Master has encouraged me to begin keeping a journal as a way to properly organize my thoughts and to better my English. I have been in his company in this place for a full two seasons and I still cannot decide how I feel about life here. While the work to sustain the food supply and shelter for the both of us is difficult, it is not much more difficult than the tasks I was required to perform in order to keep the tribe safe and fed back in my home.
I am grateful that the Master has not realized the great number of fish that can be caught and eaten just offshore of this place. Casting the great nets had always been my least favorite task of all that needed to be performed in the village. I am thankful that I need never draw back those nets again. It was an incredibly dangerous job and I am glad to be rid of it.
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They used to forbid us from spending much time in this place. It was said to be a place of spirits, that the revenants of those sacrificed here roamed and preyed upon one another like wild beasts and that our only recourse was to bring more souls to satisfy them and keep them from leaving the island to search out their own sustenance in our homes.
I think that is why Master triumphed over the party of my fellows so easily. When he approached they surely thought him a specter and fled for their lives. However, I think the Master supposes that it was through his sheer military prowess that he was able to best them. I suppose I shall allow him to think this, it would do me little good to shatter his self-image so harshly.
The island (which we had always referred to as “The Green Death”) is nowhere near as frightening or horrible a place as I had been told as a child. Food is plentiful and the weather is no worse than it had been in my home. We had been taught that the gate to the underworld lies near the center of the island, but in my searching I have not found anything to confirm this myth. Perhaps it is beneath the island rather than merely at the center of it?
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Master has begun to instruct me in the ways of his own beliefs; however, they are contradictory and confusing. Questions that seem to have no answers arise. We have always been taught that the world beyond this one is a shifting place with many gods, spirits, and other beings, and that they have a direct effect on the events of this world. However, Master explains that this is not true, that there is but one god who is all powerful and that he remains removed from this world in the skies. He says that all the evil in the world is also from one force.
However, if this god is all powerful, and so good, then why does he not simply destroy the evil in the world?
Master says he is incapable of teaching me, that he needs someone better versed in the ways of teaching and instructing belief to properly explain to me what happens when we pass on from this world to the next.
It is the first time he has admitted that something exists beyond his capabilities.
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Master’s words on his beliefs still trouble me. I find my mind going back to them in my idle hours, turning them over again and again. There are many times I have felt the spirits of my ancestors intervene and aid me during my life with my tribe. And we know of great many evils perpetrated by men, can they really all come from one source? This strange thing he calls “sin?”
I suppose I will have to wait until we can talk to someone better versed in the instruction of his faith to have my questions answered. Still, that does little to help me now, when I cannot bring my attention away from these questions that nag at the back of my mind.
I suppose it’s something to think about during my work hours. I’m grateful for the distraction.
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This is very good, Fio. I especially like the way in which you carve out a self for Friday that is distinct from the one Crusoe imposes on him. Friday's past beliefs mingle in interesting and complex ways with the ones he is forming on the island; he maintains a distance from both selves--from both sets of belief--as a Pyrrhonian skeptic might. In consequence, he seems more enlightened than his European "master."
ReplyDeleteFriday's use of "revenant" may be a tad too arch, though it is funny. Is "I try not to learn" (in the third entry) a slip of the pen on Friday's part?
It may be, but I thought his people would have a very specific word for what I was trying to imply in their language and was dissatisfied with the words I invented in order to fill that niche, so I went with the closest English substitute.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for that slip of the pen, it is indeed a mistake, though I cannot for the life of me remember what I was trying to say when I made that type.