Comparison
of the treatment of the sea in Diving
into the Wreck
by Rich and The
Sea is History
by Walcott.
INTRODUCTION
Derek
Walcott
is a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. Besides having won the Nobel
Prize in Literature, he has won numerous literary awards over the
course of his career. Methodism and spirituality have played a
significant role from the beginning in Walcott's work. He commented,
"I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I
have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation”.
Adrienne
Rich
was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was credited with
brining the oppression of women into the poetic discourse. Rich’s
work has explored issues of identity, sexuality and politics; her
formally ambitious poetics have reflected her continued search for
social justice, her role in the anti-war movement, and her radical
feminism. Utilizing speech cadences, enjambment and irregular line
and stanza lengths, Rich’s open forms have sought to include
ostensibly “non-poetic” language into poetry.
SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA IN
LITERATURE
Water
is a universal symbol of change and is often present at turning
points in a story. Since water is often a sign of life, many times
water represents life. Water can also be up into two categories:
fresh water and bad/polluted water. Fresh water can represent good
health, and bad water symbolizes bad health. Water can also mean
purity and cleansing. It also represents thirst,
which can be interpreted as a thirst for something specific, such as
knowledge or enlightenment.
The
ocean is
a sign of power and strength, dominating all other symbols of
water--due to its immensity. All life was ocean-born and life still
exists in the ocean; therefore the ocean represents life. Also, the
ocean represents mystery. The ocean is known for being unpredictable
and uncontrollable, hard to navigate in time of storm and sometimes
known for being beautifully calm. Sometimes, the ocean is referred to
as being a tear of God or the sorrow; a place where you leave your
bad memories and sadness. The ocean is also known to symbolize hope,
truth, and in some cases, mystery and magic. The ocean's salt can
also symbolize being well grounded, or stabilized.
The
sea is a wonderful and powerful image that often appears in dreams.
Water is linked with the feminine and in a dream may represent the
feminine aspect of one's personality. The sea figures predominantly
in many creation stories as the bearer of all life. It is stormy,
chaotic, and life-giving. Water often symbolizes the unconscious or
the soul. Look to see if it is calm or what might be lurking under
the surface.
The
ocean may contain what one perceives as danger, such as lurking
monsters, sharks or whales, storms, or tidal waves. These "dangers"
may represent powerful and unpredictable feelings, a repressed aspect
of one's personality, or an issue dwelling under the surface. The
seas figure predominantly in creation myths as the bearer of all
life.
The
poet Walt Whitman, uses the sea as a metaphor for immortality in a
cluster of nine poems which are part of his 1881 Leaves
of Grass.
In context he uses a ship as a metaphor for man’s passage through
life beginning with birth and ending with death. Henry Thoreau
used the sea as a metaphor for the enrichment of man’s mind and the
limitlessness of his abilities. Another significance in the use
of the sea as a metaphor for the voyage through personal growth, like
we saw with Whitman, is the insight that it provides the reader about
the writer.
COMPARISON OF THE TREATMENT OF
SEA IN RICH'S AND WALCOTT'S POEMS
The
poem entitled “The Sea is History”
connects Walcott’s present environment to its initial condition by
situating the Caribbean’s genesis in the middle passage, describing
the creation of the New World as imagined by European colonists, and
chronicling the islands’ fight for independence. The interrogative
beginning, “Where are your monuments, your battles, your martyrs? /
Where is your tribal memory?” immediately draws our attention to
the lack of
these things – items that typically compose a cultural history. The
answer, “Sirs, / in that grey vault. The sea. The sea / has locked
them up. The sea is History” introduces an element of forlornness,
especially with the word “sea” repeated four times.
Several
historians have felt the need to defend the sea from the accusation
that it is “history-less,” claiming that the best defense
comes from poet Derek Walcott, in his poem “The Sea is History”:
Maeve Tynan examines this view of the history-filled sea as “medium
for the passage operates as an interstitial site that both conjoins
and separates colonizer and colonized.” She sees the trope of
the voyage encapsulating “the uprooting effect of Imperialism”
particularly in the poetry of Derek Walcott. As she puts
it, “Walcott’s Odyssean travellers opt to voyage
through history, a dynamic quest into the future that repudiates the
past and grounds his poetics in the here and now.” Tom
Leskiw’s paper also addresses the topic of untold history, by
examining the mutualism between humans and sea creatures, and
the ways in which natural and human histories have intertwined.
Noting that seas have been a “barrier to travel since time
immemorial and crossing them has often entailed the crossing of a
frontier,” his essay examines how Polynesian mariners’ “intimacy
with the sea” gave them the ability to use “subtle clues for
navigation,” clues provided by not only the colour, taste and
patterns of the sea but by fish, plants and seabirds as well.
It
is important to note Walcott's
acknowledgement of the sea as an entity, an element in history.
Walcott asks of the peoples' "monuments, battles, and martyrs,
tribal memories", to which the response lies "in the sea".
But there is a profound biblical allusion to the historical
significance entailed. From chaos emerged light, like "the
lantern of a caravel, and that was Genesis". With these words,
the poet is referring to the many children that were birthed
overseas, amidst the struggle of sailing between the islands in
flight from oppression. Then as soon as they are born, the children
face "Exodus", "the packed cries, the shit, the
moaning", an exile from a peaceful life, from their own
homeland. Walcott is giving a perspective and an ethnic identity to
the Caribbean collective through the description of the sea as
personified by Biblical allusion.
As
he compares slavery to “Babylonian bondage” and describes the
deaths of men and women aboard slave ships, he explains that these
tragedies only caused the ocean to “turn blank pages / looking for
History”. These horrific events that are “locked
in the sea” are the antithesis of the great monuments and
triumphant battles described in the introduction to the poem. The
irony present in the references to biblical stories of creation and
redemption reminds us that the Caribbean’s history will never be
one of triumph or deliverance but instead one of anguish and
struggle.
Within
the declaration, “the sea is History,” also exists a dramatic pun
on the word, “history.” One could interpret this phrase as the
sea holding the answers to history, or “the sea is History” could
be interpreted colloquially as, “the
sea is gone.” The former meaning provides some hope in recovering
history, but the latter is completely despondent. It is clear that
Walcott intended this double meaning, for the search for history
spans the entirety of the poem and at one point a real feeling of
hopelessness occurs as he writes, “and that was Lamentations/ that
was just Lamentations,/ it was not history”.
The final stanza of “The Sea Is
History” Here, the mention of the “salt chuckle of rocks”
returns a sense of ease to the poem as a whole, and the final
line, “of History, really beginning,” also possesses a hopeful
tone. History begins at the end of the poem, yet the images here of
the sea are reminiscent of the lines, “The sea / has locked them
up. The sea is History.”
For Walcott, the sea is a
reference to the change that comes with the passage of time. The sea
is a symbol of those portions of the African history that are unknown
and hidden from the human eyes. The sea envelops in itself the events
and happenings of the African history that have become taboo and are
no longer discussed by people, but are rather repressed in the
'depths of the sea' of consciousness; “The sea/has locked them up.”
The “Genesis” or the beginning
of the crucial part of African history was when the colonizers
traveled by way of sea towards Africa and brought with them a tide of
change. The sea acted as a bridge to connect the colonizers with the
African indigenous people. The “Exodus” came when the
colonization resulted in “soldered” bones of the natives and
their “packed cries”. The sea, then, is as vast and deep as
history and contains in it the cruelties and horrors of the past. The
sea is the witness to the arriving colonizers and the shipping of the
natives to America and Europe for slavery. Walcott describes the
colonizers in the poem as “the men with eyes as heavy as anchors”
and describes that they were like the rabid jaws “of the tidal wave
swallowing Port Royal”. Throughout the poem Walcott uses nautical
terms to describe the incidents that have occurred throughout the
African history.
But where is your Renaissance?
Sir, it is locked in them sea
sands
out there past the reef's moiling
shelf
where the men-o'-war floated down;
(33-36)
The sea has locked many things in
its enormous belly. It not only contains the secrets, the horrors and
the tales of the natives, but also guards the wealth of rare jewels
and marine life. Walcott highlights the enormity and majesty of the
sea. The ocean is presented as magnanimous and of immeasurable depth.
The sea is the place where the history of the Caribbean people is
often located. The slaves and servants were brought to other lands by
the sea route, they died on the sea and the sea-bed became their
grave, the colonials traveled by sea as well. All these are an
important part of the history, and the sea by default becomes the
main chapter of the history and cannot be separated from it. The sea
has witnessed many things and is therefore a great vault of all that
has happened across it.
History
and the sea have a very intimate relationship as they both are always
moving and changing and are virtually uncontrollable. Walcott uses an
interesting combination of strong visual imagery and historical
references. He has used the flow of the water to describe the flow of
time. His personification of the sea effectively demonstrates it's
and history’s, power and control. The sea can “lock them up,”
it can cause drowning, sinking, struggles; But it can dry up too –
even the sea, despite its undeniable power, has its weaknesses.
“Diving
into the Wreck” is Adrienne Rich's most celebrated poem that is
often called as the epic of modern times. The poet in this poem gives
a description of the sea and her dive into the sea, the various
things observed and particular experiences underwent are all
beautifully narrated. The poem is adventurous and descriptive of the
experience of diving into the sea in order to search for a wreck. As
the seawater is deep and mysterious, so are the meanings of the poem.
The poem is representative of Rich's feminist ideals and the changing
conditions of America. Rich is the diver that wishes to observe the
damage done to the female race, and the wreck of their treasures.
Although
it is not named, the Atlantic Ocean is probably the sea that houses
the wreck that the speaker of the poem explores. The
sea represents uncovered female history. The
image of the sea is a metaphor of life as sea is full of wreckages;
the world too is full of ruins. One glance around will bring back
countless pictures of destruction. Diving
into the Wreck provides
the angle of perception about the wreck from both the male and the
female side. Deborah
Pope in finding the meaning of the wreck states that the wreck
represents the battered hulk of sexual definitions of the past, which
Rich, as an underwater explorer, must search for evidence of what can
be salvaged.
The
diver's act of diving into the sea is like undertaking a voyage into
a new territory. Rich's poetry continually testifies to her need to
work out possible modes of human existence verbally, to achieve
imaginatively what cannot yet be achieved in actual relationships.
The
poem chronicles one woman’s quest for discovery as she journeys
alone to seek the truth of “omitted” and “misrepresented”
ideas. Adrienne Rich enables the reader to understand the
journey that the speaker undertakes as one of not only
self-discovery, but also as a mission to understand the universality
of humanity.
The
body of water isn't always mentioned directly in the poem, but it's
definitely ever-present. The ocean is huge, deeply powerful, magical
and somewhat frightening. It swallowed the ship and it surrounds the
diver. It's about as wild and as natural as possible. Line 32 is
where the ocean is mentioned directly. The ocean hits the diver as a
surprise, as the diver cannot see as she moves down the ladder to
descend into the water. This surprise makes the ocean seem
frightening, as it harbours unknown, unseen entities.
And
there is no one
to
tell me when the ocean
will
begin. (31-33)
As
the poem progresses, the
diver is learning to move underwater, to get used to the feeling of
actually being "inside" the ocean. The ocean is completely
in control though, and the diver cannot fight it or use his or her
power. Rich calls the ocean as a 'deep element' in which the diver
has to learn to adapt: “you breathe differently down here.” The
speaker describes a log as being "water-eaten." It seems
like an ordinary thing to say, but it gives an image of the ocean as
a kind of animal. It gnaws and chews and slowly devours all the human
things that fall into it. It has a slow, inescapable power that makes
it a scary force in this poem.
The
poem narrates the speaker’s quest as she explores a sunken ship to
discover the cause of the disaster and to salvage whatever treasures
remain. The sea is a traditional literary symbol of the unconscious.
To dive is to probe beneath the surface for hidden meanings, to learn
about one’s submerged desires and emotions. In this poem, the diver
is exploring a wreck—a ship that has failed to
survive.
The
poem is an extended metaphor in which the dive comes to signify the
diver’s quest for knowledge and power. Her descent into the primal
depths of the sea of life, of consciousness, transforms her: She
becomes a creature of a different world. The "awkward mask"
and crippling flippers are inappropriate for the land-based world but
essential for the underwater journey. She apparently has become the
drowned vessel as well, the boat and its figurehead:
whose
drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose
breasts still bear the stress
whose
silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely
inside barrels. (80-83)
By delving
into the mystery, looking beneath the surface, the diver learns the
secret of her own submerged power. The diver is not only the boat and
its cargo, a figurehead, an observer, an explorer. She/he is also a
participant in the disaster: "we are the half-destroyed
instruments/ that once held to a course."
The
theme of descent and return is a traditional one in Western
literature and
this is employed by Adrienne Rich in a modern setting. Perhaps the
diver represents all humans, submerging into the depths of personal
histories to find out who they really are. In 1971, Rich wrote an
essay entitled "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision."
In the article, she wrote about an awakening of women’s
consciousness, their "drive to self-knowledge." She wrote,
"language has trapped as well as liberated us." She urged
women to reexamine their history, to learn "to see—and
therefore live—afresh."
If
the history books do not tell women’s stories, they must search the
past (dive into the ocean) and find the evidence so that they can
retell the old stories. The
journey to discover one’s identity is like a dive to discover a
shipwreck, dangerous, mysterious but fascinating. So many threats
await down the deep level of the sea, yet the charming adventure
raises the irresistible invitation into the unknown world where the
woman may find her hidden self. She is afraid, she is uncertain about
what lays ahead, therefore she prepares and arm herself, with
knowledge, with weapons, with the brave expectation of new, great
change she may go through. The wreck she is diving into is the
patriarchal society where she is living in, her community, her
family, her belief.
As
noted, Rich stated that this poem “is” an experience rather than
about an experience, is the idea of searching our memories, our past.
And that is a journey that can only be done alone, subjectively. So
using the symbolism of the dive, and the shipwreck, it appears that
she wants to go back and figure out what happened in her life (her
journey, or course) that left her damaged. To do this, she has
to dive deep in the water, which is not pretty but black and dark,
symbolizing that the journey is fearful. Rather than jump right into
the water as some divers do, she has to use the ladder to slowly
descend into the water, indicating hesitancy. The repetition of the
phrase "I go down" in the third stanza show that this is a
slow and gradual process. So as she retreats into her memories, she’s
not exactly sure at what point she’ll find clues or meaning. Also,
because the water creates buoyancy, she really has to hold onto it to
“go down”, so it’s not an easy task to go into the unknown (the
sea of memories).
“Diving
into the Wreck” contains Rich's fullest, most dramatic reference to
the sea. In this poem, the speaker gives up her old notions of power
because they don't seem to apply where the sea is the controlling
element. Attempts to gain power over the sea appear useless to Rich's
diver, who has to move differently in the sea and adjust. The sea
provides a valuable context for a developing consciousness. In one of
her poems, Rich uses the sea chiefly as a metaphor of change. The
ocean represents all that is vast and unknowable. In another poem,
she finds the sea lacking as an instructor about how to live one's
life. Ultimately, for Rich, the sea is its own entity, often violent
and mainly separate from human concerns. The setting of the ocean can
be seen as a symbolic metaphor for the real world and society as a
whole.
CONCLUSION
In
conclusion, the sea represents the unknown, the hidden and the secret
for both Walcott and Rich. The sea is powerful and cannot be
controlled by mere humans. It is deep and full of remnants of history
such as the traces of the colonizers crossing it to get to Africa, or
the painful past of the women of the world. Going into the sea
results in some sort of discovery, or unlocking of mysteries;
ultimately, the sea is a symbol of the past lives of humans.
REFERENCES
- http://symbolism.wikia.com/wiki/Water
- http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/nature/nlgonz.htm
- http://www.academia.edu/1145933/The_Multitudinous_Seas_Matter_and_Metaphor
- Tung C. , J (2006). “The Sea Is History”: Reading Derek Walcott Through a Melancholic Lens. Massachusetts.
- http://www.shmoop.com/diving-into-wreck/ocean-symbol.html
- http://studies.tripod.com/ENGL2328/diving_into_the_wreck.htm
- Gidmark,
B. J. (2001). Encyclopedia
of American Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes. Greenwood
Press, Westport. p.375.
-Credit Moneeza Rafiq
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