Marc Schooley

3/4/04

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.                    Introduction             3

II.                  Against the Wind        3

III.                The Nature of Pym         4

IV.               Meaning on Ice             7

We got Mother Nature on the run, in the 1970’s…

                                                            Neil Young

INTRODUCTION

If Nature is truly our mother, someone should file a grievance with the Child Protective Services.  Insulated as I am relatively near the geographic center of North America, some time passed before I connected shelter from nature with increased estimated life expectancy…even Neanderthals sought out caves.  Furthermore, increased non-natural activity (factories, synthetic medicine, economics, etc.) produces an apparent non-natural result, extended life span coupled with an augmented quality of life.  Civilization’s ongoing fascination with the wild, a virtual Stockholm Syndrome, presents an engaging irony, one echoed throughout the pages of exploration literature.  This midterm will briefly consider instances of western civilization’s quixotic portrayal of Nature and examine the concept of Philosophic Naturalism against the backdrop of Nature in exploration literature.

AGAINST THE WIND

Most organized state-based civilizations strive to establish a permanent identity against the ravages of time as illustrated by monuments, art, literature, and other disciplines.  The battle is waged against the Second Law of Thermodynamics and against just plain old heat, wind, and rain. Though the score throughout human history is now Nature 262-Humanity 0, with a few contests currently in progress, civilization romanticizes the exploration of this indomitable foe.

Not to over-generalize, a myriad of excellent and downright true reasons exist for humans to explore and to record the exploits thereof.  This essay will not attempt to reduce all possibilities to its thesis; however, I maintain that Nature is a 100% successful, well-oiled killing machine and civilization seeks, if only subconsciously, to buffer the despair created by the knowledge of its own fate…it is returning, at some point, to the wilderness from which it sprang.

Hence, Arthur Gordon Pym recalls romanticizing an adventure he knew in his breast to be a foolhardy venture:

I can hardly tell what possessed me, but the words were no sooner out of his mouth than I felt a thrill of the greatest excitement             and pleasure, and thought his mad idea one of the most delightful and most reasonable things in the world.

THE NATURE OF PYM

The following litany incorporates the purest form of isogesis; however, Poe’s text reveals itself as a willing accomplice, systematically blaming Pym’s misfortunes on men instead of natural forces.  In fact, for a novel based on exploration into inhabitable climes, Nature is remarkably benign, arguably offering some manner of metaphysical salvation at the conclusion of the novel.  Nevertheless, this essay makes no claim that Poe intended any of the subsequent analysis when writing The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

As alluded to above, Pym ventures out on the Ariel into the grasp of the Atlantic, forsaking civilization and the comfort of his own bed in the process.  Yet, the calamity which befell the Ariel is not caused by waves, fog, storms, or even sea monsters.  Poe attributes the accident primarily to drunkenness on the part of Augustus, and to a lesser extent another vessel manned by an unscrupulous captain who would have left Pym to his death.

Evidently Poe anticipates the reader to logically conclude such a harrowing experience would assist in abating Pym's desire:

It might be supposed that a catastrophe such as I have just related would have effectually cooled my incipient passion for the sea.  On the contrary,             I never experienced a more ardent longing for the wild adventures...My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some gray and desolate rock; in an ocean unapproachable and unknown

Lured by the romance of exploration, Pym secretes himself aboard the Grampus and is nearly entombed alive within a hidden portion of the hold.  As the novel begins to reveal itself, Pym learns that a mutiny, not acts of Nature, has kept Augustus from rescuing him.  Thus, Pym eventually emerges from the hold, not to battle Nature, but to confront a decidedly human peril. 

Having quelled the uprising, Poe finally allows Nature to confront Pym and his cohorts; however, the reader can intuitively sense that Pym is only at the mercy of Nature because of the mutiny.  Had humans not disrupted the normal flow of events, the brig would not be in danger from the storm.  Likewise, the sustenance privations soon to be endured by Pym are directly a result of the mutineers’ actions.  During this interlude, the gothic reemerges, but again in human form, once in the form of a ghost ship, once in the act of cannibalism.

Having been rescued, Pym’s adventure leads him to undiscovered lands in the far south.  At last, it seems Pym will encounter Nature in all its primeval starkness.  Nonetheless, in keeping with Poe’s line, nature is again hospitable and pleasant.  It is once again the humans who are evil and threatening.  Ironically, these natives must force nature to kill, engineering a landslide that buries the explorers.  Pym, on the other hand, is saved, not of his own accord, but by virtue of the crevasse he is exploring, as if nature enveloped him and protected him from the evils that men perpetrate against each other.

At long last, Pym encounters the sublime.  Nature is again benign, assuming the form of a messianic figure, the passage itself cloaked in religious undertones.  Thus, I detect in Pym an undercurrent suggesting that all civilization needs to master Nature is to master itself.  In my opinion, over and against the outcry of the scientific community, this theme does not harmonize with our experience of Nature.  And where actual experience does not conform in some degree with one's worldview, futility of thought abounds.

Is this a valid inference from the text of Pym?  Not particularly, however, the generalization does clearly illustrate notions preconceived by civilization and foisted upon Nature.  The literature of polar exploration revisits this recrudescent theme.   

MEANING ON ICE

History shows again and again, how Nature points out the folly of men.

                                                                                    Blue Oyster Cult…

The dominant secular philosophy of our age is Naturalism.  Philosophic Naturalism affirms many tenets, but can be briefly summarized by declaring that the ultimate “truth” underlying the universe is matter.  This belief is prevalent and widespread within the industrialized world and rarely questioned by secularists.

Interestingly enough, Naturalism is not seemingly able to bear the weight society attempts to place on it when confronted with Nature in its most raw form.  An anonymous midterm submitted in 2002, entitled, "The Sublime in Exploration Literature" argued:

Poe's accounts of the sublime are exciting and awesome, but they ring false when compared to the non-fiction accounts.  The journals describe fleeting moments of the sublime amidst unbearable drudgery and pain, while Poe describes awesome event after awesome event in meticulous eetail.  The impact of such moments is diminished when they are placed among other riveting, typical adventure tales, rather than the realistic descriptions of starvation and frostbite in the non-fiction exploration accounts.

In much the same manner, philosophies hatched within the confines of civilization are not always equipped for survival in the wild.  In short, just as civilization produces romantic images not indicative of actual exploration, purported non-fictions produced in the academies may not square with the harsh reality of Nature herself.

Philosophic Naturalism suffers from a lack of meaning at its core.  The conflict this evokes with polar exploration is readily apparent: explorers to a man believe their avocation has meaning.  What importance can really be attached to reaching the pole first if matter will ultimately not remember it?  Yet, we know that both camps engaged in the race believed real meaning was at stake.  When confronted with the dilemma, the Naturalist cannot maintain both poles; he must abandon his worldview in order to ascribe meaning to his achievement, or else sacrifice the meaning of his achievement to maintain his philosophy (be he a Naturalist, of course).

"I May Be Some Time," by Francis Spufford, succinctly encapsulates this dilemma:

Out here...it can begin to seem that an obscure message is being delivered.  [it may seem obscure to those steeped in civilized culture] Scott's ordinary feeling that an impersonal fate obstructs him germinates into something else, his sense that the mammoth indifference of the physical universe to his efforts shades further over with each successive mishap into a nudging conviction that there is a purpose at work.

This is not simply the sublime creating feelings of awe in a Naturalist.  It is what Francis Schaeffer would later term "the line of despair," a moment when worldview and experience contradict each other.  Spufford continues:

It's a perception common on the expedition.  You can't not try to read the great document of Antarctica for meaning.  In these surroundings the pattern-seeking habit of the human mind wakes a vague instinct of faith even in the most secular and scientific of Scott's men.  As Debenham will put it years later, 'one cannot live for a while amidst the vast, lonely and yet magnificent scenery of the Antarctic...without feeling dwarfed by the scale of everything one sees and in the hands of a Providence or a Power.  An intelligent man cannot really be satisfied with saying it is a matter of Chance, or if he does he really means that there is Something behind the Chance.'

Perhaps this is a small portion of the allure of the romance of failure.  In failure, Nature strips away our facade of self-sufficiency, leaving our egos bruised, but with a clearer impression of our fraility and ourselves.  Surely, we flatter ourselves into believing we are the masters of the universe. 

Apsley Cherry-Garrard put it best:

In civilization men are taken at their own valuation because there are so many ways of concealment, and there is so little time, perhaps even so little understanding.  Not so down south.