Did It Mean Anything? Does It Matter?
If a tree falls in a forest...
This week I read And the Ocean Was Our Sky, a novela by Patrick Ness. Surprisingly, it confronted me with a question I find myself coming back to over and over in my life, a question I am certain to return to as I approach my window into the next world, as I wither, as I ache.
Chalk it up to my bias toward Ness’ writing prowess, but I would not be so moved by a ridiculous adaptation of Moby Dick if it had been told by anyone else.
The book begins with the line, “Call me Bathsheba,” a spoof of the famous “Call me Ishmael” which opens Herman Melville’s novel. Bathsheba is the third-in-command for a renowned captain of a militaristic hunting unit, and though her technologically and culturally advanced society revolves around the hunt, Bathsheba was not raised to be a hunter. Despite the unit’s obsessive pursuit of the legendary “devil,” Toby Wick, who supposedly kills countless of her kind, including Bathsheba’s mother, Bathsheba does not believe in the devil’s existence. She finds herself increasingly at odds with the worldviews and motives of those around her, particularly after they take a member of an enemy group as prisoner, bringing Bathsheba closer to one of their kind than ever before. She realizes they are not all bloodthirsty, nor are they all hunters—this one is merely a baker, in fact—and her unusual connection with the prisoner deepens. By the end of the tale, she finds herself subject to the truth and terror of Toby Wick after all as she faces him in a final boss battle. The scene captures the culmination of Bathsheba’s total questioning of her reality. She emerges as the only survivor, Toby Wick having killed everyone she knew and loved, including the prisoner.
I will come right out and say it: Bathsheba is a whale.
Bathsheba is a whale of the sort whose world is literally upside-down to the human world. They dive down to the “abyss” to rise out of the sea, worlds flipped. In this version of the world, the regular, right-side-up (to humans) kind of whales also exists, and they are also hunted by her intelligent, upside-down kind of whales. Their primary enemy, however, is humankind. Their two societies are permanently at war, harpooning and slaughtering each other in massive numbers while dogmatically convinced of the other’s barbarism.
Communication between the whales and the humans is limited and hostile; the man Bathsheba’s pod picks up, Demetrius, was left out as bait to warn the pod off of Toby Wick’s trail. Bathsheba understands and speaks his language better than any of the other whales in the pod, making her his primary interrogator and keeper. She keeps Demetrius alive for questioning, but ultimately finds herself defending him from harm and coming to see him as unlike what she has always believed humans to be. Bathsheba’s peers poke fun at her for being “in love” with him. Their relationship is special, though it never becomes friendly.
In the end, he is killed. In the moment of his death, Bathsheba poses a simple question. She says,
“He did not speak. His last word had been my name. The last word he heard was me speaking his own. Did this mean anything? And if it only meant something to the two of us, did that reduce it?”
***
Ness is a storyteller, which is not true of all fiction writers. He manages to craft a world, in this case one that requires a good deal of suspension of disbelief, and a tale only concerned with itself. In other words, it is sincere. It is not carried away by metaphor or (failed) attempts at subversiveness. Instead, Ness effortlessly delivers readers at a profound philosophical appeal which requires the whole story’s build-up to consider seriously with the emotional gravity it deserves.
If two individuals overcome a deep social divide despite an ongoing war between their peoples, does it change anything? What about after one or both of them dies? Does it matter? Does it matter that Bathsheba lives to tell the tale? Does it matter that the tale is told at all? We are often led to believe that sharing a story with more members of society effects societal change, but does it? Ultimately, the disappearance of Toby Wick ushers in a period of peace for Bathsheba’s kind, but by the time she tells her tale, hostility is already returning. Hostility always returns. There is always conflict. The world goes on.
Now what if you have an emotional experience or connection with someone and it does not last? Does the experience/connection matter? Even if it lasts, you die. Does that matter? Does it matter while you are alive and does it matter after you are gone? Does it matter after no one is left to remember or to tell the tale? Does the tale-telling matter? Why? How? I don’t know.
The question is not original by any means. It reframes the classic “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it even make a sound?” by asking “If a tree falls in a forest, does it matter if anyone is around to hear it make a sound?” Sort of a nihilistic line of thinking.
It also reminds me tangentially of a quote from one of my favorite YA series I read as a kid, The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare. In it, the young Will Herondale struggles against the curse a demon placed on him as a child, causing anyone who loves him to die, as he has been forced to abandon his family and push away nearly everyone he holds dear. He forces himself to act against his nature by being cruel and heartless to those he loves, and it reaches a point of utter insufferableness after he falls in love with a girl. He says to the warlock, Magnus Bane,
“I feel myself diminished, parts of me spiraling away into the darkness, that which is good and honest and true—If you hold it away from yourself long enough, do you lose it entirely? If no one cares for you at all, do you even really exist?”
Toward the end of the series, Will realizes the curse was a hoax, which makes sense as he also realizes he fooled himself into believing no one loved him. In truth, he was always loved. If the curse had been real, everyone around him would have already perished long ago, including his family and the girl he loves. It is interesting he poses the question (albeit he is mostly talking to himself) to Magnus Bane, an immortal who has outlived all of his family and the loves of his life many times over.
I feel like this is the natural progression of the question Bathsheba poses in And the Ocean Was Our Sky. For Magnus, does it matter he is alive if he outlives the ones he loves? If no one is left to love him, does he matter? Does he exist? Do we have to matter to exist? What does it mean to matter? Does it matter even that he is loved? Why do we love if it does not matter?
***
I have been asking myself this question lately. Beating myself with it, more like. I am not so much a nihilist as an absurdist of the I-read-The-Stranger-by-Albert-Camus-at-age-thirteen-and-it-named-something-I-had-always-known variety; I believe we apply meaning to our ultimately meaningless lives and that matters because, well, we are alive. Might as well. Given that background, the existential aspect of the questions I describe in this post are not tying me up in knots. Rather, I am drawn by the desire to save myself the emotional damage of loving something futile and ephemeral. I can rip apart my longing: If I cannot have him forever, I cannot have him at all! I will not! I am captain of my ship!
I am reminded of lyrics from one of my favorite albums of all time, Selfish Machines by Pierce the Veil. This comes from the song “Disasterology”:
“Can we create something beautiful and destroy it?
Nobody knows I dream about it
This is my imaginationIf every living thing dies alone
What am I doing here?
If every living thing dies alone
What am I doing here?Fuck it!
If it’s the end of the world
If it’s the end of the world
You and me should spend the rest of it in love!”
There is no conclusion.