The Rising Waters of Injustice by Harrison Epstein

Reflections on Chinua Achebe's quote:
"People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck"

In Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, a small African tribe is faced with a group of British colonists and missionaries whose goal is to 'convert' the people. Things begin innocently enough, with them building a church in a dangerous land and preaching what the natives consider to be nonsense. Over time the missionaries gain followers and grow larger until it has many of the elders of the tribe worried. Eventually the newcomers gain a large enough following to impose rules and laws on the African natives and press their beliefs into the foundation of the society, changing even the most basic beliefs to their own through harsh treatment. One man, Okonkwo, sees the injustice his people are suffering and tries to convince the other elders in the tribe to take action, but to no avail. His people do little to nothing until it becomes too late to repel the invaders, and their entire culture is shifted to that of the British, with very little of their own culture remaining. Okonkwo's last ditch effort to return ways to normal is greeted by failure and in his despair he kills himself at the end of the novel. This story has a heavy relation the Achebe's quote about the rising waters; if you wait until the forces of injustice are too powerful to do something, there is very little hope in stopping it. This idea is even shown in history.     

In 1968 Francisco Macias Nguema was 'elected' president of Guinea and over the next 10 years shut down all school in the country and executed 80,000 people in a population of only 300,000, people he considered to be a threat because they were educated. In 1975, Pathat Lao and his followers overthrew the government Laos and subsequently executed 1/4 of the population, they were people who 'did not agree' with his ways. In 1939 Adolf Hitler and the Nazis invaded Poland and the country was captured in less than 5 weeks and over the next 6 years, over 11 million people were murdered throughout Europe. As a whole, the human race has developed a bad habit of acting on problems when it is too late to be effective. Many people see the rise of injustice and do nothing, thinking they have no power in such a large world, or simply because it can put their lives at risk. While self preservation is obviously important, there comes a point where the conflict is unavoidable and people must act in order to prevent horrible events from happening. The sad truth is that many people see injustice happening and think it does not effect them and hide behind their closed doors. Martin Neimoller, a pastor, addressed this idea in his famous poem about the Holocaust:

"First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me"

The point of this is that you can't sit idly by as bad things happen because it is not effecting you, or as the waters rise because from people like Achebe in literature and others like Neimoller in history alike we see that "Idleness is the beginning of all vice" (Franz Kafka) and that idleness in the face of injustice, leads to the oppression of the innocent.


More on the problems with idleness
https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/bystander-effect

and some pictures to illustrate the idea of idleness in crisis





And a drawing to illustrate Achebe's quote 

A Recollection of the Voyage in Africa by Harrison Epstein

It was damp. It was hot, sticky, muggy, buggy, but mostly it was damp. My hair was stuck to my head, my shirt clung to my back like some sort of strange suctioned sheet.

We walked for two and a half days before we reached the cave that we had been looking for, we called it Beest Mond Grot or the Beast’s Mouth cave as the protruding rocks at the entrance to the cavern appeared ready to clamp down on unsuspecting prey that wandered through, and the vines that wrapped around it seemed to twitch on its own like a cat’s hair when frightened. Samuel began to shout about how rich he was going to be, and sprinted toward the mouth of the cave where already the glimmer of rubies was visible, unfortunately he only made it a few steps before his screams of joy turned to terror as his feet and legs were engulfed by a hidden pit of quicksand surrounding the cave and his struggling only made him sink quickly to his death.

With our small company now slightly smaller, and an air of gloom surrounding us, we moved to a safe distance, where the cave was in sight but the quicksand would not be stumbled upon in the darkness of night, and set up camp. I didn’t sleep that night, I am not sure anyone did for more than a few short minutes, between the thoughts of the previous day and shrieks of the night, one could barely close their eyes.

Lewis noticed them first, these dark shadows peering out from behind the brush, their eyes wide with a mixture of terror and curiosity. It seemed the natives had finally come to visit. It quickly became clear that they had no intention of violence but their sharp machetes gave it away that they could fight if needed. Lewis began rambling off his rather small vocabulary of one of the more common African languages and gestured around wildly; it seemed we had gotten lucky and the natives appeared to at least comprehend that we were miners and could not enter the cave without assistance, nor had we anything to trade with them or other tribes if we could not secure any rubies. An older looking man barked an order that no one understood and three of the other natives darted off to the cave and quickly leaped around the quicksand until they reached the mouth of the cave. It appeared our group had found a way to get what we needed.

This went on for a while, the natives coming by every morning with fruit and nuts, or occasionally some horned, forest creature, and every night with a small portion of rubies. However a problem became evident, we were not getting enough of the valuable gems to pay for the expenses of travel. The natives saw no reason to bring more that a small amount of this rock to us because all we ‘needed’ it for was trade for the food. The only reason they brought it at all was because Lewis insisted we give them something for the food and help. Our attempts to gain more of the resource were not successful and thus we turned to more drastic measures.

The violence began on a small scale, with yelling and threatening with guns, but after a number of weeks, we would tie some of their people up or cut them with the bayonets on our guns. While they honored their values and brought us food, they stopped assisting with hunting and the rubies they gathered were in poorer quality but higher quantity. It was as if out violent nature was tarnishing the pure sheen of the gems.

The year dragged on as time meandered by, and with it came the deaths of two other company members. Phillippe was bit by a spider while searching for berries, and we only found him because his smell carried far enough from where the berries grew to the camp. Lewis perished when he attempted one too many times to order the chief of the tribe to gather more food and minerals. With Lewis dead we had no means of communication and the situation only deteriorated further. On the twelfth month, we had little food and were constantly fending off attacks, we almost ran out of ammo in fact.

As one might imagine, leaving the camp was a day we all looked forward too, but when the day came there was no laughing, we walked through the bloodstained brush to get back to the river that connected to the ocean. The forest was no longer filled with joyful birds as they had been scared off or eaten long ago. The shine in the cave had gone and it appeared a vast chasm. It seemed that even the flowers had wilted with all the cigar smoke. The remaining native tribe members were weak from disease of suffering injuries, the land had suffered.

But we were profitable.         

Wet sidewalks and bad horror movies by Harrison Epstein

In Chapter 10 of How to Read Literature like a Professor, the author, Foster, discusses the importance of weather in a story. The chapter goes into depth about several weather patterns and their effect and meaning in the story. For example rain can symbolize a cleanse or a healing process, such as restoring a wasteland to fertility. It also can lead to one of the most iconic biblical symbols, the rainbow, which is representative of a new beginning and hope. Rain can be a double edged sword; storms can cause floods and death. Rain can be harsh and unforgiving, and symbolize destruction or decay; not to mention it can make a very sad tone. Whether the symbolic nature of rain is good or bad is dependent on the particular piece of literature. In The Great Gatsby rain has a bit of a mixture of the positive and negative sides. In the reunion between Daisy and Gatsby, there is rain pouring, which creates a sort of melancholy tone for the reader.   

The other major weather trend discussed is snow. Again, snow has good symbolism and bad, depending on the circumstance. It can be good in the sense that it can represent innocence and purity, or even fun, like with kids on a sled or making a snowman. When snow can be negative is when it comes down in a blizzard or hail, then it can symbolize death, inhospitality, or simply nothingness. It also is often something that traps people in stories, and in real life for that matter. In Snow White the young Snow is always picking flowers and loving on animals, and is quite literally the purest person one might ever see. This is one of the more positive representations of snow and while the ‘snow’ is in her name, she still represents the positive aspects of what snow can stand for. On that same note President Snow in The Hunger Games is the exact opposite, he is inhospitable and cruel and causes death at every turn. It is interesting to see how something as simple as snow can be so drastically different depending on the piece of literature.

Perhaps my favorite symbol in weather is fog, which the book briefly discusses. There really is no good connotation for fog, it almost exclusively represents uncertainty or danger as well as causes confusion. I like this one because there is a foggy scene in a bunch of horror movies and horror stories in general. There is actually an entire horror movie based on a deadly fog, it’s rather funny really because it’s a really bad movie called The Mist. Basically there is a sudden fog that is impossible to see through and people go out in it one by one to escape and sort of die unexpectedly. A more literary piece with fog in it is the Percy Jackson series. In short the ‘fog’ is something that keeps ordinary people from seeing the supernatural. Overall there really are so many different weather patterns and so many different ways they can be used in a story. Foster was right when he said, “it’s more than just rain or snow!”

       Look at this happy fellow from singing in the rain!

http://thetouchtypist.hubpages.com/hub/rain-and-literature

Here is a bit more on weather symbolism 

The meaning of mealtime! By Harrison Epstein

In How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, the author discusses the importance of meals in literature and what they mean. He points out that meals can be difficult to make interesting in a piece of literature simply because not a lot happens at a meal that can be portrayed in an interesting way. So when there is a meal, it almost always holds some importance, whether something big is revealed, or it foreshadows the outcome of events later in the story. The outcome of the meal is often a good indicator as to the outcome as a major part of the story. One such example is in Charles Dickens’ Oliver, the very beginning of the novel is a large mess hall with orphans eating a small bowl of gruel that wouldn’t sustain a horsefly. One of the young boys, Oliver, volunteers, or more is volunteered to go ask the head of the orphanage for more food with the very iconic phrase, “please sir, may I have some more?” This one meal is the event that actually starts the story and propels it into motion because when Oliver asks for more food, the head kicks him to the streets and Oliver becomes homeless. On a deeper level the meal foreshadows how poorly Oliver’s life in the book will be. On the opposite spectrum, a meal with a good outcome or positive meaning can foreshadow a story having a meaningful ending or even happy. In To Kill A Mockingbird there is a man named Atticus who is defending an African American man against a rape charge in court and many people turn against him for it. However the African American community brings Atticus a great deal of food and gives him a feast for what he is trying to do for the African American man that he is defending, Tom. The dinner is a rather happy occasion because of all the delicious food and chatter; however it has a bit of a sad undertone because it is made clear that the food Atticus is receiving is almost all the people have. The meal symbolizes how much the things Atticus was doing meant to the people, but the sad undertone foreshadows Atticus losing the trial. However the novel does have a bittersweet ending, much like the dinner. There is another dinner in the book where a young bullied boy is invited over to dinner with the girl who bullied him. Both the dinner with Atticus and the dinner with the young girl serve another purpose that Foster says dinners can do, break down social barriers. In the first the barrier between races for the time was broken for a short period of time and in the second a rivalry between two kids was ended. The point is that meals in a novel are usually meaningful and should not be overlooked, because they often hold a message for the story as a whole!  

Oliver really did need a bit more food just for the record!

Here are some iconic meals in literature 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10405256/10-great-meals-in-literature.html?frame=2714203

More on meals in literature 

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/pleasures-of-the-literary-meal

Harry goes to the Supermarket by Harrison Epstein

In the very first chapter of How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster goes on to discuss the very typical event in a piece of literature of going on a trip. The chapter is aptly named, ‘Every Trip is a Quest (Except when it’s not).’ His claims at what makes a trip a quest are valid and make sense and are applicable to most pieces of literature. For most character in stories that I have read I never really thought all that much about how each place they went impacted the specific character. I sort of just went along with the plot and any short or seemingly unimportant movement from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’ never really stood out to me, I sort of saw it as just that, a character moving from one place to another. When I actually took a minute to stop and think about some of the trips the character have taken in assorted novels, I began to realize how many of these seemingly unimportant trips actually held a great deal of meaning and character growth.

One example, from the well-known novel Harry Potter, is Harry’s train ride to the magical school, Hogwarts. (Disclaimer: I might spoil something if you haven’t read the books so don’t read this if you haven’t read the novel) To give a short summary of the events, Harry boards the train and as it is going from the station to the school, it is stopped and a group of magical beings called dementors board the train and harass the passengers. Now Harry ultimately escapes and gets to the school but the trip has a lot more meaning than first meets the eye. In Foster’s book there are five things that must be present for a trip to be a quest, the first is a quester (Harry), the second is a place to go (Hogwarts), the third is a reason to go there (it is Harry’s school), the fourth is the challenges on the way (a flock of dementors trying to suck out the souls of the students), the fifth and most important aspect is the REAL reason to go to the given location. Now this one is a bit harder to answer because the actual answer is rarely given in any novel, however Foster says that the real reason always involves some aspect of self-knowledge. In Harry’s case there are a number of things that he learns about himself, one is how much he cares about the school and his friends in his willingness to fight the monsters, another, perhaps more important discovery is he learns that dementors are his greatest fear, even more so than the villain in the series. The discovery of his fear is not shown in full until later in the series, but the train event foreshadows the later event and also just shows how terrifying some things in the magical world of Harry Potter can be!!!  

  These are dementors! Look at how freaky they look!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here are a few more articles that elaborate on this topic in Harry Potter a little bit more 

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101114191845AAgQqvD

and one that talks about the importance of trips in literature and how they are designed 

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/ach-allc.99/proceedings/barrette.html