CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF CLADE (2015)

Topic Question: How does Bradley’s use of Realist and Modernist literary techniques in his writing of climate change (in Clade) express his agenda to educate the public on the real impacts of climate change, and to show in a very tangible way, a world that is changed by the climate?

This essay will focus on analysing James Bradley’s novel Clade, as a literary text that focuses on addressing the theme of climate change, in a way that is both educational and proactive. The literary styles of Realism and Modernism will be closely analysed, under the scope of ecocriticism through using in-text examples and referencing critical theorists. Despite Bradley’s use of Postmodernist techniques within his novel, this will not be discussed due to other techniques being more useful in clarifying Bradley’s agenda of educating the public on the realities of climate change, as well as the potential future realities of climate change if humans don’t act now. Bradley’s use of Realist and Modernist literary styles allow for an interdisciplinary and multifaceted writing of climate change. This is useful because it makes the text accessible and relatable to a wider audience from different life experiences, vocations/disciplines, vested interests, and knowledges/skillsets.

In analysing Clade, through the literary styles of Realism and Modernism, and Bradley’s specific interest in the ever-changing environment, the novel can be discussed through an ecocritical practice. Ecocriticism is a term that encourages readers to explore the relationship between literature and the physical environment (Glotfelty 1996). Discussed also by Lawrence Buell in The Environmental Imagination where he believes that in a true ecocentric text ‘the human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest’ (Iowa State University 1995). Bradley does this in Clade through his constant references to the environment with statements such as ‘the day is unseasonably cool’ (2015, p. 111) and that another catastrophic event is just ‘one more factor in the ongoing transformation of the world’s ecosystem’ (p. 79). Bradley is not afraid to confront the in-depth details of how the ecosystem is struggling due to contamination and disruption. It is also through looking at various interdisciplinary fields, such as science, humanities and arts, that Bradley has at the forefront provided the reader with a wide view of opinions in order to allow for ecocriticism. These fields were explored through his various characters that are either scientists, artists or uncooperative bystanders and their reactions towards climate change and their environment. In analysing Clade, through the lens of ecocritical practices, the literary styles of Realism and Modernism were deemed most effective in allowing all living organisms within the natural environment to be given a perspective.

The detailed descriptions of the changing climate and environment within James Bradley’s novel, despite being a fiction and containing futuristic elements, does little to hide his urgent pleas for proactive action. In his non-fiction article Writing on the precipice he likened climate fiction writing to climatologist James Hansen’s statement that ‘being a climate scientist was like screaming at people from behind a soundproof glass wall’ (2017, p. 2). Further on, Bradley also struggles with the notion that fiction writing about the climate can leave one with ‘a feeling one’s tools are not fit for purpose’ (p. 2). Regardless of feeling a sense of inadequacy, he goes on to claim that language needs to be used to help society understand the world (p. 2). In the first four chapters of Clade, Bradley sets up the novel through scientifically exploring climate change, such as “For the best part of two decades scientists have been worried about its growing unpredictability” (2015, p. 23). The middle chapters of the novel take the reader into the depth of climate change through catastrophic weather disasters, wide-spread extinction and fatal diseases. In the final three chapters, Bradley explores a more speculative future. This is done through sims and echoes, ‘Virtual recreations of the dead assembled from photos and videos’ (p. 178) and the discovery of aliens, allowing the novel to enter a more supernatural, apocalyptic realm.

Further on, Bradley confronts climate change through foregrounding the environment, fragmenting the time frames in order to depict longevity of climate change and its effect and exploring intergenerational experience through the structure. From the first chapter in Clade, the readers’ attention is brought to reflect upon the environment, opening with ‘[a]s Adam steps outside the cold strikes him like a physical thing, the shock still startling after all these weeks’ (p. 3). The focus immediately shifts from the character to the environment that he is stepping in to. A tool that Bradley uses throughout the entire novel, in order to bring the attention back to include all living organisms. Bradley also doesn’t follow a chronological time frame, with each new chapter including a time jump from anywhere between a year to a quarter of a century. As argued by Maggie Kainulainen, ‘[c]limate change exceeds boundaries by forcing us to think of time beyond the human scale’ (2013, p. 111), Bradley carries the novel through large spaces of time. Clade originally follows the journey of scientist Adam and his artist wife Ellie, as they struggle through IVF and eventually their marriage after conceiving. As the text continues, the characters become more distant and relationships become more static. Each chapter then follows a different character’s individual journey through the changing climate. This does little for the development of the character’s relationships but allows the reader with a multifaceted view of everyone that is affected by climate change.

Bradley’s techniques of exploring climate change were also utilised and explored through the literary styles of Realism and Modernism. Literary Realism as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, in Pam Morris’ text Realism, is a ‘close resemblance to what is real; fidelity of representation, the rendering of precise details of the real thing or scene’ (2003, p. 4). It is understood through this definition that Realism is a style that focuses heavily on displaying facts, without providing any formal explanation behind the statements made. It is a literary form that focuses on depicting people’s realities and sets the standards for the social norm. Bradley commonly uses two techniques throughout his novel that heavily align with literary Realism, the ability to foreground the environment through factual descriptions and highlight the impact of climate change through the intergenerational structure. Through constant references to the weather and the environment, climate change explicitly becomes the subplot throughout the novel, and in many circumstances, it takes over the plot due to the unsteady characters.

The first four chapters of the novel focus heavily on describing the environment and setting up the catastrophic events to come within the following chapters of the novel. With statements throughout, such as ‘In the Artic the permafrost was melting’ (2015, p. 13), ‘the storms have grown more frequent’ (p. 36) and ‘Most of the birds are gone now’ (p. 42). Further on, Bradley breaks the division between different cultures and brings the issue of climate change to a global forefront. Despite the novel being set in Australia, Bradley involves the use of television and internet within the novel, to explore scenarios that extend beyond the parameter of the central characters. Noted through Adam’s account earlier in the book when he says ‘the news is about powers cuts and the climate negotiations in Bangkok’ (p. 27) and when Li Lijuan follows the updates on the internet, ‘In Europe there are gangs on the streets, in America they’re closing off cities and killing anybody who tries to get in’ (p. 166). It is through these accounts that the information is provided through the style of literary Realism and it provides information alluding to climate change being a global issue.

Bradley also avoids providing detailed information about characters backgrounds in order to spend more time describing the suffering environment and world within Clade. He does this through constantly changing the central character in each chapter. Defined by Pam Morris, as the writer ‘refus[ing] the reader any objective knowledge of the main protagonists that could form the basis of moral or epistemological evaluation’ (2003, p. 15). A technique that Bradley consistently uses through out the novel, through allowing the reader with an insight into a certain moment in a character’s life, only to then mention them briefly a few chapters later. For example, Ellie was one of the central characters in the first few chapters of the novel and then she doesn’t reappear until the sixth chapter Keeper of the Bees. Similarly, Summer was only a teenage in chapter four, Breaking and Entering, only for chapter five, Boiling the Frog, to continue with her as an adult with a child. She then disappears again and is only briefly in the second to last chapter, 1420 MHz, when the son that she abandons visits her on her death bed. Highlighting that whilst Bradley doesn’t forefront the characters individually, he subtly reflects on the fragmentation of their relationships as the environment changes around them.

Further on, despite Bradley heavily relying on Literary Realism as a style, there are aspects of Literary Modernism used in the novel. Literary Modernism is a style where the materiality of language shifts from a set of rules and patterns, to a language that is both transparent and naturally expressed (Beasley 2007). It makes room for characters voices to be heard, rather than offering the reader heavy descriptions without any emotional responses being conveyed. Allowing for, as Beasley stated, an emotional shift in the text. James Bradley commonly uses two techniques in his novel that heavily align with Literary Modernism, the fragmentation of the time frame and the intergenerational experience within each individual chapter. These techniques allow for climate change to be explored through the emotions of the different characters and enforce the concept that it is an issue that needs to be discussed through language and communication with one another.

Bradley’s use of multiple voices across the novel evoke an entanglement between natural forces, weather and climate, and the social and cultural formations of characters, through their relationships and mentality. Bradley specifically chose to begin Clade from the perspective of a passionate, yet exhausted scientist, Adam Leith. Through his strong views on action being required to protect the environment, the reader is confronted with hard facts about climate change. These passages then take on a more Modernist approach when Adam frustratingly reacts to a newspaper columnist denying global warming. ‘Adam watches with fury boiling up in him at the man’s bland reasonableness, his polished deceit’ (2015, p. 28), is what drives Bradley’s text towards becoming an internal dialogue of frustrated accounts of the world ‘coming unravelled’ (p. 28). As the novel continues, Bradley depicts internal shifts such as Adam’s strong scientific views fading into exhaustion, Ellie’s deliberate naivety changing into a social and political concern for refugee Amir and Summer’s ignorance of the political issue due to personal struggles. Emphasizing that in order to truly confront the natural, we need to ensure that we also confront the cultural aspects and assess their relationship with one another. Defined by Matthew Griffiths (2017, p. 10) when he explains that ‘Modernism and climate change force us in different ways to recognise that cultural and the natural are always already entangled, and that we cannot make the latter our only focus’. Making it clear that Bradley’s use of fragmenting the time frame over a long period allowed for further emotive responses and views to be encapsulated and reflected upon.

Whilst the overall structure of Clade was very sporadic, the use of different characters in each chapter allowed for a wide range of perspectives to be expressed. In order to tie all the characters stories together, Bradley made use of an omniscient narrator. This narrator allowed for the constant character changes to be observed in their different environments, whilst still maintaining a steady voice. It is through the omniscient narrator, that the reader is also able to capture the internal perspectives of each character and therefore understand how climate change is affecting everyone. Bradley does this through interjecting the descriptive environmental passages with internal perspectives of the characters. An example of this, is when Ellie was walking through a valley outside the house that she recently moved into. The passage begins by explaining that ‘the sun is still hot’ and ‘the land below was farmland’, before stating that ‘she remembers driving through here as a child, gazing out at fields and sheds’ (2015, p. 111). This shift in style, allows the reader to become emotionally invested in the concept that the world is not as it should be and provides an internal response to further encourage this view.

In conclusion, the styles of Literary Realism and Modernism have been arguably the most prevalent forms in allowing Bradley to explore climate change in a way that is both educational and forcibly proactive. Despite Ghosh’s argument that ‘when novelists choose to write about climate fiction it is always outside of fiction’ (2016, p. 8), Bradley continuously moves between fact-like descriptions and human’s interaction with the environment, in order to break that assumption. Essentially, through using both Realism and Modernism interchangeably through out each chapter. Clade also questions national boundaries by reflecting on the catastrophic environmental changes globally through multiple characters. Influencing the reader to critically consider the future of the environment, and as stated within the novel, to hopefully create a ‘sense in which its destruction answers a need’ (2015, p. 37). The need being that action must be taken within society for the planet to remain beautiful and protected.

REFERENCES

Glotfelty, C & Fromm, H 1996, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, University of Georgia Press, Athens.

Iowa State University 1995-2019, What is Environmental Imagination?, Iowa State University Department of English, viewed 15 May 2019, <https://engl.iastate.edu/graduate-students/mfa-program-in-creative-writing-and-environment/what-is-environmental-imagination/>

Bradley, J 2015, Clade, Penguin Group, AUS.

Bradley, J 2017, ‘Writing on the Precipice’, Sydney Review of Books, Sydney, Australia.

Kainulainen, M 2013, ‘Saying Climate Change: Ethics of the Sublime and Problems of Representation’, Symploke, vol. 21, Nos 1-2, pp. 109-123.

Morris, P 2003, Realism, 1st edn, Routledge, UK.

Beasley, R 2007, Theorists of Modernist Poetry, Routledge, Abingdon, UK.

Griffiths, M 2017, The New Poetics of Climate Change: Modernist Aesthetics for a Warming World, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, ProQuest Ebook Central.

Ghosh, A 2016, The Great Derangement, The University of Chicago Press, USA.