“A New Climate,” by Ben Esther, describes a mission to Mars roughly 500 years in the future. The entirety of the story takes place onboard the ship, narrated in the form of the ship’s log. Instead of showing the captain’s unfiltered thoughts, this narrative only shows the reader what he wants them to see in the form of the journal. The story ends with humanity’s efforts to save itself being in vain, as both climate change and intense nationalism prevents diverse people from cooperating. Setting, imagery, and mood in the story.
“A New Climate” takes place on the ship which is sent to save humanity. Instead of showing the reader the character’s mind, this story reveals what the character wants the reader to see through the filter of a journal. This makes it more like political commentary, as it consists mostly of the character’s thoughts on a topic, global warming. The captain recognizes that global warming is bad, and it helps exacerbate nationalism, the problem which helped start global warming in the first place. The author provides imagery to describe the ship’s trip through space, as shown in this excerpt from page 1.
At once precious and yet destroyed, It is startling how many dead, useless satellites float around the world. It is equally startling how tranquil the Earth looks from here, a blue and green orb floating in the cosmos. You see no suffering, no starving masses, and yet our fragility is more apparent than ever. Humanity has found itself trapped in an incarceration of its own making while still under siege by the rest of the universe; and only now, in the depths of despair, has it found a key.
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Describing the fragility of the Earth helps show how easy it is to destroy ourselves. The line, “Our ship glides smoothly through the dark cosmos, a solitary beam of light, illuminating a path of salvation for humanity,” displays how crucial space travel is, because it will be our only option to save ourselves if climate change continues to worsen. I chose to put the story in the future so that I could provide a lens for viewing our current world. While we are too self-involved in our day to day lives to view the bigger picture, a story set in the future allows us to view the world as a whole and our effects upon it. Just as we view the past in a different way than somebody in the past would, somebody in the future would most likely have different opinions about our actions than we do currently.
My descriptive language is intended to show both how miniscule we are on a cosmic level and also to show how bad our choices are from an environmental standpoint. An example of this is, “the Earth has long been a greenhouse, and many lands have been rendered uninhabitable. Our crew, a mere 50, carry the hopes and dreams of the copious suffering masses below.” Describing the Earth as a “greenhouse” connects the story to climate change, as global warming is also referred to as the “greenhouse effect,” and pollutants such as carbon dioxide are called “greenhouse gases.” “Copious suffering masses” shows the despair and poverty which has enveloped the Earth as the choices made in the 20th and 21st centuries return to haunt humanity.
I intended for my narrative to have a dark mood. “Copious suffering masses” is just one example of this. “Locusts fed off of the dead plants and buzzed from field to field, a dark fog gliding through the sticky air,” is another example. Locusts seem like an Old Testament kind of threat, bringing famine with them to punish the bad deeds of humanity. This adds darkness to the story. A “dark fog” also adds an overwhelming effect, and it is intended to show the helplessness of people as the aftereffects of climate change sweep over them. The mood does change, however. In the beginning of the story the captain is hopeful about his prospects. Near the end of the story, as the ship descends into chaos, he is very pessimistic.
The importance of the characters in my narrative. My narrative is has a first person point of view, as it is written with pronouns such as “I,” and “we.” While it is not showing the character’s direct thoughts, words, and actions, merely showing what the captain writes in his journal, it is still first person. I chose this format because I thought that it would be an interesting way to include some political commentary in my narrative. I would characterize Captain Washington as a smart and well-qualified man who suffers from both loneliness and the dilemma of how to effectively govern a divided crew. I included the part about loneliness to make him more human, and to leave him thinking about whether his interest in finding happiness was more important than the interests of the crew. He attempts to govern the crew, but as seen in the end of the story fails at doing his most important job because people cannot cooperate.
I chose to have the main character describe himself, which is direct characterization, but he is also indirectly characterized through his actions. The reader can see this when he repeatedly accuses Woods of sabotage. His continued accusations portray him as a very stubborn individual. He grows as the story progresses, however, as the reader can see when he says “ My guilt is crippling now that I realize that Woods did not commit the sabotage.” He learns to accept his mistakes and thus becomes a more understanding individual. While in the end he kills Richard, who was the saboteur, he is forced to do so because otherwise the mission would fail. In this way he is a dynamic character. He forces himself to realize that his point of view is not the only correct one, but it is ultimately in vain because the other crew members do not understand that.
Some secondary characters that are worth mentioning are Woods and Richard. Woods, who is the first mate, is the scapegoat of the story. Because his country is enemies with the captain’s country, the captain blames him for the sabotage. This leads to Woods’ suicide and the captain’s realization that his view is not the only one worth paying attention to, and that he has to be willing to believe other people. Richard is also worth mentioning because he is the actual saboteur. He believes strongly in his country, and when he undergoes a similar transformation to the captain in realizing that nationalism has divided the world, he responds by trying to end the mission, which could lead to humanity’s extinction. This shows how when countries close their borders and shut themselves off, it could lead to devastating after effects.
Conflict in my narrative. There are both external and internal conflicts in my narrative, the main one being external. The most apparent conflict is the external one, which is the survival of the mission. The captain must keep the crew and ship intact so that humanity can survive. Both global warming and nationalism contribute to this, the former being the reason for the mission and the latter threatening it.
The internal conflicts are the captain’s dilemma about how to govern the crew and also his decisions about how to find the saboteur and his resulting guilt. The conflict does build in my narrative, climaxing when the captain shoots Richard. In my story nationalism has gotten to the point where people cannot cooperate, which this shows. The internal conflict also has a climax near the end of the story, when the captain feels incredible guilt for his actions. I decided to drive the conflict this way because it shows how our actions now could have devastating effects in the future. I did not include a resolution because leaving that part out helps clarify my points about global warming and nationalism. Many events occur over my narrative which change the conflict. The crew begins to fall apart, which contributes to the conflict, and as tensions build back on Earth, tensions build on the ship. Woods’ suicide also greatly contributes to the internal conflict as the captain finds himself crippled by guilt: “My guilt is crippling now that I realize that Woods did not commit the sabotage.”
The plot structure of my narrative. I sequenced the events in my narrative chronologically because it is a journal. Sequencing events in a journal helped me critique our current society, in the same way in which one might critique a society in the past. As tensions rose onboard, the story got more intense as the fate of humanity hung in the balance, determined by a man who could not control his subjects.
This is eerily similar to this world today, because despite the efforts of the United Nations, world peace seems to be a mere fantasy, and I think that it will most likely be impossible to obtain. The very idea of our extinction is concerning and causes anxiety, so explaining how that could happen in my narrative contributed to the story’s tension. Making the narrative chronological allows me to build up to my climax, where the ship floats uselessly, lost, in the shadows of space, and humanity is reduced to rubble, insignificant to the universe.
