Joanna Opaskar

Exploration Literature:

From Pure Science to Pure Fiction

            Almost anything written could be described as literature of exploration, if viewed from the proper perspective.  A writer could be exploring his or her environment, thoughts, emotions, imagination, anything.  One way to pare down the texts which qualify as “exploration literature” is to borrow from travel writing, and define the genre as an account of a visit to a particular place (whether the journey and the location are real or imagined.)  A further way to pare down the volume of material is to specify that in most cases a story of exploration should tell of a journey to an unknown or uninhabited land that a reader would likely never visit.  After defining the genre of exploration in this way, one still finds that its scope encompasses other genres within it.  Journal, memoir, science fiction, historical fiction, and cultural studies are just a few of these genres within a genre which make a cohesive study of exploration literature challenging.  One common thread running through all these genres within exploration literature is that each author brings a unique perspective of the journey to his or her writing, and has a particular purpose in mind, whether to educate, emote, or simply entertain.

            One could imagine the sub-genres within exploration literature on a continuum with pure science writing on one end and pure fiction on the other.  On the science extreme the author is most likely an explorer or scientist, writing for a scientific purpose, while on the fiction end one finds such authors as Edgar Allen Poe, writing fantastic, gothic tales of exploration.  As one moves down this continuum, the author’s perspective, purpose, and manipulation of plot change dramatically.  This essay will examine the ways in which these narrative elements shift on the science to fiction continuum within the literature of exploration.

            Many journals fall on the science end of the spectrum.  The author keeps an account of a journey or scientific expedition to preserve an historical record of events and to keep track of data.  Journals are likely to contain many dry facts and details of everyday life and investigation throughout the expedition.  For example, George W. DeLong in his journal The Voyage of the Jeannette begins one entry this way: “October 1st, Saturday. – One hundred and eleventh day, and a new month.  Called all hands as soon as the cook announced boiling water, and at 6.45 had our breakfast; one half pound of deer meat and tea…Temperature 18 degrees” (ICE 158).  Later in that day’s entry he lists traveling times: “Actually under way: 8.30 to 9.15, 9.30 to 10.20,10.30 to 11.20…” and so on (ICE 159).  These facts and more like them could contribute to calculations of distance and location, or aid in a study or the human body in intense cold with limited diet.  DeLong is not trying to tell a gripping story.  He cannot manipulate plot points or create suspense because he only learns the story of each day as it happens.  Perhaps this is the draw of reading a journal; the suspense and excitement are not in the plot itself, since the reader probably already knows what will happen, but in the knowledge that the narrator faces real, unexpected challenges as he writes.  The writer feels the suspense instead of the reader.  Perhaps the reader of journals reads on, despite knowing the end result of the quest, for the same reason that mystery readers read mysteries which reveal the guilty person at the beginning of the story.  The point of the story is not who committed the murder, but how he or she was discovered and captured.

            While journals can provide an extremely poignant and moving account of suffering and heroic deeds, they are usually not intentionally manipulated to create suspense or drive home a certain point (other than the natural prejudice of each person which would play a part in any journal).  DeLong’s journal provides emotional details, but in a matter of fact way.  For example, “The doctor resumed the cutting away of poor Ericksen’s toes this morning.  No doubt it will have to continue until half his feet are gone…” (ICE 158).  And journals can tell one more than just the words that are written.  The reader can see that times grow more difficult as the length of entries becomes shorter and shorter.  DeLong begins writing several pages each day, whereas the final entry is only two lines long: “October 30th, Sunday. – One hundred and fortieth day.  Boyd and Gortz died during the night.  Mr. Collins dying” (ICE 170).  One reads cold scientific facts, despite the sorrow and despair the writer must feel.  No other genre within exploration provides such unembellished facts, without contrivance or manipulation, for the reader to digest and interpret on his or her own than the journal.

            The memoir, like the journal, often provides many scientific details, and has a scientific purpose, but the memoir also gives the writer much more flexibility in his or her descriptions and construction of plot.  Memoirs, written in hindsight, though often borrowing from journal entries from the expedition, may appeal primarily to scientists or fiction fans, depending on the style of writing.  Memoirs also provide a broader, more objective perspective of the expedition, since the author has lived through the ordeal and had time to ponder it before collecting his thoughts and beginning to write.  Apsley Cherry-Garrard writes of his comrades that “These two men went through the Winter Journey and lived; later they went through the Polar Journey and died.  They were gold, pure, shining, unalloyed.  Words cannot express how good their companionship was” (ICE 74).  This description could not be written in a journal; it requires examination and reflection over the passage of time.  Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World provides a good example of several of these differences between the exploration sub-genres of journal and memoir.

            Cherry-Garrard includes many details of scientific value in his memoir, which also allow the reader to more easily follow the successes and failures of his and his companions’ journey to collect the eggs of the emperor penguin.  He writes, “The minimum temperature that night as taken under the sledge was –69 degrees; and as taken on the sledge was –75 degrees.  That is a hundred and seven degrees of frost” (ICE 69).   These details add verisimilitude to Cherry-Garrard’s story, but too many details could slow the plot and ultimately tire readers, so he omits many bits of data to smooth the flow of his narrative.  Also, many non-scientific readers might not understand some of that data, which he would need to explain, which would also slow down his story.  More flexibly than in the journal, the author of the memoir may sift and conform data to the style and flow of narrative he chooses.

            When attempting to create suspense in a memoir of exploration, the writer may employ typical methods from fiction writing.  He cannot contrive plot points, or manipulate them to the extent that a fiction writer could because his experiences are real, rather than invented, but there are several fiction techniques available to him.  For example, Cherry-Garrard uses foreshadowing in The Worst Journey in the World.  “We had started before the moon on purpose, but as we shall see she gave us little light.  However, we owed our escape from a very sticky death to her on one occasion” (ICE 71).

Cherry-Garrard refers to an upcoming adventure before it actually happens, to keep the reader interested, and to add the suspense of the knowledge that a dangerous accident is about to happen.  A journal writer could never do this, since he cannot predict what dangers he may discover on his trek.  Therefore, the author of a memoir has some flexibility of narrative not possible for a journal writer, but not nearly as much freedom as a writer of fiction.

Within exploration literature, cultural studies is unique in its attempt to present a story within its contemporary cultural context, while making references and connections to ideas of the present day.  Francis Spufford’s I May Be Some Time exemplifies the techniques of cultural studies in exploration writing.  His perspective is unconventional: he uses both present and past tenses to make the reader feel alternately present in the midst of the action and looking back on it from a distance.  He also interjects quotes from the journals and memoirs of those on the expedition.  “Nobody else quite feels Wilson’s relish for the situation (‘I must say I enjoyed it all from beginning to end’)” (ICE 290).  The change of tense and interjection of quotes can give a disjointed feel to the writing, but also gives it an unusual dreamlike quality, as in a dream in which the dreamer is sometimes a participant and sometimes an observer; sometimes one can see beyond a situation, objectively, and sometimes one cannot.  Reading Spufford’s work is almost like reading a synthesis of all the journals and memoirs which came from the Scott expedition, combined with an overview of the culture from which these men came.  He explains that a song the men sang on the ship “…is a patter song in waltz time.  It began as a Broadway hit of 1908, but London music halls took it up quickly.  Really you need a female voice and a cello for the full comic effect” (ICE 288).  Beyond his references to the culture of the time of the Scott expedition, Spufford makes reference to cultural ideas of today, to give the reader a closer understanding of the men of the expedition.  Of Clissold the cook he says, “Clissold, early twenties, Navy crewcut, little blond beard – who looks as if he’d be renting Kung Fu films from a video shop, if there were Kung Fu films, if there were video shops…” (ICE 306).  Spufford’s main purpose seems to be to link all of the perspectives and ideas of the expedition to each other as well as to their time, and to ours.

Spufford has a great deal of freedom in the telling of this tale.  He can pick and choose which scientific details he includes, pausing to explain them when necessary, but not letting them get in the way of the plot.  He can shift his focus from one character to another if it suits his narrative. He may not even tell the story in chronological order, linking people and events by what they have in common as opposed to where they fall on a time line of the expedition.  He is free to use many techniques of fiction writing, just as the writer of a memoir, but is far less bound by the limits of perspective and experience than the writer of a personal memoir.  However, Spufford, and others who would write about exploration in the style of cultural studies, are bound by the facts of the expedition.  He may take many liberties in his narrative style, or add many outside references and information, but ultimately he did not write the story and must remain faithful to the events as he finds them.

            Finally, the work of pure exploration fiction has the most liberties and contrivances in the plot, and the least allegiance to good science.  Here the author has the most freedom because one reads not a scientist’s account of a journey, but a writer’s impression of what that journey might be like.  In fact, the story might not even follow a scientific expedition, but might tell the tale of an adventurer, who travels to an unknown land, as does Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

            Pym has many adventures aboard a whaling ship, exploring an undiscovered island and parts of the Antarctic Ocean, simply for the purpose of the adventure itself.  Pym says, “My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes; of a life-time dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some great and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown.  Such visions or desires – for they amounted to desires – are common…” (Poe 596-7).  The tale is narrated as if it were Pym’s memoir, but of course Poe is not bound by any of the aforementioned limits of that genre, since he has invented the story from beginning to end. He only includes scientific details which are essential to the plot, and even those details are not really scientific in nature, but have more to do with sailing ships.

            Poe’s narrative style and devices reveal at once the great difference between writing for science (or at least adhering to reality) and writing fiction.  In, Pym, Poe exaggerates everything, describing the worst possible predicament, a miraculous recovery or rescue, followed by an even worse calamity.  “Having barely escaped this danger, our attention was now directed to the dreadful imminency of another…” (Poe 656).  Poe’s gothic hyperbole could not be applied to an actual memoir.  The audience would not find such an account believable, and might impatiently view the narrator as either boasting of almost comical good fortune, or wallowing in self pity and despair, as Pym seems to bounce between these two extremes.  This is not to denigrate the literary merits of Pym, but to show that in fiction writing, different rules most certainly apply.

            One may think of the literature of exploration as a genre encompassing other widely varied literary genres.  These sub-genres lie along a continuum stretching from pure scientific writing, such as a detailed record of a scientific exploration, to pure fiction, in which the author may write whatever he or she likes with no obligation to adhere to science or even reality.  Depending on the genre, and where it falls on this spectrum of science to literature, the author might have few liberties or almost limitless freedom to construct plot and develop narrative style.