, however Mentz proposes the use of “flow” instead, a term that emphasizes circulation, repetition, and transformation rather than linear advancement. “Thinking in terms of cyclical flows rather than linear progress makes historical narratives messier, more confusing, and less familiar. These are good things” (Mentz xvi). Here, he argues that history and advancement do not come in the commonly accepted form of regularity and standardization, but rather in a more fluid, unpredictable way like the flow of the ocean and waves. These metaphors contrast from the land-centered experience, where everything appears solid and movement can be measured. Ocean “flow” does not move toward a fixed endpoint at the end of a linear path, but rather it moves through cycles and waves. Walcott’s description of “waves’ progress” mirrors Mentz’s concept because the waves do not represent improvement or forward movement in the traditional, human sense, but rather display change through constant breaking, erasing, and reshaping of the surface. Thus, Mentz’s claim supports Walcott’s poem in that oceanic thinking is more realistic and flexible than terrestrial metaphors by refusing clarity and linear-based “progress.” Mentz writes, “The blue humanities name an ocean-infused way to reframe our shared cultural history. Breaking up the Anthropocene means reimagining the anthropogenic signatures of today’s climactic disasters as a dynamic openings” (Mentz xviii). In order to address true history, the ocean cannot be written out of it, and history itself cannot be viewed as a linear timeline, but rather as something “dynamic.” History, similar to water, does not stay put, but rather it builds as time goes on, distorts, and is reremembered. Mentz’s framework helps explain how Walcott’s imagery not only emphasizes the ocean as a keeper of history, but actively describes how history itself moves.

Ultimately, “The Sea is History” by Derek Walcott uses heavy Biblical allusions and connections between humans and nature in order to further the purpose of depicting the ocean as a vessel preserving truth and history, which is supported by Eric Roorda and Steve Mentz’s works exposing terracentrism and human-centered narratives. 

Works Cited

Roorda, Eric Paul, editor. The Ocean Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press, 2020.

Mentz, Steve. Ocean. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sdsu/detail.action?docID=6036857.

Wow. I’ve truly learned so much from this class that I don’t know where to start with this blog post. Thank you all for being a part of this educational journey, which has felt way too short! Learning about mermaids and how they have been transformed throughout the years from different cultures have been deeply insightful. By learning more about mermaids, I’ve learned more about humans and our relationship to the environment. It has shifted my perspective on the Ocean (emphasis on the capital O) and how we were never apart from it. Mermaids which are often painted as frivolous shallow girly fantasy exists outside those constructs of the patriarchy as symbols of queer expression, female freedom, immigration, and so much more.

I’ll be missing this class dearly. The intellectual conversations and deep dives have bettered me as a student, and has challenged me to be a better writer.