Do we have the juice to save the planet? That was the closest I came, in my reading of Tim Winton’s 'Juice', to any hope for future generations on this planet, writes Lyn Bender.
THE STORY COMMENCES WITH an unnamed narrator travelling an endlessly bleak landscape in search of shelter.
Winton’s dedication heads the narrative:
“To those who, from the beginning, saw blood in the machine, tasted death in the air, and cried …. enough.”
And, so begins the telling of a Homeric journey in his rig of salvaged parts. Its "Juice" comes from the sun. He extracts water from the air.
The journeyman talks to a silent child, his only companion as we learn. She fails to respond other than with obedient or fearful movements and mute acquiescence.
“On and on we go, hour after hour, over country as black as the night sky across a fallen heaven, starred with eruptions of white ash and smears of milky soot that drown you in ash.”
The narrator recalls that these areas were once rich in forest with air that you might eagerly 'eat'.
When they finally reach old mine shafts, the narrator sees this as a potential sanctuary. The landscape now shows some variegated colours. It has life. But as he spots a promising shaft he encounters a hostile man armed with a bow whom he calls 'The Bowman'.
He and the girl are then imprisoned underground in the mining shaft, by this hostile man. Thus begins the long saga of how he came to this point. How this world came to an impasse.
The story he tells The Bowman has an urgency both of needing to be told and as a stay of execution.
It is a marathon — matching this lengthy book of great heaviness.
Winton wrote Juice over seven years. Through the wasted years of climate change denial – thwarting of action by fossil fuel corporations – and the deniers of former Prime Ministers Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison.
In interviews, Winton refers to the criminal neglect wrought by our politicians — the book is no disguised metaphor.
They knew, yes we knew, and we all know despite denial. We are Tim Flannery’s Future Eaters.
Even Tory PM Margaret Thatcher warned us.
The most poignant part of the book is when the narrator recalls how he was shown footage of recovered archives revealing the world as it was. The world that despite being already threatened was the beautiful environment that we now inhabit.
It was rich with a multitude of living creatures and rivers and forests — now poisoned and extinct.
It was situated some 200 years in the past – before 'The Terror' – the reader will note that we still live in this world called 'before' but beneath the Damocles Sword of a changing climate.
Are we heeding the warnings in time to save the planet? This is the ultimate rhetorical question Winton asks of our time.
The latest UN report indicates that we are far behind what is needed to keep toThe Paris Agreement goal of 1.5 temperature rise. It may seem like a small number, but each small rise can wreak enormous havoc with our hitherto sustaining climate on earth.
Winton is illustrating what life on an increasingly devastated planet would be like.
Summers would be spent underground. 'Juice' to maintain this life would be obtained from the sun. Water sourced through a water maker that pulls moisture from the air.
The gravel-voiced hero of the audio version speaks of smoking chuff. Presumably a form of dope needed to calm the constant and intense anxiety that this degraded world engenders.
There are small future communities that manage a level of cooperation — but the journeyman steers clear of others that are powered by enslavement.
As his narrative continues in an almost endless soliloquy, we learn that he has been part of the ‘Service’ operatives charged with seeking out and destroying the descendants of those who are responsible for profiting from fossil fuels and delayed action.
These are the protected profiteers’ blood line of the future eaters. These privileged descendants reside in bunkers that offer the comforts of bountiful food and even a long lifespan.
The narrator is surprised when he encounters an aged person — reflecting in wonder, that this is what an old person looks like.
Winton reveals that the price of climate change is paid for most heavily by the poor who bear the least responsibility for emissions.
As a boy, the narrator’s mother had shown him an orange, that stripped of the skin at its ringed centre represented the globally warmed earth. The cooking of the tropics meant massive displacement and death. Human Life was only possible south of Capricorn and north of Cancer.
The orange – grown underground – was a powerful image that brought Winton’s words home to me.
But now we have COP29 The Council of Parties at Azerbaijan — the President of the current COP calls gas "a gift from God".
COP29 seems to be all about the money and markets. Didn’t that bring us here in the first place?
The choice of location of COP29 has been deemed "controversial". Yet. who amongst the nations can caste the first stone regarding hypocrisy?
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has confronted this greenwashing at several COPs.
Saying that, without caring about human rights you cannot care about the planet and future generations.
Are COPs just another form of seeming to act while delaying action?
Juice is not an entertaining tale or cleverly literate distraction — or designed to sell to a consuming demographic.
It is powerful truth-telling in the tradition of George Orwell.
Winton’s words and narrative are etched across the landscape of Western Australia.
The mute traumatized orphan is future generations blighted by our consumption of their future.
The Bowman is the uncaring masses — cynical and lacking in empathy or care for others. But might he be persuaded by a man in a hole telling his story to save his life?
Winton refuses to give us fake closure.
Lyn Bender is a professional psychologist. You can follow Lyn on Twitter @Lynestel.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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