The Encantadas

Here Enviro-Melville analyzes the most distinctive piece of the four Melville works that have ecocritical themes. While Typee, Moby-Dick and Redburn are all nautical narratives of sorts with some aspect of adventure imbedded in the plot, “The Encantadas” strays completely from this genre. This work is actually a collection of ten short essays that Melville published during his visit to the Galápagos Islands. There are no tales of adventure or life at sea in these works; instead, they consist of expository reflections on things such as the beautiful environment, animals, and nature of the islands. Amidst these reflections is a pro-environmental tone that can be extracted from Melville’s awe at the wonder and beauty of the nature of this mystical land that he has happened upon.

Natural Setting

"It is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can...furnish a parallel to this group." (182)

The setting for “The Encantadas” is similar to that of Typee in that it is completely untouched (or as Melville would maybe rather label it: “unharmed”) by Western civilization. The Galápagos Islands were a remote and primarily unvisited area in the mid-1800s: Charles Darwin had visited the cluster a few years before Melville and had similar reactions to the isolated, beautiful nature that existed there. Melville is amazed at the “starkness and desolation” of the islands and develops an ecocritical attitude that analyzes the beneficial impact of such a lack of humanity (Azzarello 62). In other words, the fact that the islands are untouched is what makes them beautiful – “their otherness is intensified to its limit,” and this makes them enchanting – hence the name “Encantadas,” which is Spanish for enchanted (Azzarello 62).

As is the case with Typee, being removed from human touch is a good thing according to Melville’s stance. He is amazed at how beautiful this place is – not just in its vibrant colors and odd life forms (we’ll discuss animals in a bit), but also its simple starkness and desolation. He comments on how the landscape often looks like the remnants of a destructive fire that left the land as a “fallen one,” filled with desolate decay (“The Encantadas” 183). He says that “it is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in its desolateness, furnish a parallel to this group” of islands (“The Encantadas” 182). This shows his fascination with the “abandoned” bubbles of land that he says “awaken in us some thoughts of sympathy” toward nature as a whole (182). Look at the beautiful things that can spring up from nature when humankind avoids intervention.

Isolation = Changeless

One of the primary themes in environmental activism these days is an eternal conservationism for the Earth – in other words, an effort never to have anything change. Environmentalists want to preserve nature and its natural structures as long as possible (ideally for eternity). While analyzing the setting of the Galápagos, Melville makes numerous comments about how unchangeable the islands are. He says that the islands have a “special curse” “which exalts them in desolation… (where) change never comes; neither the change of seasons nor of sorrows. Cut by the Equator, they know not autumn, and they know not spring” (Melville 182). These islands, according to Melville, are so well preserved and isolated that they will never change. Unless mankind decides that the Galápagos are the next location of some sort of settlement (which will probably end up in alteration of the land), they shall remain unchanged in every way possible. No landscape deformity, no seasonal change, and (apparently) no life form change either…which leads us into our next examination.

Animal Life

The animal life on the Galápagos Islands (led by the tortoise) fascinates Melville. He finds the tortoise to be a creature unlike anything he has ever seen before, possessing a “queerness of the other-than-human world” that critic Robert Azzarello keys in on in his book Queer Environmentality, where he also examines “The Encantadas” from an environmental perspective. He comments that Melville’s writing on tortoises seems to suggest that they show a “circumvention of time” with their prehistoric designs and slow-moving mannerisms that would never allow them to survive in an environment other than the isolated Galápagos. From these comments, Azzarello deduces that Melville is encouraging humanity to appreciate the natural, detached elements of life by offering appreciation for an animal that serves no real use for the human race. With this lens in mind, we move into our final inspection of the environmental element of “The Encantadas.”

Be Here Now

Melville’s overarching theme in this piece is his encouragement to humanity to live apart from materialistic desires as well as understand their responsibility for their impact on the environment. Philosopher Steven Vogel was once quoted as saying, “To view the environment as socially constructed is to see it as something for which we are literally responsible; it is in this recognition of our inextricable connection to and responsibility for the world we inhabit” (Vogel 10). It is through this mindset that Melville appears to have viewed the world. He understands the necessity for humans to realize that they are responsible for the development, maintenance, and/or destruction of nature. According to Azzarello, “The Encantadas” is “unique in its focused meitation on life completely detached from human intervention,” and Melville’s “chief concern is the subjective experience of being-in-the-world, the interaction between environment, mind, and body” (75).

Understanding the necessity of being in the moment is what many environmentalists today preach as the imperative mentality through which humanity must live in order to be a sustainable species. By living in the moment, appreciating what each moment and place (such as the Galápagos Islands) has to offer, and accepting full responsibility for the upkeep of such places, humanity can achieve environmental sustainability to the best of our capabilities.

NEXT: CLOSING

Images from top to bottom:

- Script cover of Encantadas (cited work from Piazza Tales) http://i.ytimg.com/vi/WjGH-ipSMcw/hqdefault.jpg

- Aerial shot of Galápagos Islands http://www.atlanticadventuredivers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Darwin1.jpg

- Galápagos tortoise http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/galapagos-tortoise/