Old Man River
The Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Rivers that form the western and eastern boundaries of Long Beach have been tamed. Concrete-channeled, laden with trash from careless upstream cities after a rainstorm, they empty into the Pacific like sad puppies let out to relieve themselves, a far cry from the wild beauty of their bigger brethren around the world. Gazing at these subdued California waterways, I find it depressing to remember rivers once played important roles in human history, not the least being as the first interstate highways. The river of my youth, the Thames, provided a highway for English kings and queens traveling between the royal residences at Hampton Court, Westminster and Greenwich.
Beyond their practical aspects, rivers in human imagination have always been powerful symbols. Our blood stream is a river in itself, so it’s no wonder the river’s passage from spring in the mountains to final emptying into the ocean came to be a metaphor for life from birth to death. Rivers appear in the myths and legends of almost every tribe on the planet, the Tigris and the Euphrates that bounded Eden, the Tiber, the Nile,the Danube, the Amazon, the sacred Ganges. Not surprisingly, we find writers as diverse as Thoreau, T.S. Eliot and Mark Twain using rivers as metaphors in their work. And a brief glance at a catalog of science fiction titles seems to indicate an equal fascination in our genre: HATRACK RIVER (Orson Scott Card), GRERAT SKY RIVER (Gregory Benford), “Child of the River” (Paul MacAuley), “The River Styx Runs Upstream” (Dan Simmons), and – of course – Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series.
Considered as metaphor, the source of the river symbolizes birth, and the mouth symbolizes our re-absorption back into the All, the direction of the flow being the natural path of life. So what are we to make of stories about going upriver, against the flow? It might be logical to expect them to carry themes of a return to childhood innocence , but instead they seem to reflect the opposite, the warning Thomas Wolfe gave us: “You can’t go home again.” Return to the womb is neither possible nor to be aspired to, upriver journeys tell us, especially when we realize nations follow the same path from a state of primitive existence to a later, more socialized one that human life follows. “Upriver” comes to symbolize devolution not evolution.
Joseph Conrad’s 19th century novel, HEART OF DARKNESS, where a journey up the Congo from the teeming civilization of the African coast to an earlier, troubling state of humanity in the jungle, reveals the breakdown of Kurtz’s psyche as its result. “Going native” here means much more than wearing Earth-friendly cotton and necklaces of seed pods, or avoiding fast food and pesticides. This novel has become the inspiration for others that have attempted to explore the same theme, the darkness that lies at the heart of “civilized” man. All our pious sophistication and our civilized manners and customs, such novels tell us, are only a thin skin over a raging horror of original, out-of-control appetites and evil intent. Conrad’s narrator, Marlowe, sees little innocence in the well-spring of our dark hearts.
Francis Ford Coppola’s movie version, APOCALYPSE NOW, remains true to this motif; Captain Willard travels deep into the jungle to encounter his own “Kurtz,” a once-admirable man who has “gone native” in all the worst senses of the phrase. The theme of losing the tenuous hold civilization has on humans, and becoming more influenced by amoral (to say the least) circumstances the further upriver one travels, is explored in another movie: THE MOSQUITO COAST, based on Paul Theroux’s novel of the same name. Allie Fox is a genius, a likable man when we first meet him, who conceives the plan to travel upriver deep into the jungle to build an ice house to supply the natives. But “upriver” seduces decent, capable men; they go from being helpers to exploiters, and eventually they go mad. APOCALYPSE NOW adds the somber message that such men must be killed for the common good. All our best stories tend toward myth, and these three versions of the going upriver theme warn us that we have no business feeling superior to those we perceive as less far along on the path than we are. Doing so, we court disaster.
Robert Silverberg’s 1970 novel, DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH, with its references to Conrad’s novel (including the name Kurtz in case we miss the similarities) explores much the same mythic territory. In a story which evokes humanity’s often disastrous colonial past, going upriver on an alien planet doesn’t result in greater innocence or humanity of spirit for the protagonist. Rather, the opposite is true. The main character, Gunderson, violates the belief and customs of the planet’s inhabitants for his own gain because he finds them of lesser value, and in doing so risks his own spiritual integrity. Science fiction is a kind of contemporary mythology, and myths are always didactic, so we shouldn’t be surprised to find lessons along with story in its pages. Silverberg’s novel offers a new perspective on the “going upriver” theme, warning us not to export our questionable values around the galaxy.
I remember in graduate school studying the difference in the European myth of the forest and the American myth of the frontier, and how these referenced the historic situation of the cultures the writers were embedded in. But the journey upriver transcends everybody’s history and expands into our future, a Jungian theme that speaks not of our past but of our soul. As we stand on the brink of the Age of Space, we might do well to study the lessons of these river journey stories.
The author of eight novels, more than thirty short stories, dozens of poems and articles about science fiction, SHEILA FINCH has received several awards, including the Nebula Award, the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel in the Field, and the San Diego Book Award for Young Adult fiction. She has given workshops at writers’ conferences all over Southern California and recently retired from twenty-eight years of teaching creative writing and science fiction at El Camino College, California. She lives in Long Beach, California, with a cat and two retired racing greyhounds. To learn more about Sheila, see her website or read her blog.
2 comments so far.
Thanks for your comments, David! Yes, “upriver” is just one theme about personal and societal development, but there are many others. Mark Twain, for instance, doesn’t seem much impressed with the significance of going against the current back to the source.
1. David de Beer on 26th May 2009 at 12:23 pm
Salmon have to swim upriver or they’ll, as a species, die.
interesting thoughts, as usual, Sheila, but I would add that the hypothesis is incomplete. It presupposed the journey as being only one way—from source to sea—whereas in fact it’s more truly cyclical. Water evaporates, is carried in clouds back inland where rain is absorbed and become the river all over again.
A cycle that never ends, merely changes form at different stages of the journey.
Reincarnation is a suitable comparison. Personally, I can see the allure of reincarnation but it also feels very alarming, like being trapped in the same vicious, uncaring cycle for all eternity.
Now there’s potential for story there!
I’m afraid I’m not really going anywhere with this, just shooting off some thoughts:) This idea could be explored further, though, and I’m not familiar enough with the breadth of fiction to think of further examples that add to this metaphor.
Rivers are powerful symbols. You are quite correct in that regard.