How the Past Posses the Present and Future in Night-Sea Journey

The Night-Sea Journey anthropomorphizes and displaces the role of a sperm and a human in the process of fertilization, and the journey a sperm must go through in order to achieve such an ambitious feat. This story touches on many stories that have been told in the past, and using genius displacement allows the reader to identify with the sperm, as we too are going about our lives that will ultimately lead to death.The sperm in this story is given many human traits, and looks to the human as if they are a god. Not a perfect, monotheistic god, but rather a highly flawed god similar to those in the myths of Ancient Greece.

In Ancient Greek mythologies, the many gods were all flawed characters, who had motives of their own and were not at all the all-knowing, all-loving monotheistic god that many look up to today. Similarly, the sperm in Night Sea Journey look upon the human "Makers" in a light not unlike the way humans viewed their gods in Ancient Greece. The Makers have many nights and seas, and are willing to kill almost all who live in their sea. In this story, the sperm speculate about a possible hierarchy of Makers. a Maker of the Makers. Gods too had a hierarchy of importance, some gods being the maker or father of other gods. The sperm seem to have an acute understanding of their own mortality. But, there are a few who are able to escape mortality. There are some who go on into a new cycle, and are able to live beyond the night-sea. In Greek myths, many humans mated with deities, blurring the lines between what it means to be mortal and immortal.

Just as humans looked up to the gods as a higher form of being; sperm in the night-sea look up to humans as almost deities, who few selected of their kind gain access into the next realm. The story told is not a new one, merely a twist on a familiar tale of overcoming unbelievable adversity and obstacles in a land strewn with deities.

Finnegans Wake

During last Tuesday's class I was completely enchanted with the way Professor Sexson had recited parts of Finnegans Wake to the class, and found myself craving more. Though I was too tired to tackle reading it myself, I found a recording of Finnegans Wake being read on Youtube, and sat down for a listen. I quickly became almost entranced with the words, and taking the advice that had been offered in class I did not attempt to make sense, but rather let the words lap over me softly like a piece of music. In the way that a mother reads to a child, I put myself in the position of the child; listening to the story halfheartedly while I focused more on the soothing and melodic pulse of my new Youtube mother's voice.

It was comforting in class to be told to "not get distracted by sense". I recently took a Victorian poetry course whilst studying abroad in Istanbul, Turkey. One of the assignments given by the professor was to analyze and interpret The Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll. This poem was particularly fun to look at, seeing as I have had it memorized for as long as I can remember and have fond memories associated with this beautiful piece of nonsense. The reaction of the rest of the students was a much less pleasant one consisting of frustration, and one student actually being brought to tears. I can see how troubling this type of literature might be, especially for a non-native English speaker, and this could have been remedied by the professor offering the same advice as Professor Sexson offered while looking at Finnegans Wake. Sometimes it is more important to look beyond sense and view these types of works more in the category of music.