Not Wanted on the Voyage

Lydia Burton was an editor and writer living in Toronto, and was co-author of Editing Canadian English.

Findley has recreated the myth of the Flood in a genuinely original work. He has succeeded brilliantly in individualizing some stock characters of biblical tradition, as well as in inventing some of the most remarkable, unwhimsical, and consequently believable talking animals imaginable.

Book One describes the rural domain of Dr. Noah Noyes and his wife and sons. Agriculture and domestic life are medieval in style. Outside this estate, more ancient religious and primitive customs prevail, while distant Cities seethe with a degenerating humankind. To visit his 600-year-old friend Noah comes twice-older Yaweh (God), a weary, doddering old man, disillusioned and disappointed in the creatures of his invention: “What have we done, that man should treat us thus?” Yaweh’s all-male entourage is like the remnants of a bedraggled circus run out of town. It is clear that Yaweh means to punish earthly beings for their conceits and rejection by destroying the world. An ark will be the instrument of salvation for a chosen few humans and beasts — and Noah the recipient of Yaweh’s directives.

Book Two concerns building the ark, the process of which further demonstrates the tyrannical, ritualistic extravagance of Noah and the pragmatic, humanistic disposition of gin-tippling Mrs. Noyes. The symbolism of whom Noah selects to go on the voyage is significant. Mrs. Noyes’s favourite animal, the old, half-blind cat Mottyl, is rejected. The faeries of the woods (revealed only as skimming, shining lights), fleeing the devastation and flooding of the land, also find the doors barred. Mottyl is covertly brought aboard, but the faeries, representing magical joyousness, perish forever from the world.

In Book Three, the miserable conditions of life on the ark serve to define the haves and have nots and to prepare the way for revolution. Dr. Noyes, sons Shem and Japeth, and Shem’s strange wife Hannah make up the elite first class. Emma (Japeth’s simple child wife) is prisoner above deck, longing to be below. Steerage class includes Mrs. Noyes, son Ham and wife Lucy (a wonderful character: Lucifer in drag), all drudges of the ark. Below deck, too, are all the animals, birds, and reptiles, barely surviving the most abysmal conditions.

Book Four confirms the irreconcilable conflicts between these two groups and Noah’s growing fear that he has been abandoned by God (resulting in intensification of his authoritarianism and mad ritual activities). The doomed voyage will go on forever, a continual struggle between the two factions, sometimes interrupted by exhausted peace (the calm after many storms). With this, there will be a further erosion of beauty and joy, especially among the less fortunate.

In mixing varied historical periods with modern psychology and ancient magic, Latin liturgies and rabbinical scholars with English folk songs, and sophisticated contemporary dialogue and sensibilities with artless emotions, Findley has created such vivid images that this apocalyptic vision of world “survival” resonates with a most astounding vitality and credibility, even while being suffused with a profound sadness. A masterly work.