Not Wanted on the Voyage Essay Example For Students

Not Wanted on the Voyage Essay In Timothy Findleys Not Wanted on The Voyage Noahs wife asks what else could heaven be but a world afloat nothing hard or real to fall against or stumble over; everything distant, everything benign, (pg 18) but at the end of the novel the Ark is hell where the innocent are shut in perpetual darkness and are devoid of God. Not Wanted on The Voyage chronicles a time in which the order of things has become unhinged, (pg 24) where those who seem devout are corrupted and those who seem evil are actually pure. This is a place where appearances are deceiving and questions are seen as a challenge to authority instead of a quest for truth. This is a place where nothing is without contradictions. Noahs last name, Noyes, is a contradiction within itself and exemplifies the war of yes and no, the war of good and evil that escalates throughout the novel until it reaches the final breaking point. In an existence so convoluted, a fallen angel becomes a beacon of hope and salvation in an otherwise dark journey. This angel is Lucifer. Unlike most rouges, who tended to be hotheads an malcontents and very often dangerous this creature was smiling, soft spoken and beautiful. (pg 59) Naturally this rouge angel chose the form of a woman in direct opposition to a misogynist society and a God who has no women and no female angels (pg 72) in his retinue and relegates them to being subservient to men. In doing so, Lucy (as she likes to be called) becomes a champion of all those oppressed. She joins the race of men in order to prevent the holocaust on earth (pg 110) instead of abandoning it to the flood. In her desire for difference she searches for an world where darkness and light are reconciled, (pg 284) fully knowing that one cannot exist without the other. Lucifer, as the unlikely heroine, challenges all of our preexisting notions of hell when she states that the depths are as cozy as a fireplace (pg 218), and thus a place of comfort and safety. The shunned demons are like innocent children who squeal with delight when they catch snowflakes on their tongue and are eager to help Lucy, Ham, and Mrs. Noyes. We find the only demon is Doctor Noyes, (pg 42) who relegates the demons to death because he sees them as a threat, just as he sees the frolicking sea dwellers as creatures of hell spewed from Satans mouth. (pg 236) They too are murdered for mistakenly believing they could be a friend of man. Noahs actions make it painfully clear where the true evil resides especially when they are done in the name of his God. Lucy is forever opposed to Doctor Noyes opposed to his methods and his tactics and his evil ways. (pg 279) She throws her lot in with the humans to live with them and face death with them, while Noahs God leaves His friends to rot alone. (pg 350) This is a world where appearances are deceiving, where all that seems good is evil and all that is evil is good. Further playing on the fair is foul theme, those who seem the most pure are, in reality, the most corrupt. Hannah, going about her business, just as she been told the only treasure in the trove (pg 15) of Noah. To Yahweh she encompasses all that is intended in the gesture of Creation. Purity of heart and motive. Devotion and subservience to the greater glory. (pg 88) She alone is the only woman allowed in the apple orchard, a place where only women with the highest dispensations allowed to walk. (pg 139) Yet, Hannahs purity is a ploy in which she uses her sexuality as a bargaining tool in order to reach her goals in a male dominated world. She has no rivals in court (pg 72) of Yahweh and seizes upon this with a vengeance. She makes herself a fawning handmaiden to Yahweh in order to secure her position in his good graces and to elevate herself above the other women. On the ark, Hannah is the only passenger who thinks about survival clinically: who reasons through the whole long process of staying alive at any cost: whose perseverance is calculated from moment to moment. (pg 267) Her psyche is devoid of everything except her own ambition which has eaten away at and deteriorated any other characteristics she may have had. Only too late does she realize that she has traded too much of her self for what she had thought would be security and esteem. (pg 287, 288) Hannah becomes pregnant. Her elevation, and Mrs. Noyes demotion in terms of the favor of Noah is a mystery to his wife but to Hannahs husband Shem Noahs attentions to Hannah had by no means gone unnoticed. (pg 244) Unfortunately, Shem is a man who doesnt hold the bond of marriage over that of a dutiful son and thus is silent. Hannah pays the ultimate price when she gives birth to a deformed stillborn. The death of the child in which she had invested all her ambition and all her secret love was of course her responsibility alone. (pg 340) Mickey and Eddie EssayThese questions are the only way that they can improve themselves and develop their own moral codes and values instead of being mindless automatons without free will. It is their only form of defiance and their refusal to obey Noah and Yahweh is the only way they can remain true to the law that is written upon their hearts. To Yahweh it is monstrous that even the wisest of the wise should attempt to usurp their God, that they should ask of God: why and how (pg 110) Only those who knew not to reach out with their hands and who knew not to dwell upon the word were worthy of his salvation. Only the single chosen of the Lord may hear the Word, (pg 110) and the man chosen was Noah thus taking the wisdom and truth of the Word away from the people and placing it within the hands of the man who would corrupt it. The building of the ark, to Noah produced a thoroughly satisfying atmosphere of no more questions asked no more questions needed as if the grandeur of the ark was its whole justification. (pg 119) Perhaps this is also true for his own religion, and if any questions were put forth they would expose the callousness that would allow only eight people out of countless nations to survive the forthcoming flood. Yahweh relies on his image and the ignorance of his followers instead of merciful acts to attract and hold the faithful. Perhaps Yahweh, the apparently all-powerful, has something to hide from his people and thus their questions cause him fear. Yahweh himself questions what have we done, that man should treat us thus? Why should Yahweh ask such a question? Did it matter what He did? Was he not God? (pg 117) Maybe it does matter what Yahweh did because he is not God in the true sense of the word: a Supreme Being, perfect in goodness, knowledge, and power. He may be trying to hide his own mortality. Mottyl, the cat, suspects from His smell that He human. (pg 66) How could a confused, lozenge sucking man with yellow streaks and bits of food and knotted tats in his beard (pg 66) be anything but a human with all of their failures and fallibilities When he begins to weep it is apparent that the Lord God Yahweh was having a breakdown. (pg 69) What would happen to the world if it is at the mercy of a man who is overwhelmed by stress and his own emotions? Assassinated seven times, Yahweh seems unable to summon the energy to revive his spirit along with what is undoubtedly an ailing body. After being assaulted on all sides by an onslaught of evil, vice and shame, (pg 88) and by accepting the crown of flies, the Lord God Father of All Creation had consented to his own death. (pg 112) Perhaps it is for the best as it is not a loving God that must lift Ones skirts to avoid contamination the hands of sinners that reach out to touch One and to drag One down. (pg 89) This is a God to whom agape is a foreign and abhorrent thing. Mercy not his concern, (pg 69) and the only love he is aware of is that in which he is the master of both men and angels and they are his slaves. With the words that the will of God would triumph, no matter what the cost, (pg 239) the God of Love, Yahweh, becomes a deception of massive proportions for a true God cares for each individual being, no matter how insignificant and would hesitate to lose a single one. If it was His intention to leave behind an impression of His person that would last forever, (pg 189) he did. Yahweh with his final gesture shut them in (pg 189) the ark and drowned the world entire as a fitting monument to mark his own passing. He and his actions stand as a mockery of a true God as they are devoid of mercy, wisdom, and strength and instead are rife with weakness, self pity, and selfishness. Not Wanted on the Voyage creates a world that is a negative photo image of all that we would wish it to be. The reversal of good and evil in the novel compels the reader to sit back and look at their own individual world objectively. What they find may be disturbing because their questions may unveil much injustice that has been done under the guise of goodness, and they may discover that their own personal biases towards what is evil may be just that a basis that is founded in ignorance, not fact. After reading the novel you learn to challenge reality in order to find the truth buried within.