“For a shipwreck one must have a sea, but which particular sea (in the geographical and historical sense) makes no difference at all.”
(Bakhtin 100)
After devoting quite a bit of time to diaries and logs, it is only fair to mention that non-fictional texts, such as logbooks, journals, registers and diaries written by travellers or common sailors were also forerunners of the genre. Not aspiring to literary success or fame, these texts still contribute to our topic, and must have done so to the research of those few writers who decided to write a ship novel without having been professional seamen for at least a short duration in their lives. These are mostly very informative documents, but they can still carry adventure-like elements. Whether they contain features resembling the picaresque novel or not, they often include one of the most fascinating qualities of sea novels, namely, sea folklore – some very early “sights” of legendary creatures and phenomena were recorded at length in such texts, so much that with some exaggeration, we might call these documents bestiaries rather than ordinary diaries.
As it has already been suggested (borrowing the words of Jurij Lotman), spreading out mythological texts into a linear narrative with a plot results in at least two major changes. One of these is the strengthening of sjuzet, and the particular importance the act of narrating gains.
Telling stories, and recounting the tales of the sea appear as guiding marks for plots, just as we have seen when briefly discussing the works of Coleridge, Conrad, or in more detail, of Golding. The other consequence is that monolithic characters break up into couples, doubles, or groups. The frequency and importance of double figures or doppelgangers are not as high in sea novels as in, let us say, gothic or crime fiction, but nevertheless, sometimes they can be easily identified, and the frequency of such instances is not entirely independent of which literary period we are looking at. Much more often than that, what we have in the genre is a
Fagyal 32 beautifully stereotypical range of crew members. With a slight exaggeration, one could say that stock characters are not alien even from some of the mostly highly esteemed representatives of the genre.14 After reading a number of novels and short-stories belonging to the genre, it is certainly possible to make at least a rough sketch of some ranks on board a ship. First of all, usually the ship’s captain does not fill either the position of the protagonist, or the narrator. He is seen from the outside and mostly appears as a bad-tempered, strict, stubborn, reckless, at times intimidating and fanatic man (e.g. Captain Ahab, Captain Anderson, or Zeke Voorhees in The Voyage of the Narwhal). Second in rank, the first officer is mostly a very ambivalent character due to his position. He is the one who is supposed to have almost total control on deck, but because of the authority of the captain, his orders can be contradicted, which indicates his frailty to the crew – this is exactly what causes the downfall of Charles Summers from Close Quarters on, and also the reason why Starbuck in Moby Dick is an utterly powerless figure, who cannot change the course of their voyage even though he is aware of the potential dangers of Ahab’s zealous chase after the white whale. We could go on listing how basically all the important ranks and positions follow a scheme, but the pattern is already clear and drawing an imaginary fleet would be redundant here. For readers of ship novels, these naval ranks are easy to conceptualize, and they work similarly to how we tend to imagine figures like blacksmiths or thieves, who, in theory, can be diverse, but for some reason the way they live in the mind of the public could be expressed with one single picture. Of course there are times when this theory of stereotypical characters does not hold water, there are surely exceptions, but it can hardly be denied that all these figures have
14 Just as in Lord Jim, where Jim gets a second chance in life thanks to Stein, who sends him to the ”custom-made” made island of romance, Patusan. There he might take the position of the hero coming from the outside, gaining the trust of the colossal, old and wise chief, Doramin, befriending his son, who is also the military leader of the men (typical warrior figure), and falling in love with Jewel, a beautiful lady, whose name says it all, just as intended.
Fagyal 33 leaked into less famous and acknowledged examples of the genre as well;15 they are associated with the naval environment, almost taken for granted, and as the result of this, they can be easily identified in popular sea stories, also in cartoons, or in movies.
There are, however, some other fields where mythical patterns and forms are preserved.
No matter which century we take a modern example from, the environment in sea novels is heavily loaded with mythological elements, something that is best described with the term
“sea folklore.” This is a specific, very rich setting filled with legendary creatures, effects and phenomena. Everyone knows stories about the Leviathan, or Kraken, Nessie, Davy Jones, The Flying Dutchman and other ghost ships, and generally seamen are portrayed as superstitious people. Moreover, even if some on board are not openly shown in that way, the validity of those legends mentioned above is never questioned. These stock characters, and the strong presence of sea folklore itself, as Northrop Frye says about archetypes in general, connect one text within the genre to another, thus favouring the unity and integrity of our literary experience (87). Indeed, we can also find countless examples of archetype-like scenes and images in ship novels, like the sinking ship, an iceberg, a huge vortex pulling down the vessel, being frozen into an ice-field, grounding, caught in a huge storm, and so on. These are all threatening forces of nature, and one could freely try to analyse them, like for instance how the lull in Close Quarters influences the plot, and on the most basic level, why it is disturbing to be utterly still on the ever flowing water, but these overwhelming images do not really require any explanation. Their effect is elemental, and they command awe immediately.
It should be made clear that even though the sea is a place for mythical or legendary creatures, they are not amassed and piled up there without logic or restraint. The main point is
15 The same tendency can be observed in other plot-driven genres, for example in romances, in adventure stories, or even in detective fiction.
Fagyal 34 that a special set of conventional naval myths is given here, and new elements cannot be arbitrarily added to it. For instance, there are no shape-shifters, succubi or fairies in sea stories; simply because they do not belong to this environment, but there might be some other creatures that fulfil almost the same role in a different form, and under a different name.
Instead of a fairy, one can meet the will-o’-the-wisp (not exclusively a naval phenomenon, since it often appears around marshes too), and sirens charm the sailors instead of a succubus.
These elements had been present in the forerunners of the genre thousands of years ago, are not given to change, and do not show signs of disappearance. Modern and contemporary novels, films, musical compositions and other texts use these even today; countless rewritings were made of these stories, and when they are not central in term of importance, they can still be present as quite dominant themes.16
Archetypal scenes, however, can join this set of conventions more easily. Noone can really deny that the tragedy of the Titanic reinforced the image of the monstrous iceberg as a threatening force at sea in the public imagination, neither that the film with the same title (made more than 80 years after the real life event) further reinforced this. The sea has always been seen as a mysterious agent, much more than just a passive environment over which people can take control. Several legends (like the Bermuda, or as others call it, the Devil’s Triangle) attached to it exemplify this very well, and these recurring images can create mental connections between the texts dealing with the topic. As Northrop Frye articulates: “[b]ecause of the larger communicative context of education, it is possible for a story about the sea to be archetypal, to make a profound imaginative impact, on a reader who has never been out of Saskatchewan” (99). And indeed, these archetypes and sets of images have been
16 We may think of how differently the legend of The Flying Dutchman is handled by Wagner, by Füst Milán in A feleségem története, or by the film Pirates of the Caribbean (2003).
Fagyal 35 communicating very effectively for centuries, regardless of the recipient’s background (be it cultural, social, class, or even nationality, age, and so forth).
Sea novels are very much aware of all these, and they make an extensive use of the elements taken from sea folklore. It is obvious that the common ground in ship novels is the sea. It is not by chance that even in the Bakhtin quotation used as an epigraph for this chapter, the basic requirement for a shipwreck is not a ship, but a sea. Of course, a ship is needed as well, but our attention is deliberately directed to the environment. The usual portrayal of the sea, its importance and inherent metaphysical meaning, along with how it appears in relation to the crew of a ship, to individuals, is what the next section will focus on.
Being at Home, and Homelessness on the Sea
Northrop Frye says that the study of genres is based on formal analogies (83), and so far we have discussed a good number of these specific to the ship novel genre; in the following paragraphs this search continues based on Bakhtin’s chronotope theory. He argues that “[i]t can even be said that it is precisely the chronotope that defines genre and generic distinctions, for in literature the primary category in the chronotope is time” (85). Not forgetting the importance of adventure time operating within texts belonging to the genre, we could say that spatiality in sea novels is just as important, or even more important than time, for the most salient factor connecting all the texts of the genre is the sea, which, as a result of being regularly used, gains a set of qualities and attributes. Its personification is probably one of the most common tropes in the genre. From another perspective, it is possible to say that the factors of time and space fuse into one, and the whole “takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and
Fagyal 36 history” (Bakhtin 84). This apposite idea of Bakhtin might remind one how the inner and mental developments or changes of the characters follow the spatial course of the voyage, how sea stories are about the “sea-change” brought forth by the journey.
First of all, it should be noted that the sea is an abstract space. It is cut off from the field of everyday experience, and for the vast majority of people this exotic, peregrine environment remains alien even if they sail out a few times. It is a place outside everyday life, a very restricted one where one’s space is limited to the ship. The vessel takes on the role of one’s house without allowing him to leave it, and compressing all her passengers densely. Usually, members of the crew are separated from the passengers and tourists, and in most cases, one can only avoid the crowded quarters for a rather huge amount of money.17 Sea life appears as radically different from the mainland way of life and habits, and in spite of lacking comfort, the ship is still the closest substitute for a home. There is also a kind of everyday life of a ship – when everyone is doing his regular duty; they are in the middle of their voyage and do not have to worry about disembarkation, paying-off or unloading, neither about bad weather at the moment, and so on. These calm moments, of course, are relatively rare and short in sea novels, partly because the genre needs progression and the development of events, and also because these descriptions of naval still life might not be the most entertaining pages for the readership. The significance of this alternative home becomes even clearer if we remember the superstitious nature of seamen, the threatening natural forces on sea, and the legendary monsters hiding in the depths. At times the sea is portrayed as something beautiful, and at these times it is a wonder to be out there, but much more often, people have to fight against its harsh conditions.
17 Probably most visible in Joseph O’Connor’s historical novel, Star of the Sea (2004).
Fagyal 37 The notion of the “sublime” explains this ambivalence, and perhaps also an important consequence present in sea stories, which is the unfamiliarity of the sea. It is not just an exotic, but also an alien and threatening environment. Passengers might get their “sea-legs”
within a week, as Mr Talbot’s example shows, but in itself it is not nearly enough to feel at home in a ship. It is always important who is being at home on the sea; it shows some fundamental differences between seamen and “land-lubbers.” Examining some commonly used metaphors leads us towards the same idea. It is as if there were a racial difference between the “Children of the Sea” and those who never set sail and thus are not taken in by
“Our mighty mother!”, as Buck Mulligan says in James Joyce’s Ulysses quoting George Russell, and also referring to Swinburne. It is not easy to identify whether it is a self-implemented distinction created by seamen ages ago, or a result of the actual experience of sailing and its radical otherness, but these two factors are certainly tied together, and a pattern has been built out of it in sea novels.
Taking a closer look at some literary examples in order to see how this element works in fiction, Malcolm Lowry’s Ultramarine is a fine starting point. Dana Hilliot strives to become one of the shipmen, wants to be accepted in their circles. His hopes, however, are vague from the beginning, for he is taken to the harbour by his wealthy father, in an expensive car. This is exactly how not to start integrating into a crew – the obvious signs of his higher class origins do not escape anyone on board, and even after leaving the mainland, they cannot view Dana as one of them. Well-to-do people never enlist on a ship, they can choose from much better jobs on the land, and Dana’s counter-example evokes suspicion in the crew. It is not easy to accept that he enlisted only for the sake of adventure and the romance of sea life living in his imagination. This novel effectively shows how conventional images living in the public’s mind influence the general judgement of sea life, and also that many of these images cannot
Fagyal 38 be encountered on one’s first voyage, if at all. It is, in a way, a deglamourizing method, and it is not by hard work that Dana can win the sympathy of others, especially of the cook, Andy, but by insulting him heavily in a drunk and enraged state. On the whole, this partial success is not in the least convincing; Dana’s place is clearly not on board of a ship. He goes on a journey on the Oedipus Tyrannus in search of adventure, a rite of passage, a sea change, a chance to “officially” grow up in everyone’s eyes, but the sea is just not his realm, not his place to prove himself. Realizing how he was led by some common fantasies, he spends most of his time wondering why he signed up and left his beloved ones behind, and what he expected at all.
Having or not having a family is usually an important factor in these texts. Families tie seamen to the land, but those who do not have any relatives, or view family and settlement as alien concepts often choose an alternative way of life. There is an undeniable metaphysical stake in spending one’s entire life at sea. Some radical examples would include Captain Ahab itself, who just before the final chase after Moby Dick confesses to Ishmael that he has spent only three days on land in the last four decades. He has no place to go home to, and has thus found a substitute in the ship. In fact, his strongest bond of all is the revenge driving him after Moby Dick. Still, he probably could not break up with his dire way of living even after destroying the whale. It seems only fitting that his enemy of mythical proportions hurls him down to the deeps, leaving Ishmael as the sole survivor to tell the tale. In addition, already in the first paragraph of the novel, we get to know when and why Ishmael himself goes to the sea:
[...] nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of
Fagyal 39 every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can
21
It is clear that his motivations are very different from those of Ahab. He sees every voyage as an escape from real life, or a pause, a break in it. In other words, his life can be divided into two halves: one spent on the “watery part of the world,” the other on land. And the novel seems to reinforce this idea, because right when he signs up and leaves the shore on board of the Pequod, he ceases to be an active agent. He turns into a story-teller, never saying what he did on the ship, or how he contributed to catching a whale. He simply records the events,
It is clear that his motivations are very different from those of Ahab. He sees every voyage as an escape from real life, or a pause, a break in it. In other words, his life can be divided into two halves: one spent on the “watery part of the world,” the other on land. And the novel seems to reinforce this idea, because right when he signs up and leaves the shore on board of the Pequod, he ceases to be an active agent. He turns into a story-teller, never saying what he did on the ship, or how he contributed to catching a whale. He simply records the events,