Analysis Of Goodness Not Wanted On The Voyage By Timothy Findley

Goodness Not Wanted on the Voyage

Areta Boone 100125033

Imagine the word “Good”. What the average person may see is a pure, white angel in Heaven. This vision of an angel is seen by even those who do not believe in the church. I asked ten adults from the ages of eighteen to fifty what they imagine when they hear “good”. Five were non-believers and the other five were either avid church attendees or believe in some faith. In short, eighty percent of them said that they imagine Heaven or angels. Then the question is, why do the people who don’t believe in faith still imagine “good” as Heaven? Simply because the Bible taught us to believe it. No matter if one is religious or not. It has been engraved into the human nature that the Bible represents

There are passages in the Bible that contradict even other passages that are meant to describe how one can be good enough to get to Heaven. There is no pure version of good in the world today, because good is always accompanied by evil. In the novel Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley both Christian symbols for good an evil are present in the form of Yaweh and Lucy. These characters are imitations of the Christians symbolic deity’s of God and the Devil. However, in this novel their roles in the debate of good and evil are questionable and will be discussed in this paper. Even though centuries of human nature say otherwise, the vision of good that is used today is unrealistic because good is demonstrated in the Bible as an unrealistic feat and in the novel Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy

In the book, Yaweh/God represents the evil in the people. God made people in his own image, and this book shows how human kind has corrupt his image and which is why the world needed to be purged by the flood. The book also shows how pride is a factor of human nature that can be good and evil in itself. Yaweh’s pride was damaged when his people threw eggs at his cart. This damaged pride is what lead to his decision to die and to kill of the human race at the same time. The traditional view of this timeless tale of Noah and the Ark is challenged by Findlay and the boundaries of what is considered good are pushed. The reader is shown a perspective where Yaweh, or God, is cruel and seemingly weak. While at the same time the readers are shown a version of the Devil which makes one ponder if he is so evil at all. Lucifer comes to the story in the form of Lucy and seems to have more all moral good in her than Yaweh. Her sense of graciousness and mercy comes back to the quote from the bible in which God says to Moses that he is good and gracious, but how gracious can one be if they choose to destroy all they have created. With my own personal views in mind, I have come to the conclusion that goodness cannot be defined, it changes with ones morals and in the end it should be a personal decision if one contains goodness or not. It seems that goodness was not wanted on the