Boxing the Compass - Essay Example

Bible Literature This essay examines the engagement of the novella, Mourning into Joy: Boxing the Compass, ed by Sandy Florian with chapter sixto nine of Genesis in the Bible. It will end by relating the story of flood in Genesis to the wrestling of Florian with the flood. In Boxing the Compass, Florian uses English language to introduce an idiom different from what she has given before. Told in third-person, the story revolves around a woman character who takes up a mourning trip. This story is narrated from the time when the woman wakes up, dresses up, goes out to buy bread and then returns to prepare tea followed by some writing and then a shower. She then leaves to board a train and, after alighting, rides to the site where her mother was buried. In the novella, the simple pilgrimage is presented sequentially in a manner where the memory of the main character with regards to interplay of her family, her meditation of space and time and her vision of the rising of the temperature of the Earth and the sea level bring about the notion of boxing the compass. This refers to respective clockwise naming of all the points present in a compass. In the sixth to ninth chapters of Genesis, the Bible gives an account of the ark of Noah. In this religious story, Noah is portrayed as a man who lived a righteous life unlike the other people of the world who had turned to wickedness. God saw this wickedness among men which made them forget Him and disregard His Commandments. The story tells of how God became angry as a result and decided that He would wipe mankind off the face of the Earth through heavy rains. Nonetheless, God remembered of Noah, the only man He considered righteous, and decided that He would save him. God instructed him to build an ark and preach to the people. Whoever believed him was to enter into the ark to be saved from the deluge. In addition, Noah had to bring into the ark all living creatures in pairs of opposite sex, including seven pairs of clean animals together with what they were to feed on. He was also to take in his family. Noah abided by all instructions given by God. After Noah had entered the ark, God opened up the heavens and there was a heavy downpour of rain that lasted forty days and forty nights. This caused the whole Earth to flood, with every high point submerged in water, wiping everything off. It was only the living creatures in the ark with Noah that were saved. Thereafter, Noah and all in the ark had to wait for 150 days for the Earth to dry up. It was after a whole year that God gave instructions to Noah to come out of the ark. Immediately, he built an altar, offered burnt offering of ocean animals and worshipped Him. God gave His promise to Noah that He would never again destroy the Earth through floods. The rainbow appearing in the clouds was to remind of this covenant He entered with Noah. From the novella by Florian, this Bible story is the theme upon which the main character sought for salvation. The writer mourns of environmental degradation that has been brought about by human activities. The Bible story recounts that mankind was to be swept off the face of the Earth due to wickedness as people adorned corrupt hearts and forgot the existence of God. Boxing the Compass elicits a debate on whether men deserve to be referred to as Homo sapiens, which translated from Latin means wise man. Man, referred to as Homo sapiens, is known for finite existence just as is the case with all other living creatures. It is only the Biblical account of the floods where the wiping off of man from the Earth is given. No envisioning or divine favor has been known to attempt sending man to extinction. It is only God in the Bible who attempted to do so, but could not because of the mercy He has. Climate change has been implicitly brought out as the promise to wipe man off the face of the Earth. Just like the wickedness in the story of Noah, climate change as depicted by global warming is a consequence of the deeds of men. Similarly, just as the people in the story of Noah’s ark had the ability to reverse the tragic eventuality of their deeds, the today men have the ability to change their destiny. Chery records a 2010 hypothesis by an Australian microbiologist, Frank Fenner, that within a century, Homo sapiens would be extinct (1). This was attributed to the looming doom occasioned by the degradation of the climate and a consequent wrath of nature. The author of Boxing the Compass considers change in climate as an occurrence in language. The extinction of fish in the oceans, just like the extinction of the many other species of animals, causes their absence which cannot be reversed. This is a worse scenario than it was in the story of Noah. In the story, Noah offered to God burnt offering from ocean animals when he got out of the ark, an indication that there were animals that were not in the ark that were spared from the deluge. However, Boxing the Compass presents a scenario where the whole population of sea life would go extinct. It therefore raises the question of what would be of the living things that occur on dry land. These living things are likened to language where words, just as their referents, disappear. In a similar manner that referents to living things disappear and word fade, the mourning for climate change in the Earth today will follow suit, which risks permanently wiping off mankind from the Earth. Compared to Boxing the Campus, the narration begins at 00 through to 348045’ where Florian narrates that “This box is empty” (17). Through this sea navigation metaphor, the writer employs Boxing the Campus to find the memory and the mysterious way in which the mind linearly keeps and retrieves memory. With the sinking of the woman character into the tab, she is thrown into a dream trickling into the deep waters of the sea. According to Lydick, the author compares the depths of the sea with the heights of Himalayas (19). The woman giving orders throughout the story, “come here, come now,” is an indication of the urgency with which humans should tackle the issue of climate degradation. This is similar to the call from Noah for which the people were supposed to respond to with immediacy following the looming deluge that was to end the world. The ‘here and now’ conception by Boxing the Compass should be the endeavor of every human as all humans face unavoidable and irreversible loss from climate change. Just like the story of the woman who lost her mother and had to make a commemoration journey every year, so has humanity lost animal species and habitable places. The memories will take time to disappear and the mourning will continue for eternity as long as destruction and loss continues. The grief of the daughter for her mother interrelates to her mediation on sea life facing degradation as a result of climate change. Whereas Boxing the Compass and the story of Noah approach the truth differently, they share a common eventuality. The author of Boxing the Compass blends fiction and science to pass across the theme of her work. Seeking to understand the functioning of the memory in human mind, she notes the depth of human memory, likened to the depth of the seas where the woman character in the story finds herself in her dream. She observes that taking an exploration of the memory is similar to exploring the historical account of the Earth and the associated fragile evolution. As documented by Florian, it is known “that 200 million years ago, the super continent, Pangaea, broke into parts that drifted across the Earth and opened the mouths of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans” (18). Furthermore, the author undertakes a study of the scientific belief on the creation of the Earth contradicting the Biblical account in the creation story which goes on break with the floods in Noah’s story and begins anew after the floods. The author likens the placing of the elements in the Earth to the elements in the memory through the declaration of the Plate Tectonic Theory which argues for the interior of the Earth comprising of two main layers – crust and mantle lithosphere and molten magma asthenosphere. Florian further explains that lithosphere is made up of eight major plates riding on the asthenosphere and moving relative to one another at a divergent, convergent or transform boundary (Florian 23). Florian likens this complexity to that of the memory together with that of the mind responsible for storage and retrieval of information. According to Lydick, this exploration of the nature and scope of the memory, combined with the mourning daughter and ocean intimations, points out to the message of the author on critical fragility of the life-sustaining Earth (21). This prepares readers for the inevitable mourning narrated in Boxing the Compass. From the Biblical story of Noah in the book of Genesis, an account of the covenant that God and Noah entered into for the former not to destroy the Earth with water ever again, and the rainbow serving as a reminder of this, is given. In the same way, the author documents unavoidable reminders to the looming catastrophe which threaten to wipe off human beings and all other living things from the Earth. This is already well signaled considering the continued disappearance of animal species and ocean life together with their referents. In the same way people were to search themselves during the times of Noah, contemporary men should search themselves as demanded by the mother Earth. It is this self-searching that Florian blends into the woman’s real emotional life. This is analyzed by Boxing the Compass so as to compare memory to self experience, to be external to self and to know oneself. This novella depicts climatic degradation as an irreversible occurrence, but hope for restoration exists. Contrary to the lost life of a mother which will never come back but remains in the memory of the woman, whatever has remained of the extinct species that are irreversibly gone could be regained and preserved. Noah was told by God that whoever accepted the call and changed their ways towards God would be saved. Similarly, by searching oneself, the divergent boundary, resembling two people who walk towards the opposite sides ending up separated, could be reversed (Florian 23). The reverse situation is likened to “the transform boundary” resembling “this woman walking toward you right now” (Florian 23). The navigation of readers through the intricate story of history, self and other is presented as a clockwise interpretation of the 32 compass points where the memory navigates. Usually, sailors use the compass when on sea voyage. Just as God directed Noah in the ark through the floods, so does the compass act as a critical guide in the present situation. It serves as the direction of the reader borne from evaluating oneself and others, tracing the origin of events and forecasting possible eventuality of their deeds. The looming irreversibility of the present day climatic degradation could be informed by the flood story. After God called Noah out of the ark, he used a dove to check on the habitability of the Earth. The first dove to be sent came back, an indication that it lacked somewhere to perch. The second dove, sent after some time, did not return, an indication that it found somewhere to rest. This motif is captured by the author of Boxing the Compass as the only remaining hope, which, unfortunately, is long gone. Florian grieves that all she sees “is the face of the dove dead on the sidewalk, like the face of a mother all out of true, like the shape of a brother buried in a box” (33). Like the brother and mother, the dove is gone for good but no one cares other than the woman whose memories and those of the extinct species resemble. Even though humans share minimally the memory of a person they have in common, their memory is united on the dove. This dove is engraved in the memory of all human beings as opposed to that of the brother and mother of the woman who matter only to her and maybe their familiar close relatives. Therefore, in the account of Boxing the Compass, climate change is a uniting factor and a battle that calls for cooperation for a win. The emotional navigation of the woman through the waters of the deep seas sheds light on her position in the lineage of her family. This sends an alarm to all men to gain comprehension of their position in the ecosystem and their conservation role. This is where Noah was when he appreciated his place as the savior of the animal species of the world, his friends and his family who heeded to the call of God and worked with him. It is the same kind of cooperation that is required in the effort to saving the Earth from global warming and the subsequent climate change which threatens to wipe off the Earth and all its contents. Florian does not choose the path of nostalgia but presents solutions through the woman she uses in the story through the sweetness retrieved from both the past and future that is to serve the current purpose. Works Cited Cheryl, Jones. “Frank Fenner sees no hope for humans.” The Australian, June 16, 2010 . Florian, Sandy. Mourning into Joy: Boxing the Compass, referred here as “Boxing the Compass. Las Cruces, NM:Noemi Press, 2013. Print. Lydick, Kelly. Swirling Memory, Magnetic Force: A Review of Sandy Florians Boxing the Compass. Las Cruces, NM:Noemi Press, 2013.Print. Read More