She Bit Me
Non-human characters that never let go
Stories like The Jungle Book convinced me at an early age that fictional characters don’t have to be human. Not only can places be characters, but C-3PO and R2-D2 are also characters, and now, with AI, writers can create believable HAL 9000 and Terminator characters at will. The only question is: are these types of characters deep enough to function as real influencers in the story? Do they bite you in the same way that Luke Skywalker did?
Let’s look at three different characters: a country whose people and land form the person we become growing up in it; the sea, which moulds sailors in her shape and sometimes teaches them how to survive her moods and sometimes doesn’t; and a machine, which we already know can harm or protect the people around it, and of which we’ve seen both kinds
I first encountered place as a character in Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country. I live in Toronto, Canada these days, and I read Paton’s book in 1973, aged 24, while still living in South Africa. It was the first book I’d read that made me weep. The foreword to the Scribner 1987 edition introduces Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway’s editor and one of the men who helped publish the book. He told Paton that one of the book’s most important characters was South Africa itself.
The opening lines of the book will show you why I agree with him:
THERE IS A lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.
His language is simple yet magical. When I read those opening lines again today, I was instantly transported to that same place in the hills of South Africa’s Natal province. I, too, had stood, gazing in awe over the valley of a thousand hills. Over “great hill after great hill; and beyond and behind them, the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqualand.” And on that day, I, too, had thought of music: strangely a flute playing England’s Green Fields, and even now, more than fifty years later, reading those lines again, I’m back, inhaling the dusty scent of Africa’s red earth, seeing again the black rock ridges lining rolling fields of green.
The appeal of characters, of course, isn’t tied only to their appearance, and we have had beautiful, evil witches and ugly heroes — hell, even timid lions; just ask Dorothy. My flashbacks to my homeland always contain a kaleidoscope of images of people, animals, birds, set against a backdrop of red earth and acres of golden savannah rustling in the breeze. Like any good character, Africa bit me, sank her teeth deep and will never let go. I’ve lived more than half my life in Canada, but I’m still an African.
Paton’s book inspired me to do the same: make a place a character. My second novel, The Kingdom of America, contrasts life under apartheid in South Africa with life under the Trump Regime in America. The hero is born Allan Player in Johannesburg. He spends his first 30 years growing increasingly aware of the evils of the system, protesting in more desperate ways until he assassinates one of apartheid’s architects and flees to America, where he begins a new life as Allan Pilgrim. The following extract is from Chapter Eleven and describes an event when Allan and his friends had driven to the Drakensberg Mountains, a few hours from Johannesburg. They have set up their campsite and are about to eat dinner:
The couples sat around the fire. Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence played softly from a car speaker.
The low sun shone gold. A breeze fanned the fire logs into flames. Embers popped and floated off like wooden fireflies. The scent of burning wood, vegetables, and meat thickened the air.
Allan breathed in the moist heat and remembered a book he’d read. “Come,” he said. “Might be worth taking a look.”
He stood and pulled Liz to her feet. A chorus of “What now?” greeted this, and he said, “A short walk. Come on. See what we’re fighting for.”
They reluctantly followed him back along the track they had driven earlier.
The music faded behind them, replaced by soft footfalls on the dirt and the snap of twigs. Basalt blocks on either side were blue crags in the moonlight, and the smell of damp grass deepened.
Then, they rounded a tree and stopped on the edge of the ridge.
They all inhaled. Stood still.
An indigo mist filled the valley before them. All around, green hills flowed into a sea of blue, leaving islands of rock cupping trees and proteas and soft grassy knolls. Not a breath of air.
A starling flashed by, purple wings gleaming iridescent. It cried ‘wheee-chooo,’ and the call echoed off the rock like a flute.
The couples held hands in silence. Allan took a deep breath. The stillness flowed into him, and he suddenly felt part of the rock he stood on. Solid — invincible. He said, “Everyone should see this. This is what makes the fight worthwhile.”
Then Liz whispered, “How did you know to look?”
“Cry, the Beloved Country.”
They all nodded. Alan Paton’s 1948 novel had opened Allan’s eyes to Africa’s beauty, and to the wound that was apartheid.
By now, readers of my work will know that much of it concerns the sea and sailing. For the four years I lived on my boat and sailed her about a third of the way around the earth, the sea was a powerful presence in my life. I learned to gauge her moods, to read the clouds above her to determine how hard the wind would blow and from where, to marvel, the day before Hurricane Olga almost killed me, how the Atlantic could lie as flat as Lake Ontario — a smooth sheet of blue glass — and twenty-four hours later, a raging Category One Hurricane with waves towering eighty feet above me, the wind screaming through the bare rig, raising the hairs on my neck. I learned to respect the sea at all times; to never curse her or blame her for anything, and always, always, to drink in her deep blues and bright whites and greens, staring into her for hours on end, marvelling at how changeable she could be, all the while thanking her for giving me my world.
Humanity’s Wake, my first novel, explores these ideas and introduces us to Bit-by-Bit, the hero Josh Rick’s boat. She is a 47-foot-long, 24-foot-wide, self-sustaining yacht powered solely by renewable energy systems. This passage is from Chapter One and picks up as Josh discovers they are about to meet Hurricane Olga. Here, he discusses the approaching storm with BeeBee, his boat’s nickname.
Returning to the salon, Josh says, “What’s the barometer now compared to twenty-four hours ago?”
“Down 31 millibars to 940.”
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“Holy Mother — that’s more than an inch.”
Josh exhales, his gut tightening. “Brace yourself, girl, we’re about to meet our first hurricane.”
“I was born braced, Josh. You know that.”
Josh laughs mirthlessly. “Maybe. But not for this.”
He sits at the internal helm, switches on the single-sideband radio, tunes to a weather station, and watches the computer plot Hurricane Olga’s isobars of pressure around his boat.
“Oh no… It’s going down another inch. Oh Christ, BeeBee, we are seriously fucked.”
“We’re not dead yet, Josh. To quote Hamlet: The readiness is all. Just get ready.”
Josh snorts. “Yeah, right. This is no time to play Shakespeare.”
“What about an SOS?”
“Good idea. Send our current position to the Bermudian Coast Guard. Then send an email to…”
Seconds pass.
“I’m waiting on the ‘to’…. Want me to send the SOS while you think?”
“No. Cancel.”
“Why?”
The word hangs in the air, Josh gazing at the listless sea. He draws a deep breath as the truth registers.
“No one will miss us.”
“But the contact list has more than two hundred names.”
“All weeklong acquaintances. It’s the price I pay for the freedom of you, me, and the wind and water.”
“Freedom is more than survival, isn’t it, Josh? I’m no expert, but isn’t life meant to be more than a solo journey? How do you grow without sharing it, leaving a legacy?”
“Legacy?” Josh stares, unseeing, at the sea. “The planet’s in flames. All we’re leaving is ash.”
“Your statement seems extreme.”
“Yeah, right. No one gives a shit. I can’t watch us hurl ourselves over the cliff anymore. The sea, you and me. It’s the only thing I can steer these days.”
He pauses, eyes drifting across his boat and home. “We’re sailing humanity’s wake.”
And I’m pretending I’m not alone by talking to my boat. He snaps, “BeeBee, switch to command mode.”
“Aye, sir. Buddy mode off.”
BeeBee plays a vital role in this story, literally saving the hero’s life, but her wisdom and companionship also influence Josh and his lady, Ses.
Three very different characters, then: a land, a sea, and a boat with a voice. None of them is human, and none of them is scenery. Each has moods you have to learn, each pushes back, and each leaves its mark on the people who meet it. That, I think, is what makes a character: not whether it is human or speaks, but that it can grip you, argue with you, and never quite let you go.
You can order a copy of either book in Paperback or Kindle, here…
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the%20kingdom%20of%20america%20Eric%20Goldman&i=stripbooks-intl-ship
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Humanity%27s%20Wake%20Eric%20Goldman&i=stripbooks-intl-ship
