Craig Sprowl

April 30, 2002

Question: What did you learn about genres?  What did you learn about exploration and its representation by literature?  What is gained by studying Literature of Space and Exploration as a student of literature? 

            I believe that Space and Exploration literature can be categorized as a distinct genre.  How does one classify or draw the borders of this genre?  What distinguishes it different from other genres?  How does one define it?  If conflict, struggle, and problems are where literature comes from, then the genre of Space and Exploration literature promises to deliver a substantial body of work to literature in general. 

            First, the Space and Exploration genre is marked by a trip that involves traveling to someplace uninhabited by humans.  The geographical areas largely uninhabited by humans would be the areas of the Poles (Arctic and Antarctic).  Desolate and barren deserts would characterize another area uninhabited by humans.  I would like to suggest that another geographical area uninhabited by humans would be the area of our Oceans.  Not counting the surface, I think that the depths of the oceans could constitute an area foreign to humans.  Finally, the area of Space serves as the largest area which has been off limits to humans. 

            For a student of literature, the boundary/geographic nature of the genre points to the self-other dialectic.  The Romantics were concerned with such a dialectic.  Their observations on nature served as a way to reflect on the self.  This brings up the idea of correspondence, which is a pattern of exchange.  Emerson’s observation of nature related to the internal.  Nature could be viewed as a mirror of the soul.  The text for the class that most exemplified this idea was Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.  Le Guin’s novel dealt profoundly with this topic, as seen in the human Genly Ai’s response to the Gethenians’ outward appearance of asexuality.  Humans are identified by their sexuality from birth, whereas the Gethenians did not have this labeling.  In male/female terms of the “other,” the Gethenians contained the “other” within themselves while Ai did not.  Ai’s journey throughout the novel can be seen in terms of his trying to understand the other.  Ai’s journey of discovery was often times as frustrating and grueling as the Arctic explorer’s physical journey.  Le Guin’s novel should be represented as an essential text in the canon of Space and Exploration literature.

            The Space and Exploration genre is distinguished by the theme of borders, barriers or prohibition.  The hostility of Space serves as barrier to travel.  The Poles extreme conditions serve to act as a barrier for exploration.  The desert marks a border between our normal habitat and something off limits.  If we enter the hostile desert we risk death by nature of the extreme elements.  The ultimate border is death.  Space, the Poles, and deserts all threaten death.  Our natural inclination for survival tells us to stay away from areas where we risk death.  Human’s natural habitat serves as a boundary of something to not be crossed without great risk.  Hostile environments serve to mark the edges of our habitat’s boundaries.  The ICE book contained an excellent selection of journals and stories often from the perspective of the first hand account.  A number of the explorer’s stories in ICE revealed the staggering implications of crossing that boundary into a hostile habitat. 

            Second, the genre of Space and Exploration literature often contains the language of extremes.  When explorers or fictional characters find themselves in an extreme environment, they use extreme language to convey their condition.  Isolation is a common theme in the Space and Exploration genre.  Pym is a good example of a character who relates his condition through the narrative of the extreme.  In order to relate the horror he faces he uses superlatives.  Throughout the novel Pym frequently expresses conditions in terms of the worst, the darkest, and the most terrible.  In the Elle Tracy article The Southern End of the Earth: Antarctic Literature, she addresses how one describes Antarctica, “It is the earth’s highest, driest, coldest, windiest, darkest continent…the most inaccessible and inhospitable to humans.”  Extremes are also made manifest in extremes of emotions.  The environment is so taxing, not only for the external body, but the internal mind.  Traveling to extreme places offers to make the mind operate at the extremes of its range.  People are literally on edge mentally, which can be seen in the language of despair, questioning, doubting, and hoping.  The constant prospect of death and how if effects the mental condition can be seen in Scott’s Last Expedition: The Journals.  Scott writes, “God help us! (numerous times) Shall we get there? Horrid element of doubt…It’s a gloomy position…A little despondent again.”  Two features of the Romantic; the sublime, and the gothic, can be seen in the Space and Exploration genre when trying to convey the extreme.  The sublime was a Romantic aspect of aesthetics.  The sublime provokes an overpowering sense of awe, walking the fine line between pleasure and pain.  This mixture of beauty and terror can be seen in Poe’s description of the Antarctic in Pym.  The character Pym observes icebergs of massive dimensions.  Francis Spufford, in I May Be Some Time, notes “Bowers is terrified.  Bowers is also profoundly happy.”  Apsley Cherry-Garrard, from The Worst Journey in the World, notes, “Now these ice-cliffs are some two hundred feet high, and I felt uncomfortable.”  The sublime can also be represented by language through the use of superlatives, which Poe doesn’t neglect to take advantage of.

            Third, the literature of Space and Exploration genre, involves labor and struggle; having to achieve or overcome in order to survive.  Elle Tracy notes, “Everybody works in Antarctica.”  In the ICE book, the accounts of the arctic explorers are plagued with struggle, chore, and difficulty.  The explorers face the difficult task of pulling three hundred pound sledges over the difficult surface of the ice.  In Kim Robinson’s Red Mars, The Crucible chapter shows the character Nadia involved in work.  She suffers from fatigue.  She states how everything is a chore.  She gives the reader a list of her tools (Robinson 105).  Another passage shows Nadia “lugging” her tools, and working with a wrench (Robinson 138).  Robyn Davidson’s Tracks, thoroughly mixes work in with the narrative.  Davidson must spend a lot of time and effort to train the camels for her journey across the desert.  It is such hard work in fact that she considers giving up.  As a literature student it was interesting to see the impact of the representation of work on the narrative.  Work is arduous, and involves effort.  Work passages in the texts served to slow the narrative down; making the reader experience a type of work in just trying to get through the passage.  A great story cannot focus too much attention on work without alienating the reader, because the story stops, or it is too dull, and difficult to get through.  It is difficult to include science fiction fantasy into the genre of Space and Exploration literature, because while it involves existing in Space, it does not depict the existence in remotely realistic or believable terms.  The absence of work helps separate fantasy from exploration.