“We all come from the sea, but we are not all of the sea. Those of us who are, we children of the tides, must return to it again and again, until the day we don’t come back leaving behind only that which was touched along the way”
For (eons)aeons humans have been drawn to the sea. As many times as we trekked across the alpine mountains and flat plateau we were always ended up back at the sea. But the sea is much more than just what we see, the sea, and indeed all other bodies of water, is a metaphor for human ambition. No matter what and no matter when humans seem to always be drawn to wanting something more and the more they want the more challenge wants in return. Today I will be speaking about this idea and using the metaphorical representation of water in four different texts to aide me. These texts are Chasing Mavericks kario salem, Gattaca, Macbeth and We are the champions.
Lets start of with a movie that is all about water! Chasing mavericks is a film about a fifteen year old surfer, Jay Moriarity, who discovers that the legendary big wave surf spot mavericks is not only real but twelve kilometers away. Throughout the film as Jay trains to take the drop on mavericks, he struggles to come to terms with several things.
A dad who left when he was young, leaving him to look after his mentally unwell mother.
A passionate love for a girl the year above him.
A manipulative and trustless drug dealer as his only friend.
In the conclusion of the movie jay does own up and face everything, he writes in a letter to his mentor frosty
“The truth is I am afraid. I’m afraid I’ll never see my dad again and that my mum will never find happiness. I’m afraid of losing kim as she’s the love of my life …and it made me realize that’s not what I want to leave behind…which is why I wanna take that drop, why I have to”.
Jay use’s mavericks as a metaphor inside his mind. He really believes that once he takes that drop some switch will flip and everything will be okay again. It is his life’s challenge and life’s ambition in one massive powerful wall of wavering water.
Whilst the movie gattaca is not about surfing or conquering waves as such there are two extremely important scenes that feature the main character vincent and his genetically superior brother “swimming off” seeing who could swim the furthest out into the churning waves before turning back. Slightly differently to chasing mavericks again however the characters do not use this swim on their heads as a metaphorical boundary or crossing, it is the filmmaker, andrew niccol, who use this swim as a metaphor to show vincents dire and burning ambition to lead a space mission no matter what the cost. In the finale swim vincent yells out to his brother over the pounding waves…
“You wanna know how I did it? This is how I did it antione I never saved anything for the swim back!”
This quote shows perfectly how committed vincent is to achieving his ambition and his utter desire to succeed and overcome any challenge that gets put in his way.
Now let’s talk about a play that is set in the middle of scotland somewhere far away from the warm sea and surf. At the end of the play we come to see macbeth as an evil man seething and full of dire cruelty and incapable of love. However this is simply what he has become. He used to be a noble man of true honor and valour but pressure from his wife to commit terrible crimes forced him to turn into something he isn’t . To show MacBeths understanding of this event Shakespear writes him the line “But here upon this bank and shoal of time; we would jump the life to come!’
He compares MacBeth’s dilemma to that of the damned souls of the ancient greek who had to cross the river Styx to reach hell on the other side. It is a metaphor showing he is challenged by the idea of killing his king. Macbeth “waides into the river styx and becomes taken in its water” he faces his challenge and kills the king and in doing so he achieve his ambition.
My final piece of literature to help me in this study is we are the champions a song by the british band Queen. In this day and age song lyrics are not always given the attention they deserve. However this wasn’t the case with Queen. Queen as a band was a prime example of strong lyrics. In the second verse of we are the champions lead singer freddie mercury sung “but it’s been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise i consider it a challenge before all human race and i’m gonna lose”
Not only do these two bars rhyme but they include a sea metaphor.
The words pleasure cruise bring to the head an image of a large plush pleasure yacht making its way through fine weather. Opposingly if its been “no pleasure cruise” then it brings to mind an image of a rundown single hull pulling and heaving its way through monster waves. This image is what freddie mercury is using to represent the challenges that the band have had on their way up to their ultimate ambition of touring the world playing their music.
In conclusion macbeth may be something were forced to read. We are the champions may be an outdated song of last generation. Gattaca a movie we all only watched because our teacher told us it was easy credits and Chasing Mavericks a movie about potheads and ditching class to surf. It doesn’t change the fact that the sea metaphors in these scripts can and do teach us a very important lesson we can all take away. Ambition is like Newton’s law of physics, “every ambition has an equal and opposite challenge”. Challenge and Ambition are symbiotic! So when you leave this class be prepared know your ambition and face your challenge. Remember everyone wants happiness, nobody wants pain but you can’t have a rainbow without a little rain.
Thank You