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Week 12.5 – The Ocean Contains True History

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I was working on my discovery assignment and thinking about yesterday’s in-class discussion when a realization dawned on me.

When talking about The Sea Is History we talked a lot about how the ocean preserves what’s lost in it. We talked about Moby Dick and its last line and how it gives the impression that the ocean is (literally) filled with stories and artifacts of events that we can’t memorialize by building a statue in its place.

To try to illustrate why I think this reality is so significant, consider a battle at sea versus a battle on land for a moment. Both fights share a few characteristics: each will result in a massive expenditure of money, resources, and troops, and each will have a winner and a loser. Beyond that, the two are completely independent. The winner of a land battle is entitled to the territory on which they fought. They get to change the way the area is governed and build monuments and museums filled with art and propaganda sympathetic to their cause. They are free to discard any proof that their acquisition of the land was any more violent or hateful than was necessary in order to remain benevolent to its governed peoples.

At sea, we are more than likely left to take the winner’s word on how their victory is achieved. You can’t claim the water, really – you definitely can’t build memorials to commemorate it. And while, yes, there is no presentable evidence to show malice or the true moral ambiguity of the conflict – the evidence DOES exist. Its under the water, untouched by men – resulting in what I would safely refer to as TRUE history.

It’s history without a consciousness; ultimately, it’s a dead history – having avoided the post-mortem manipulation that events on land face to keep the propaganda alive. But personally, I don’t want history to have a narrative. I do not want there to be good guys and bad guys, and I don’t believe in generational hate. I value the ocean for its ability to be honest with us and hold a mirror to our shitty behavior because the first step to improving at anything is to take accountability for the fact that you need to improve to begin with.

Sorry if I essentially reworded the conclusion we came to in class, I just felt like this was a revelation for me. I definitely dabble in true crime and conspiracy thought a bit too much and I totally could be predisposed to this line of thinking – but I do think that the history books we are all made to read growing up were largely dishonest promotions of “*Insert Country Name* Values and Reasons For Being Superior”, so I enjoy getting the chance to take a more critical look at human history.

Week 12: The Sea is History

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After doing this week’s readings, I found the poem to be super interesting. The way that the author uses the first half of the poem to describe biblical events as seen through the perspective of the ocean is fascinating. Going through those events and describing them using the ocean, shows just how long the ocean has been around and how constant the ocean is. The poem states, “but the ocean kept turning blank pages / looking for History” (lines 24-25). These two lines explain that while the sands in the ocean move and the structure of the ocean floor changes, the ocean itself remains a stable entity. The capitalization of History is also interesting because it makes the subject appear to be much more important and is almost used as a name. In a way, history is personified and the ocean becomes a more dynamic living organism that is searching for history. 

I also found the constant reference to history really interesting. Multiple times throughout the poem the author states that an event or something he just described was not history, but who decides what is history? The poem says, “but that was not History, / that was only faith / and then each rock broke into its own nation;” (lines ). This stanza disregards the events explained at the beginning of the poem because it states that history cannot be faith and faith cannot be history. This hints that history starts when the continents separate and nations start to form. I think that’s an interesting idea because faith to me is something that people believe in that helps them to explain their existence while the formation of the continents is a more scientific event. Is the author referencing history as seeing human impact on the ocean or is it something else entirely?