David B. Morris

I wish more had been written about Paul Watson and less about the author's seasickness. Nevertheless, the subject matter is a good one, the writing is borderline juvenile. A few good ideas were written about:

"I just wanted to let you know that what you people did in Iceland was reprehensible, criminal, deplorable and totally unforgivable," the man told Paul. He continued his tirade with a series of articulate, impassioned condemnations.
Paul waited patiently until the man had finished.
"What's your name?" he asked his surprised accuser. The man replied that his name was John.
"Well, John," Paul said, "when we planned this campaign, we didn't sit around and ask ourselves, 'I wonder what John's gonna think if we sink these ships, or maybe we should ask John what his opinion is.' Frankly, John, we don't give a damn what you or anybody else on this planet thinks. We didn't sink those ships for you. We did it for the whales. It's the whales we care about, John. Not you."
p. 184

"Always maintain a health paranoia."
p. 188

As poet William Blake once wrote, "What is now proved was once only imagined."

With the engines roaring and the ship nearing land, I find myself thinking about Trevor and about how, in the patriarchal Anglo - Saxon era, in the time of Beowulf, the most important bond was the relation between nephew and uncle - particularly between a young man and his mother's brother. An Anglo Saxon was never absolutely sure about his biological father, but he always knew his mother's brother. Even today, uncles usually escape from the oedipal conflicts that bedevil fathers and sons. There are other conjectures, but I like to think that "to cry uncle" refers to the time when young men like Trevor, would test themselves not against their fathers but against the other immediate male relative who had the unspoken duty to teach and protect him.
p. 198

...I find my thoughts circling back to Paul's response when the Coast Guard plane relayed the Japanese charges that he had endangered lives by operating his ship in a "reckless" manner.
"That wasn't reckless," Paul replied. I did it on purpose. I hit ships all the time."
p.201… (més)