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.
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