CHARACTERS & THEME: THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWING

CHARACTERS & THEME: THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWING

Friday, 14th November -

Adam Ewing is the narrator during part one of this novel. Ewing is a notary from San Francisco who travels to the Chatham Islands on business. Ewing is generally good natured & often trusting to the point of foolishness,  he is quick to dismisses his doubts about Dr. Henry Goose (which we later learn is a big mistake…) Even when he awakes in the night to find a stowaway hidden in his cabin, Ewing is quick to trust Atua, a Moriori fugitive. I also noticed that Ewing has a very high regard of his own morals & while he usually acts with decency, I think it is very easy to overlook his prejudices. Adam Ewing does not offer much information about his life prior to his Pacific journey but we do know that he has a wife named Tilda & a son named Jackson. It is a little strange how Ewing claims that his family is very important to him yet only mentions them once. His journal entries are otherwise extremely detailed & thorough which makes me wonder about what kind of relationship they had. If I had to leave my family for over a year, I would think about them all of the time. He continually mentions a character who he refers to as “dear Fred” & the only thing we ever learn about him is that “Dr. Goose & dear Fred are of the same cloth.” Ewing's entries are descriptive yet distant & voiceless for a journal entry. This becomes especially apparent when compared to Robert Frobisher’s letters. Yet another odd thing about these entries is the fact that section one ends mid-sentence, as if the most important part of the journal was torn out. I’m not sure what to make of this & I’m wondering if it was stolen for some reason?

Adam Ewing’s closest friend is Dr. Henry Goose, a surgeon to the London nobility. He is the first character with whom our narrator is acquainted. The opening scene of the novel begins on a deserted beach & Goose is seen digging through the sand. The first detail that we are given about Goose is his race, a detail which becomes significant as we continue to read. The second thing we learn is his nationality. Upon meeting the doctor, Ewing remarks that “His nationality was no surprise. If there be any eyrie so desolate, or isle so remote that one may there resort unchallenged by an Englishman, 'tis not down on any map I ever saw.” The narrator originally thinks that Goose is a Bedlamite (total lunatic) as the doctor explains his reasons for digging in the sand. Dr. Goose is searching for the teeth of cannibals who inhabited the beach hundreds of years ago. He is looking for teeth in order to hoodwink an old woman who blackballed him from high society. He describes her as a “scented She-Donkey” & intends to fool her into using “cannibals' gnashers” as dentures. He believes that if he is able to publicly prove this at the Ambassadors Ball, he will win back the respect & admiration of the nobility. This gives us insight into Gooses vengeful nature & the value that he places on his own status. Not many people would travel thousands of miles to did up teeth… Maybe Adam Ewing’s instinct about the doctor was right?

Ewing & Goose are two very different men but they are both a bit pretentious & seem to think very highly of their own morals as I mentioned before. They view their treatment of the poor island “savages” as generous & pity their “uncivilized” ways. Both men have a very specific idea of what “civilized” means & unsurprisingly, anyone who is not a white man, does not make this category. They have much sympathy for the natives but in no way do they view the Moriori as equals. People of other races are tolerated & pitied rather than respected. I understand that this story takes place within the context of a 19th century British colony & that this view of naives is typical but it doesn’t justify their attitude. They both frequent the use of derogatory terms, calling black or biracial people “the jungle breed”, “inbred bovine torpor”, “savage”, “mixed-blood mongrel of a man” &c… They are content to standby & watch injustice (This theme will resurface in big way in section three). As the two men watch a Maori chief whip a Moriori slave, Henry Goose remarks “Come, Adam, a wise man does not step betwixt the beast & his meat.” They do not approve of the treatment of the Moriori by white men & Maori but they are still content be bystanders of oppression. It unsurprising that the white men are not beloved by the natives, given this attitude! They are apparently sickened by the prostitution of native women yet neither man does anything to intervene because they are not directly suffering.

They go to church to clear their guilt & they tell themselves that they are better than many other white men. They do not actively persecute people of other races & in this sense they are “better” but better is not the same thing as good. Adam Ewing is naive in thinking that what the natives need is a healthy dose of religion & white civilization. To Ewing, “the Moriori were but a local variant of most flaxen-skirted, feather-cloaked heathens of those dwindling ‘blind spots’ of the ocean still unschooled by the White Man.” Henry Gooses ideas about race are even more frightening, he tells Adam that “After years of working with missionaries, I am tempted to conclude that their endeavors merely prolong a dying race's agonies for ten or twenty years. The merciful plowman shoots a trusty horse grown too old for service. As philanthropists, might it not be our duty to likewise ameliorate the savages' sufferings by hastening their extinction? Think of your Red Indians, Adam, think on the treaties you Americans abrogate & renege on, time & time & time again. More humane, surely & more honest, just to knock the savages on the head & get it over with?” The two main characters in this section take no accountability for the system that they are a part of & sometimes it takes more than sympathy & good intentions to be a good person.

Religion is another matter that is important to both Ewing & Goose who share many refined, gentlemanlike qualities. They are repulsed by the crude & godless sailors & when Mr. Walker offers Mr. Ewing a prostitute, he remarks that “I was a husband & a father! & that I should rather die than abase my dignity & decency with any of his poxed whores!”(note that he uses the past tense to describe being a husband & father). The two men are drawn together by their shared values, disgust of sailors & world outlook. Their stories are intertwined due to the mysterious “ailment” of Adam Ewing. Dr. Henry Goose diagnoses this “ailment” as a rare tropical parasite called Gusano coco cervello. Ewing contracted the parasite in Batavia & Goose tells him that it will cause a gruesome & painful death if left untreated. Dr. Goose agrees to treat Adam free of charge. Ewing is overcome with emotion at this news, writing that “My doctor is an uncut diamond of the first water. Even as I write these words I am tearful with gratitude.”

I am very interested in the Moriori culture because of their non-violent nature. “Consider this, Mr. D’Arnoq urged us. Two thousand savages (Mr. Evans’s best guess) enshrine “Thou Shalt Not Kill” in word & in deed & frame an oral “Magna Carta” to create a harmony unknown elsewhere for the sixty centuries since Adam first tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. War was as alien a concept to the Moriori as the telescope is to the Pygmy. Peace, not a hiatus betwixt wars but millennia of imperishable peace, rules these far-flung islands. Who can deny Old Rekohu lay closer to More’s Utopia than our States of Progress governed by war-hungry princelings in Versailles & Vienna, Washington & Westminster? Here, & where only, were those elusive phantasms, those noble savages, framed in flesh & blood! (Henry, as we later made our back to the Musket confessed, ‘I could never describe a race of savages too backwards to throw a spear as noble.’ ” You could argue that the Moriori are far more “civilized” than any white man in this regard. The Moriori likely would have continued to live in peace had it not been for white men who claimed their land, killed their seals, introducing invasive species, wiped out their population with disease, & transported hundreds of Maori to Rekohu, where they massacred & enslaved the Moriori people. Even after this series of tragedies, the Moriori remained non-violent, “embracing their enemy.” Sadly, they are exploited for their good nature.

Despite his prejudice, I believe that there is still hope for Adam Ewing. At the end of section one, Adam Ewing begins to take redeeming actions, protecting the secret of the Moriori dendroglyphs & later harboring a Moriori stowaway named Atua (partially to save his own skin). Adam witnessed Atua being whipped by his Maori master at the beginning of the novel & they locked eyes for moment. Despite never actually having met Adam Ewing, Atua believes that they are friends stating “Pain is strong, aye-but friends’ eyes, more strong.” Atua is the only character that I like from section one & I am hoping that the friendship between him & Adam will change the way that Adam thinks about the native islanders.

Atua has a fascinating story, he was raised on Rekohu & he is one of very few Moriori to leave home, becoming an apprentice on a French whaling ship at age ten. He eventually becoming a worldly sailor, traveling the globe & converting to christianity. Atua has had diverse & worldly experiences & he knows just as much if not more about the world than Adam Ewing, even if he sees it from a different perspective. Atua explains to Adam that “everywhere he observed that casual brutality lighter races show the darker.” It was interesting to hear about white men landing at Rekohu from the perspective of Atua’s father, Atua describes the “‘Great Albatross,’ paddling through the morning mists; its vividly plumaged, strangely jointed servants who canoed ashore, facing backwards; of the Albatross servants’ gibberish (a bird language?); of their smoke breathing; of their heinous violation of that tapu forbidding strangers to touch canoes (doing so curses the vessel & renders it as unseaworthy as if an ax had been taken to it); of the pursuant altercation; of those ‘shouting staffs’ whose magical wrath could kill a man across the beach; & of the bright skirt of ocean-blue, cloud-white & blood-red that the servants hoisted aloft a pole before rowing back to the Great Albatross.” Adam learns that the British seemed just as foreign to the islands original inhabitants, as they seem to him.

At twenty years old, Atua returned home for the first time, in hopes of settling down & starting a family but he was not so fortunate. Instead, Atua was taken into slavery like the rest of the Moriori & treated with extreme brutality at the hands of his master, Chief Kupaka. He explains that “Rekohu called me home, so I see her so I know the truth” The search for truth is another common thread throughout the novel that will resurface in every section. Throughout years of relentlessly brutal enslavement Atua makes several escape attempts & one of them is temporarily successful. Atua lived in solitude for several years on the deserted Pitt Isle (revered by Moriori as the birthplace of man) with only the company of birds & the spirits of his ancestors. Atua is intensely determined to escape Kupaka & after white settlers reveal his location, Kupaka discovers that Atua is still alive. This is how Atua came to make his escape on The Prophetess. Adam Ewing begins to develop a true sense of respect for the Moriori slave & his “go down fighting attitude.” He reluctantly attempts protect Atua from the wrath of Mr. Boerhaave & Captain Molyneaux, crafting a very convincing defense for the stowaway. I hope that this relationship between Atua and Adam Ewing will continue to develop as the story progresses.

Thanks for reading!!!