Written almost like a travel journal, "The Coming Race," is one man's journey into a civilization below the crust of our world written by Lord Lytton. The narrator is never named and the date of his travel is not important. What information we do receive as readers about the narrator, is origin of his family and the occupations and status they enjoyed. The text begins with several pages of brief explanation as to why and how the narrator journeyed toward the center of the earth with his companion the engineer. Although a troubling experience ends the life of the petty engineer, our brave narrator continues, having no other option, to explore the land below the Earth's surface. He shares amazing descriptions in long detailed sections about the setting and the "humans" he encounters, painting the most vivid of pictures for his audience. From the moment he meets them, the narrator sets himself apart for the Vril-ya by questioning its human status before settling on the idea that the first one he meets "reminded [him] of symbolical images of Genius or Demon that are seen on Etruscan vases or limmed on the walls of Eastern sepulchres ..." Our narrator acknowledges that the first human-like creature he meets has the face of the sphinx, in all its kind and intelligent beauty. Lord Lytton's tale is similar to Kipling's Jungle Book on many levels, where Mowgli would be likened to our narrator, where they were both placed (albeit accidentally) in a world unlike their own. Where Mowgli was young and impressionable, our narrator appears to be older and able to compare the world above to this world below. Both are taken in by one particular member of the important tribe, Mowgli to Mother Wolf and our narrator to Tae and his father. Both Tae and the Wolves stand against the remainder of their tribe for the safety of their guests, even in the faces of doubt and possible fear. This would place them on a level playing field, by the narrator retains his above world status, seemingly entitled to the information the Vril-ya shared with him, while never volunteering too much about his own world. In all, this near plotless text, about a man finding a world unlike his own and remaining to the learn the customs is a major been there, done that several times idea. Sure, there is a love story and the narrator attempts to teach us all that the Vril-ya, while very different, are similar to us as well. They live in a peaceful world with technology far superior to our own, but seem to draw from an origin similar to our own. That is, however, the point; they are not us and the narrator does a good job of remaining an outsider despite all attempts to bring him in. The texts ends sadly, in my opinion, with our guide having to return back to the surface without his lady love. On the bright side, the society around him can benefit from knowing that although the people from other countries and, possibly, other worlds may seem different from us because of how far away they live, we are all cut from the same cloth and stand to learn from them.
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First of all, I totally disagree that The Coming Race was written like a travel journal. It's written like a documentation; much of the novel is informative and scientific, albeit much of it pseudoscience.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I don't think you should title your be "They vs Us..." if you're not going to talk about it until the very end of the review. It's more about recurring themes in the texts we've read thus far. Your comparison of The Jungle Book and The Coming Race is really interesting. But you're trying to say too much in too little time, and I am left completely confused at what you're actually trying to say.
Teresha said…
ReplyDeleteI love how Brook brought out the similarities of The Coming Race and The Jungle Books. I would have never caught on to it because I was distracted and disappointed by Race not have a plot. My contemporary reader perspective is not conditioned to following a story with no plot; I’m accustomed to the author having some type of storyline, even if they are using a character such as Tom in Waterbabies, or Emma in Madam Bovary as the vehicle to talk about all this interesting stuff. Brook’s review put a lot of things into perspective for me. Also, the idea of the “They vs. Us” is interesting. I definitely felt the vibe of “the other” throughout the text, yet since the Vril-ya are “seemingly” prefect society it was refreshing for the author to take another route by portraying “the other” as someone not feared or threatening.
The “they vs. us questions” is important to the Coming Race, as in class we found ourselves trying to relate to a particular side. This was the same thing we did when we began with the Imperial Empire. We found the same confusion and desire to identify with one side when we read Rikki Tikki, as the reader was practically forced to believe that the “white way” was really the right way.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in the Coming Race, it is not as easy to distinguish the right way or the wrong way in terms of the Vril vs. Victorian England, and who the reader is supposed to relate to . One cannot assume that Imperialism found within the Jungle Books is what Lytton was fully advocating, but rather Lytton was warning us to be weary of our imperialistic ideas. If Imperialism expanded throughout the entire world, pretty soon all peoples would be the same, and the peoples of the world would begin to lose much of their ambition, as the Vril-ya did. It seemed to be in a permanent state of the Dark Ages. This is why as Freddie says in her post that the perfect society of the Vril is “without any conflicts, wars, or ambitions to entertain”, making the Vril seem like a very dull people.
And yet, in order to avoid being Vril-like, conflicts and wars are often great motivators for new ideas, showing ambition and a desire to help society prosper. So if a single nation or people conquers the entire world, then the world could really be like that of the Vril.