Opinion
Hello, Martians. Let Moby-Dick Explain
By MARGARET ATWOOD
Published: April 28, 2012
LAST night the Martians touched down in the backyard. They were oval and bright pink, with two antlike antennae topped by eyes fringed with sea-anemone lashes. They said they’d come to study America.
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Mari KanstadJohnsen
“Why ask me?” I said. “America is farther south.”
“You are an observer,” they said. “Please tell us: Does America have a different ‘flavor’ from that of other countries? Is it the center of the cultural world? How does it look to outsiders?”
“America has always been different from Europe,” I said, “having begun as a utopian religious community. Some have seen it as a dream world where you can be what you choose, others as a mirage that lures, exploits and disappoints. Some see it as a land of spiritual potential, others as a place of crass and vulgar materialism. Some see it as a mecca for creative entrepreneurs, others as a corporate oligarchy where the big eat the small and inventions helpful to the world are stifled. Some see it as the home of freedom of expression, others as a land of timorous conformity and mob-opinion rule.”
“Thank you,” said the Martians, after looking up “thank you” on translate.google.com™. “How may we best discover the essence of America?”
“Through its literature, would be my choice,” I said, “but I’m biased.”
“O.K.,” said the Martians. “What should we read first? Can we have marshmallows?”
“Let’s start with two stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne,” I said. “‘The Maypole of Merry Mount,’ and ‘Young Goodman Brown.’ Here are your marshmallows.”
Their pink antennae waved excitedly. They stored away the marshmallows as rare American artifacts. Then they read the stories, very quickly, as Martians do. “What do these mean to contemporary America?” they asked.
“In ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount,’” I said, “some people having a fun party in the woods are disrupted by the Puritans, who consider them immoral. Both groups have come to America in search of ‘freedom.’ The Merry Mounters interpret ‘freedom’ as sexual and individual freedom, the Puritans as freedom to practice their own religion while outlawing the behavior of others. This fight is still going on in America: the same issues come up in every election. In my novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’” I added modestly, “I’ve included them as ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from.’”
“We took that in high school,” said the Martians. “What about ‘Young Goodman Brown?’”
“So, in ‘Young Goodman Brown,’” I said, “this Puritan goes for a walk at night and discovers that all his neighbors and relations — including his young wife, Faith — are members of a satanic witchcraft group. He wakes up in the morning wondering if he’s had a bad dream. But ever afterward he distrusts the neighbors; and so do all Americans, because how do you know whether the neighbors are who they claim to be? Every once in a while America has a Salem-style witch hunt, during which hysteria takes over and people are tagged with the satanic label of the moment. Right now it’s mostly ‘terrorism,’ though in some quarters it’s ‘liberalism’ or even ‘evil-green-dragon environmentalism.’”
The Martians decided to eat one marshmallow each to see what it tasted like. Their mouths were underneath: they dealt with food by hopping onto it. “Can we have popcorn now? Orville Redenbacher’s?™ they said. “And a Coke?™”
“How do you know about those things?” I said.
“We watch American TV and Internet,” they said, “like everyone else in the universe. Though American cultural hegemony is slipping, we perceive: newly rich countries such as India and Brazil have developed their own mass media. Also, America’s promise of democracy and egalitarianism — the mainstay of its cultural capital, widely understood — is being squandered. America is viewed as riddled with internal contradictions, what with vote suppression, the economic inequality protested by Occupy Wall Street, the impact of the mortgage meltdown, and the public’s loss of confidence in political institutions. So, the popcorn? We can do the microwaving.” They took out their ray guns.
“After you’ve read the next book,” I said. “It’s Melville’s ‘Moby-Dick.’”
The Martians riffled through Moby-Dick at top speed. Then they consulted translate.google.com™ for an expression that would best convey their reaction. “Holy crap!” they said. “Does this mean what we think it means?” they said.
“What do you think it means?” I said. “I’ll do the popcorn myself: you might get the wavelength wrong.”
“‘Moby-Dick’ is about the oil industry,” they said. “And the Ship of American State. The owners of the Pequod are rapacious and stingy religious hypocrites. The ship’s business is to butcher whales and turn them into an industrial energy product. The mates are the middle management. The harpooners, who are from races colonized by America one way or another, are supplying the expert tech labor. Elijah the prophet — from the American artist caste — foretells the Pequod’s doom, which comes about because the chief executive, Ahab, is a megalomaniac who wants to annihilate nature.
“Nature is symbolized by a big white whale, which has interfered with Ahab’s personal freedom by biting off his leg and refusing to be slaughtered and boiled. The narrator, Ishmael, represents journalists; his job is to warn America that it’s controlled by psychotics who will destroy it, because they hate the natural world and don’t grasp the fact that without it they will die. That’s enough literature for now. Can we have popcorn?”
After inhaling the popcorn, they slurped up their Cokes™, then asked me to take an Instagram™ on their cellphones of them with the bottles.
“Now we are going to Las Vegas to do some gambling,” they said, “because it’s a very American thing. After that we will buzz the Grand Canyon, and then we’ll go to the Boot Hill Museum in Kansas and get pictures of ourselves dressed as Wild West cowboys and honky-tonk floozies.”
“I think you should be careful,” I said.
“Why?” the Martians asked.
“Forgive me for pointing this out, but you look a lot like diagrams of the human female uterus,” I said. “Complete with fallopian tubes and ovaries.”
A human being might be insulted to be told this, but it didn’t seem to bother the Martians. Having looked up “uterus” on translate.google.com™, they said, “Isn’t the uterus a good thing? The life force and so on?”
“In some parts of America,” I said, “the men are obsessed with uteri. They feel that having one is potentially demonic. It’s a hangover from ‘Young Goodman Brown.’ If they saw you hopping around — worse still, eating popcorn — they’d go completely berserk, and pronounce you pregnant, and put you in jail.”
“Maybe we will go to Radio City Music Hall instead,” the Martians said.
“Good choice,” I said. “You won’t stand out in New York, or not much. If anyone bothers you, accuse them of being specist. Throw in that you’re vegans.”
“O.K.,” they said. “When we get back to Mars, we will start an American book club. We wish to read David Foster Wallace, not to mention Edith Wharton and Raymond Carver and tons of others. It is the writers who convey the inner truth about a nation, despite themselves, yes? Will you join us on video?”
“A pleasure,” I said. “Any reader is a friend of mine.”