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  • Sinéad Moriarty

Imagining Antarctica in Literature for Children


Antarctica Books for Children

With this post we welcome Dr. Sinéad Moriarty of Trinity College, Dublin and University of Roehampton, London, to outline her study of Antarctica in British Children’s Literature, in which she explores over a century of literary representations of Antarctica for child readers. Using Antarctica as a case study, she examines how the ‘wild’ space of Antarctica is used to reflect heroic masculinity in ‘Heroic Era’ narratives for child readers in the early twentieth century. And while contemporary attitudes towards the Antarctic wilderness have shifted toward environmental preservation, Moriarty maintains that “many contemporary texts for children continue to depict their human protagonists in opposition to or conflict with the ‘natural’ world.” In light of the increasing threat that humanity brings to these wild places, the concept of ‘survival’ takes on new meaning. Against the urgent backdrop of climate change, Moriarty’s study draws valuable attention to changes in cultural attitudes towards landscape and environment as reflected in British Children’s Literature set in the Antarctic.

 

An article published by the BBC in October 2020 describes the efforts of 28-year-old Danish man, Anders Hofman, to complete the first Ironman-distance triathlon in Antarctica. The article includes excerpts from his diaries including the entry from February 2020:


The weather window of 24-36 hours has passed and I am still here. Reduced to a walk and with the snow coming in sideways, I have had to make camp. Now, I can barely stand up outside the tent. The glacier is at the centre of a blizzard, with gusts of more than 90mph. There is nothing to do but wait. For how long, I don't know. It is no longer a race, it is survival. (Hofman in Henson, 2020, n.pag)


Hofman is part of a long line of explorers who have travelled south to the Antarctic to complete some sort of quest, often a feat of endurance, sometimes quests for scientific knowledge, and for several years at the turn of the twentieth century the quest was to reach the South Pole.


Detailing Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton’s efforts to reach the South Pole on his 1907-09 Nimrod expedition, J. Kennedy Maclean in his 1910 book for children Heroes of the Polar Seas similarly quotes from Shackleton’s diaries. The explorer exclaims:


The scene about us is the same as we have seen for many a day, and shall see for many a day to come - a scene so wildly and awfully desolate that it cannot fail to impress one with gloomy thoughts ... We see only a few miles of ruffled snow bounded by a vague, wavy horizon; but we know that beyond that horizon are hundreds, and even thousands of miles which can offer no change to the weary eye, while on the vast expanse that one's mind conceives one known that there is neither tree nor shrub, nor any living thing, nor even inanimate rock - nothing but this for countless years, and it will be so for countless more. And we, little human insects, have started to crawl over this awful desert, and are now bent on crawling back again."' (Shackleton in Kennedy Maclean, 1910, pp.348-9).


In so many of these expeditions to the Antarctic, whether they be in 1907 or 2020, the Antarctic is the opponent against whom the explorer sets themselves, the enemy they must defeat to complete their task.


Shackleton was part of what is known as the ‘Heroic Era’ of Antarctic exploration. Prominent figures such as Roald Amundsen (the Norwegian explorer who led the first team to reach the South Pole), Douglas Mawson, William Speirs Bruce and Robert F. Scott. As Kennedy Maclean’s text demonstrates, books were being written for children about Antarctic exploration as early as the first decade of the twentieth century. Stories about the Antarctic have been enduringly popular in British literature for children. The centenaries of many prominent expeditions have occurred in the past decade, including the centenary of Robert Scott’s disastrous 1910-1913 Terra Nova expedition during which he and four other colleagues died on their return from the Pole. These anniversaries have prompted an increase in publication of books for children, particularly about Scott and his great rival Shackleton and their various efforts to reach the South Pole.


These are almost invariably hero narratives, often indicated in their titles which describe the stories as ‘great,’ ‘incredible,’ and ‘amazing.’ For over a century this genre of writing for children about the Antarctic – ‘Heroic Era’ narratives for children – has been perpetuating the idea that humans exist in opposition to the world around us, that we must battle to ‘overcome’ or ‘conquer’ the ‘natural’ world. These stories have also reasserted the dominance of the British Empire, implicitly celebrating imperial expeditions, and memorialising national heroes who aimed to continue the expansion of empire.


Yet while these stories may be some of the most numerous written for children about the Antarctic, they are by no means the only types of books available about the continent. Antarctica in British Children’s Literature explores a century of writing about the Antarctic for child readers. I examine the earliest stories for children about Antarctica; whaling narratives, featuring young boys who join whaling crews to hunt ever diminishing whale populations in the Antarctic. I analyse ‘Heroic Era’ narratives, and the ways in which the landscape comes to be humanised and vilified in these texts, seen as an enemy that must be violently subdued, but also how newer texts have challenged or subverted these narratives. I explore the fantasy and adventure literature written about the Antarctic, from Biggles adventures in the continent to horror and science fiction writing which imagines whole civilizations hidden under the Antarctic ice. These are stories which build on the long history of fantasy writing about Antarctica and I trace how foundational texts like Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (1798) and Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) have influenced the literature written for child readers about this continent. I also look at newer genres of writing for children about Antarctica including animal picturebooks for young readers and explicitly environmental texts.


Every year there are a number of news stories which describe the efforts of adventurers or sports people like Hofman to complete new feats of endurance in the Antarctic. But more often, when Antarctica appears in the news now it is because we have passed some new and awful threshold. In October 2020 the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica was reported to be bigger than it has been for 15 years. At the end of October 2020 the Convention of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) concluded with the failure of delegates to approve the creation of three marine protected areas in Antarctic seas. There are texts for children which reflect the urgency of this climate crisis, and others which offer radically different portraits of the Antarctic for children than those present in ‘Heroic Era’ or adventure stories. These are often texts which focus on the indigenous wildlife of Antarctica, and which critique the exploitative attitudes that humans have so long demonstrated towards nature.


Antarctica in British Children’s Literature charts the different ways that authors have been imagining the Antarctic for children for over a century, digging into archives to discover forgotten texts, while also examining recent award-winning books like William Grill’s Shackleton’s Journey (2014). The text is based on the premise that how we talk and write about landscapes matters, and that examining cultural views of ‘wilderness’ – those places that are not always so conducive to human habitation, that have been vilified and repeatedly ‘conquered’ – can provide insights into changes in cultural attitudes towards landscape and environment across time. In Antarctica in British Children’s Literature I argue that there is not a simple movement from an ambivalent or hostile attitude towards ‘wild’ places to a comparatively reverent approach, and that instead, many contemporary texts for children continue to depict their human protagonists in opposition to or conflict with the ‘natural’ world. The text demonstrates how we are, and speculates on perhaps how we could or should be, representing ‘wild’ places at a time when these spaces are facing increasing threat. In describing his efforts to complete an Ironman-distance triathlon in Antarctica, Hofman writes that ‘It is no longer a race, it is survival’; yet Hofman, with his large support team, his photographers, his two support boats, was always likely to survive. The survival of the landscapes he travelled through, on the other hand, is much less certain.


REFERENCES

Baker, Aryn (2020), ‘The Antarctic Ocean Is in Climate Crisis. This Week, the World Could Take a Big Step Towards Protecting Its Future’, Time Magazine. https://time.com/5900744/marine-protected-area-antarctica/


Henson, Mike (2020), ‘Project Iceman: Anders Hofman and Antarctica's first Ironman-distance triathlon’, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/sport/triathlon/54530301


Kennedy Maclean, J., (1910) Heroes of the Polar Seas: a record of the exploration in the Arctic and Antarctic seas, London: W &R Chambers Ltd.


 


Sinéad Moriarty

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sinéad Moriarty is a Teaching Fellow in Children’s Literature at Trinity College, Dublin and a Research Fellow at the National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature at the University of Roehampton, London. Her first monograph Antarctica in Children’s Literature will be published by Routledge in December 2020. She has published on topics including environmental picturebooks for children, the problematics of maps in children’s books, and twentieth century Robinsonades.

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