Jungle—the Garden of Eden in Sab
...t, when he drags himself “along the ground” and “lying [lies] flat on the earth,” he can “fix […] eyes and…heart on Carlota” under the bath of the moonlight and feels his heart “about to burst” with love (101). Hence, darkness and nature is not a forbidding image to Sab as to the other Europeans in Heart of Darkness and Castaways, it is actually a camouflage that allows Sab to expose his emotions without getting denunciation from the cruel reality. Denied and banished by the whites due to his race and status, Sab shows his longing toward the jungle because jungle is the place where racial difference does not exits and therefore gives him freedom to live and to love. Sab thinks that Carlota will be “no less lovely” if her skin “were black or copper” (74). Hence, he indicates that one’s race should not determine one’s rights of loving somebody or being loved. Yet in white European dominated society, one’s race is the factor that decides everything, and Sab’s skin color and status forbid him on every aspect. Jungle, on the other hand, does not have such limitations for him. In nature, there is no racism and slavery because “nature has not been any less […] mother” (97) to blacks than to whites. Since Sab is a slave and inferior to the Europeans, he wishes that Carlota were born with him “in the burning deserts of Africa or in some unknown corner of America” (74) where the social rules do not apply, so “he would have both a homeland and love” (107). While to the Europeans in Heart of Darkness and Castaways, the “civilized” society gives them protections and comforts, and the jungle gives them difficulties and restrictions, it is the opposite for Sab. He wants to “snatch Carlota from her father’s arms, to tear her away from this society which comes between the two of us [them],” and “to flee into the wild” (99) where “love is eternal and happiness is boundless” (100). Sab’s desire of escaping from the social injustice and inferiority lets him has longing toward the jungle and sees it as a shelter and a home for people like him who are lowered and suppressed by human society. In the jungle Sab finds equality and companionship that he desires, while “among men” he has “failed to find the great harmony that God has established in nature” (141). When Sab meets Teresa at night, it takes place in the jungle, near “the riverbank, in back of the southern cane fields” (90). There, for the first time it is possible for Sab to freely express his love toward Carlota and his hatred toward European society’s injustice. It certainly will be impossible for him to have such a conversation with Teresa if he is in European society. In nature, the normally cold-hearted Teresa also opened up her heart for the first time to express her feelings. Both of them realize that their “destinies touch” and their “fate will be the same” (95) even though Sab is a man of color and Teresa is white. Furthermore, Teresa puts herself in an equal position with Sab when she says, “I am that woman which entrusts herself to you […] I will be your friend, your companion, you sister!”(108) All of the companionship between Sab and Teresa is formed under the setting of the jungle, which is described in a heavenly tone: It was a beautiful night in the tropics: the firmament shone, picked out with stars, the breeze whispered in the immense cane fields, and an infinite number of cocuyos stood out against the dark green of the trees; […] The solemn quiet of midnight was broken only by the melancholy rippling of the waters of the Tinima, which glided along among blue and white boulders at the edge of the cane fields and watered the wildflowers which adorned its solitary blanks. (95) Here the reader can see that the “human society has not imitated the equality of our common mother who has told them in vain” that all people “are bothers” (97) regardless on the color of the skins; the Eden-like background of the jungle and nature, on the other hand, symbolically brings back the equality of mankind to Sab through his association with Teresa, and let him experience the kinship which he would not experience among the majority Europeans in “human society.” To Sab, the jungle is not only a place that can give him protection and freedom, or a place that allows him to find equality and companion; moreover, it is also a place that reverses the role of being superior and inferior. When Carlota’s lover Enrique Otway feels the urge of “pressing matters of business” (44), he insists on traveling through the wild to go to his business regardless on the stormy weather. Like the majority Europeans in Castaways, Enrique’s greed makes him only focus on making money and ignores his ignorance toward nature and absence of handling the physical hardship in the jungle. As a result, going against the power of the nature, he strikes “his head against the branches and severely jolted [jolts]” by his horse while he is crossing the jungle where “lightning described [describes] a thousand fiery angles […] and the burning atmosphere was [is] like a huge conflagration.” When he is “bloodied and unconscious” in “the deepest part of the forest,” Sab was the only person there who can either help him or kill him. Here the reader can see that the role of being superior and inferior is switched. In the forest, the man that Sab loathes yet has to obey in the European society is now “at my [his] feet” and needs his pity to survive. Outside of the jungle, only the whites have the right to decide slaves’ life and death. Now inside nature, it depends on the slave that whether Enrique should live or die since he and Enrique are “alone in the night and the storm,” and “no one could ever tell if his [Enrique’s] head had been shattered by the fall or whether the hand of an enemy had finished the deed” (50). Although the jungle here seems dark and dangerous for Enrique and limits him physically, it actually becomes a positive force for Sab that gives him great advantage and authority. A slave and a mulatto like Sab, whose position is normally suppressed and degraded in society, can actually overpower the European in the presents of the jungle. Carlota’s position in society although is the opposite as Sab’s, same as him, she is suppressed and limited because she cannot have free will in term of love. Growing up in a highly ranked family under very comfortable conditions, she enjoys “the advantages of wealth without knowing their price: she had [has] no idea of the effort involved in obtaining it” (136). Therefore, she does not have much interest or desire toward wealth and power since she already has it all. Instead, what is more important in her life is love because love is something that she has never experienced before and she loves Enrique “with all the illusion of a first love” (37). She believes that “there will be no greater riches than […] gratitude and […] love” and as long as she has Enrique it does not matter to be less wealthy because they would not be less happy because of it (57). Her naiveté also allows her “convinced [convinces] herself that her husband [Enrique] would think the same way she did [does]” (136). However, Enrique does not love Carlota as much as Carlota loves him (89). To him, “everything else disappeared [disappears] or succumbed [succumbs] to […] the desire for wealth,” includes love (115). For that reason, he is “more occupied with his fortune than with his love” and takes frequent business trips (136). Although Carlota does not recognize Enrique’s evil nature from the beginning, she nevertheless feels the limitations of her spirituality....