Darwinism, Superstition, Rockem Sockem Robots, and Masochism

No matter what we say our life goals are one of the unsaid missions of almost every human being is survival.  Sitting in a classroom or working in an office cubical, that doesn’t seem too difficult – but its stories like In the Heart of the Sea that show us real survival situations and what it can take to get through them.  For example, in a Criminal Minds episode called ‘North Mammon’, three high school girl soccer players are kidnapped and thrown into an unknown location together where they’re told only two of them will be allowed to live.  The three girls say they won’t choose, that since they’re friends they’ll hold out and refuse to kill each other, hoping someone will find them.  After a few days though, they realized there’s no way they’ll be found.  One of the girls is already ill, so the bossiest of the three tells the nicest they have to kill her for her own good so she’ll stop suffering and they can get home to their families.  In the end, the sick girl bashes her bossy ‘friend’ in the back of the head before she can kill her.  The weakest of the group somehow finds the strength to save her own life at any cost.  In my opinion, survival of the fittest just got its ass kicked.

When it comes to survival, I think the only thing standing in your way is yourself.  Morals are a concept of human creation.  We cling to them because they make us feel superior to animals and other ‘less civilized’ humans across the globe.  In class we discussed whether morals should be absolute and worth dying for.  Personally, I feel that I don’t have a single belief or moral in my body that would stop me from trying to stay alive in any way I could.  Morals are supposed to show us a way to live, not a way to keep us from surviving.  I’ve always seen morals as a way to guide our actions, like a compass meant to keep us from doing bad things like murdering people or cheating on our significant others.

Does this mean I think I would give in and be a cannibal if I was in a situation like the men on the Essex?  Hell no I would not.  I know we all say we wouldn’t know what we would or wouldn’t do until we were in that situation, but I know myself well enough to say I wouldn’t be able to eat another human being.  I would let myself starve to death before eating someone else, no matter how desperate I was.  When I asked my roommate, she said the exact same thing – so either we’re both deluding ourselves, or we’re actually really anti-cannibalism.  Scientifically, I’ve heard that eating the flesh of another human being will cause you to go mad.  I’m pretty sure that’s the last thing I would need if I was stranded and about to die.  Historically though, there are lots of instances of cannibalism for a variety of reasons.  For example, "some south American cannibals believed you could cure a limp by eating someone else's good leg" (Shaw 214)*.  "Aborigines in western Australia" used cannibalism as population control "by eating every tenth baby born" (Shaw 214).  To suvive after being captured by Allies, one German soldier who they "locked in an abandoned railroad truck" only "survived by eating portions of his left leg and drinking his own blood" (Shaw 216).  During a famine in 1201, Egyptians "survived by slaughtering and eating children" (Shaw 216).

One of the small things about In the Heart of the Sea that I latched onto was the importance in their society of omens and superstitions.  Several times in the book things were taken to be a “sign that something unusual was about to happen” such as comets, “an extraordinary sea animal” on the coast that was unknown to all, and “swarms of grasshoppers” (Philbrick 4, 27).  To us, I’m sure this seems crazy since we understand that science can back up and place all of these things in a realm that can be explained.  And yet, our society can be just as superstitious as the people living in Nantucket.  For example, how many people have been cautious on Friday the 13^th?  How many of us throw salt over our left shoulder if we spill it, refuse to walk under ladders, are careful not to break mirrors or don’t cross the path of a black cat?  Even thought they seem really little to us, they’re still superstitions, just like the ones the people of Nantucket feared shouted the ruin of the Essex.

The differences between Pollard and Chase in the novel were akin to me as the differences we drew a few classes ago about Boyer and Sanford, except they were fighting over a ship and not a lady.  For a start, Pollard starts off seeming unsure and a bit unorganized on the ship whereas Chase is experienced and quick to supersede the Captain to get things done.  For me, one of the most telling things about how the two characters operate was the telling of their histories.  Pollack’s father was a captain that “would make it difficult for Pollard, a first-time captain just emerging from the long shadow of a respected predecessor” find a way to do things, especially given his “first mate’s cocksure attitude” (Philbrick 31).  Chase’s reason for “his impatience to become a captain” wasn’t because he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, but because “his father was a farmer on an island where seagoing men got all the glory” and thus was “fired with more than the usual amount of ambition” (Philbrick 30).  Chase for me was like Hercules in the Disney version – he wanted to go the distance and find where he belonged. 

This rift between the Captain and his first mate’s baser natures spells doom for the crew.  The first time this happens is when Pollard wanted to “return to Nantucket for repairs” but his first mate “disagreed” and “urged that they continue on” even though “the captain’s will was normally the law of the ship” (Philbrick 43).  Look at it like a video game:  Round one, Pollard vs. Chase.  Chase uses cocky and experienced attack combo – Pollard uses Indecision.  Chase totally kicked his ass – round, set, match.  If this was Rockem Sockem Robots, Pollard’s head would have popped off. 

One of the most interesting things I think we talked about in class about this book was about humanizing the whale, and why that could have terrified Chase so much that it haunted him.  One of the things that humans seem to think makes us superior to animals is that we can express emotions and think critically.  In the novel, the whale hits the ship in the place where it would do the most damage almost like it decided to attack and calculated how to do so.  As a whaler, that would be a terrifying thought – as a hunter if your prey starts hunting you you’ve got a major problem, especially if the prey is that much bigger and stronger than you.  As a whaler the last thing you want is a mafia whale with a hit list coming after you to avenge his brother whales.  I think Hannah said it best when she said it would be like “West Side Story for whales”.  For me, a humanistic whale would be like someone trying to kill Babar the Elephant.  One of things that I think makes it so much more socially acceptable to kill animals than it is to kill another person is because we don’t see animals on the same plain as us.  If suddenly we see whales on the same plain as us, then it would be just as morally wrong to kill a whale as a human being.  It wouldn’t be killing for profit or oil, it would be murder.  For someone like Chase, morals intact at this point, that must have been a horrible thought to have.

In a way, all of humanity is haunted by something or another.  That’s where I think insomnia comes from.  Whether or not you’re haunted by past mistakes, trauma, or just what you’re going to have to do tomorrow, everyone has things that weight on their mind or keeps them from sleeping.  Personally, I have insomnia because I can’t shut my mind down long enough to rest and fall asleep.  Sometimes I stress over decisions I’ve made that might affect my future, past mistakes I can’t change, my workload, being so far from my family, etc.

In ‘Fight Club’ Jack is being haunted, in my opinion, by the lack of things in his life worthy of haunting him.  His life is empty, so he tries to fill it with stuff and material possessions until he meets Tyler, who in a very Emersonian way believes possessions end up owning us.  In this way he tries to steer Jack away from the kind of consumer culture Jack has been buying into to fill his empty apartment and his life.  In this way, they remind me of Mark and Roger from RENT.  Jack is like Mark, void of the destructive identity people like Tyler and Roger possess, floundering around in his life while watching other people live theirs, Jack from an office cubical and self help groups, Mark from behind the camera lens.  I think the consumer point is driven home most in the song “What You Own.”  Along with hitting the consumer aspect of the two characters and how what you own owns you, there is also a line that says "I don't own emotionl/I rent" which I feel speaks to Jack and Tyler's emotional capabilities or lack there of:

In a way, Tyler is just as empty as Jack is (I prefer to think of them as separate people, even though I know they aren’t, in case you haven’t already noticed that).  In the scene in the parking lot, Tyler has Jack punch him so that he can FEEL something, to fill the void of numbness, and then hits Jack back.  Both of them see violence as a way to feel in a very masochistic way, enjoying and even reveling in this self-inflicted affliction or pain in their lives.  In a way, I can understand how they feel.  Sometimes in the midst of all the numb and the nothing, I need a little sharp pain to remind me I’m still breathing and going about my life, that I’m living it and not just a spectator in it.  For me, I’ve always thought about it as being like the song “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls:

Wasn’t that pretty?  Now let’s get down to business interpreting those lyrics!  I think the most poignant verse for this point is the second one: “And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming/Or the moment of truth in your lies/When everything feels like the movies/Yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive”:   This really reminds me of Jack and Tyler in the way that they seem to be null and void of most emotions unless they’re beating into each other or other people.  They need to bleed to know that they’re really living, to feel pain to feel anything else in their lives.  On the other end, they also seem to me to parallel the chorus: “And I don't want the world to see me/'Cause I don't think that they'd understand/When everything's made to be broken/I just want you to know who I am”.  Fight Club is hidden away from the majority of society that wouldn’t understand what people like Jack and Tyler need pain in their lives to really feel like they’re living.  Jack clings to Tyler to know what he really is and wants Tyler to know him for who he really is – that in the end he’s both himself and the fictious Tyler.  In this way, violence is self-help for these men and other like them.

*Quote from The Giant Bathroom Reader by Karl Shaw