From One Leviathan to Another: The Transfer of Consciousness and Country

In James Cameron’s ‘Avatar,’ the main character Jake Sully, for sake of time, leaves the world of man behind and joins the cause of the Na’vi, an alien race (to us, at least) that are fighting off the militant threat to defend their home world. When it comes to leaving his man body behind via neural transformation or some similar process, it can be seen that he is leaving the Leviathan behind. However, I don’t think this is really the case; instead of exiting the Leviathan for good, it seems to me that he has entered a new Leviathan all together; the world of the Na’vi.

In the movie, Sully initially joins the fight for (lack of a better word) corporate greed, and sees how his services reek havoc on the planet. He then gets uplinked into a Na’vi body, lives among the local inhabitants, and has a change of heart, joining their cause. He fights against the machines of man with the beasts of the planet, and it seems as if he has defeated the enemy and has left the Leviathan.

However, by being exposed to the way of the Na’vi, by integrating into their society, by becoming ONE with the Na’vi. When it comes to the Na’vi, they use their ‘ponytails’ to connect with all living things, to conjoin, to link into a collective consciousness. When he becomes a Na’vi, he literally becomes a part of a larger whole, a piece of society that that literally is a part of a larger being. By forsaking his old body and the Leviathan of man, he becomes a part of a new Leviathan of the Na’vi and becomes a warrior to defend his new family.

Dune Buggy Rodeo (Placeholder)

In “The Meeting of the Wild Animals,” we see the said wild animals try to decide on how long winter should last, and ultimately listening to the wisdom of the porcupine and his wisdom. I believe that the characteristics exemplified by Marc Beckoff in his book “The Emotional Life of Animals,” such as cooperation, deliberation, and fairness are represented in this tale. As Beckoff states, “The origins of virtue, egalitarianism, and morality are more ancient than our species” (109), and can be clearly seen in this tale. In Indian belief, they understand that the world around them came to be through the work of spirits and animals, and often animal spirits. Within this tale in particular, we see that the animals do try to work together to achieve a mutual understanding, despite having a bit of conflict at first between the Bear and the Porcupine. Through the act of self-infliction, the porcupine fights for what he believes is the best for everyone, and the bear respects him afterwards.

However, one thing that strikes me as odd in this tale is how the Bear doesn’t just kill the Porcupine and get his way. As we saw in Aesop’s “the Frog and the Lion,” the Lion easily kills the frog with no resistance. If the Bear really wanted it his way, why didn’t he just take it? I would like to believe that, in Native American mythology, the animals really all just naturally worked well together, so as to keep the whole ecosystem in balance.

Alas, a Ribbit is not a Roar

Alejandro Joseph Serrano

There are definitely some instances of when the moral of the story in Aesop’s fables, some of which had just been shoehorned in to give the story some semblance of meaning. In one infamous fable that makes no sense, as well as the moral provided by the translator, is the fable “The Camel Who Shat in the River,” which has such a confusing message in both the original text and the included moral, that it had taken a good portion of the class to find several different layers with no real conclusion; instead, it was decided that it should be left up to interpretation. However, the fable I will discuss today will not deal with the shitting camel, but rather the fierce Lion and the little Frog, affectionately called, “The Lion and The Frog.”

 

In the story of The Lion and The Frog, the Lion hears a frog croak, and he believes it comes from a large creature. He waits so he can see the loud beast, but when he sees that it is but a small frog, he crushes it under his paw and exclaims, “So much noise from one so small!” The moral underneath then goes on to state that, “This fable applies to people who are all noise and have no substance to them.”  Now, I feel as if there are several confusing articles to this fable. First of all, it doesn’t seem like the Lion’s style to just kill another animal without the intention of eating it. As is seen in other fables, he would either kill other animals so that he may consume them or he would converse with them in a regal fashion. In the fables assigned, he has not killed a single animal without reason, except in this one.

 

Second, the moral feels as if it were a tad confusing. When the moral says it, “applies to people who are all noise and have no substance to them,” it makes it sound as if the main character of the story is the frog. However, it makes very little sense since he is only presented to the Lion for such a short time before meeting an untimely end. With such a grim demise for one croak, despite how loud it was to the lion, it has very little bearing on the story. If the Frog had more dialogue or even had more to do in the story, then maybe the fable would at least make the moral have some sense in the end.

 

In the end, although the moral of the fable did not feel as if it were a strong enough moral, it now feels also feels mildly ironic that the story is all noise with a moral to match, and yet neither has the substance to support each other.