Not Wanted on the Voyage

Related to the status quo’s upheaval, there are notable indicators of the decline of religion, as demonstrated by Yaweh’s description of the changes in how humans treat him. Where once he was lauded and magnified, he is now attacked in the streets with arrows, darts, and feces. Even in the Noyes household, and despite Noah’s intense loyalty to God, the altar is ill-used and its surrounds are notably ill-kept. The sacrifice as completed by Ham—wherein he cuts his own arm rather than kills the sacrificial lamb—demonstrates flouting the intention of the ritual, if not the letter of the law. Similarly, the first messenger—the harbinger of God’s arrival—falls at Noah’s feet and is left to die in the dirt, with no further attention given. Such carelessness, however unintentional, denotes the growing inattention to God. There is no greater metaphor than what is presented in Yaweh himself, who reeks of decay to the degree that Hannah must place potpourri around him to remove the smell while he sleeps. Prone to crying fits, the telling and retelling of thinly-veiled allusions to his unquestionable sovereignty, and a fixation on the removal of the undesirable through water, Yaweh eventually slips from using the royal “we.” The images of a god brought low by the upset of the status quo culminate with a “hollow bang” as Yaweh chooses to die.

Once dead, Yaweh no longer speaks to Noah; despite countless prayers, the Noyes family is on its own. In the absence of God, Dr. Noyes begins fashioning himself into one, granting himself an elevated title and mirroring Yaweh’s leisurely feeding of the cats, Abraham and Sarah. When things inevitably go wrong, an increasingly unhinged Dr. Noyes clings to his dominance over his family the way he always has: through the threat of force and claiming to be acting on the orders of God himself, and thus being above reproach. Without God to provide religion, Noah creates his own, inventing a new ritual to justify his glaring abuse and falsifying messages from Yaweh to maintain control. Noah even burns an image of God on his own altar, a signal that the time for worshipping Yaweh is over.

Less direct and dramatic but equally telling is the fact that Lucy’s powers are diminishing as time passes. It’s unclear whether this is the result of the flood, her fall, or the death of Yaweh. In any case, the message sent by these points, plus the deaths of the magical creatures and Yaweh himself, is clear: the old ways are dead and gone.

In order to survive the flood, characters are repeatedly forced to compromise their beliefs and autonomy for the sake of survival and relative safety. Even prior to the flood, Ham sacrifices his own blood to protect his principles and flouts his principles in order to do enough to avoid his father’s wrath. Japeth survives the attempted cannibalism through pain and suffering and is forever scarred both physically and mentally by the experience. The theme continues through the story’s progression. The ark will save them, but it is ugly and dark. Mrs. Noyes can board the ark, but only after submitting to her abusive husband’s will and not with the child she tried to save. Hannah sacrifices her sense of self, denying her own personality and mental health for the sake of ensuring her sustained favor with the man in charge. After being told that she must deny her own wishes and serve her husband to survive, Emma decides she would rather not pay the price of survival. 

Lucy details her displeasure with heaven and its “merciless light,” where all things are dull, predictable, and therefore trite to her. She has longed for a world with extremes like deserts and snow, and people with whom she can argue and debate. Lucy finds it on earth, but soon learns that the world—at least after the floods begin—is just as disappointing and flawed as the one she left. She expresses hope that she will one day find a world with a balance of light and darkness, as of yet unseen:

Where I was born, the trees were always in the sun. And I left that place because it was intolerant of rain. Now, we are in a place where there are no trees and there is only rain. And I intend to leave this place—because it is intolerant of light. Somewhere—there must be somewhere where darkness and light are reconciled. So I am starting a rumor, here and now, of yet another world. I don’t know when it will present itself—I don’t know where it will be. But—as with all those other worlds now past—when it is ready, I intend to go there (284).

This hope strikes a chord with Mrs. Noyes, who states that even if it takes 1,000 years to find such a place, she (along with Ham and Emma) wants to go with Lucy in search of it. Lucy then shares that Mrs. Noyes is finally beginning to understand the meaning of infinity. Whatever optimism the idea of a balanced world may bring is fleeting for Mrs. Noyes, who comes to the conclusion that even if there was a new world, her husband would destroy all that was good about it, as his nature will never change. He will always be a self-aggrandizing despot, eager to take life in the name of his experiments. She has no desire for him to find even a balanced world, as he would only ruin it with his cat-killing experiments and abuse. She would rather they all die on the ark and never find the balanced world than subject another a new world to her husband.