The Metaphor Of The Ocean

We live in a materialistic world. We can’t go anywhere without a car, and the unimaginable tragedy of going camping with no cell reception. That’s not to say our materialistic view doesn’t have it’s merits. It leads to a constant flow of inventions and technology that makes society run more efficiently. However, efficiency and technology have started to overshadow the natural world, which has nurtured the human race for thousands of years providing it with food, shelter, peace, and beauty. Despite the large role nature has played in the upbringing of mankind, society has justified neglecting it’s responsibility to take care of nature by disassociating the human world from the natural world.
In Albert Wendt’s Black Rainbow, a glimpse of the
However, it seems that Jetnil-Kijiner is trying to portray the ocean as both the mother and the child; the protector and the protected. The role she places of the mother figure serves as a reminder of how the ocean has nurtured and helped us. Through the seafood we consume, the waters in which we use to travel, medicine from marine plants and animals, and the recreational uses of sports and leisure, the ocean has provided humanity with substance and enjoyment for thousands of years. Jetnil-Kijiner draws attention to the provisions the ocean allots to us and uses the reminder to get the audience to realize that taking care of the ocean is a necessary task we must do in reciprocation for what it has done for us. Moreover, calls herself “mother ocean”, displaying her different interpretive roles of being the ocean’s mother, the ocean as her own mother, and her and the ocean as one being. In complete opposition to the people she talks about who blame the ocean for the destructions and tsunami’s around the world, Jetnil-Kijiner counters this ignorance with the lack of blame she puts on the ocean, even though it is the physical being threatening to destroy her home. Her ability to see past the physical threat, and look beyond to the root cause allows the audience to do the same. Just like Eric’s wife in Black Rainbow , Jetnil-Kijiner is able to show the innocence and beauty that nature is, looking beyond the materialistic world and into humanities hand in the destruction of the natural