[In the following essay, Ragion analyzes and underscores the elements of Zen Buddhism that appear in Peter Matthiesson's ecological novel Far Tortuga.]

A perception of the interrelatedness of all life underlies the work of any writer with ecological concerns, but no career illustrates this point as clearly as Peter Matthiessen's, and no work as forcefully as his haunting and powerful novel, Far Tortuga. However, because this perception of interrelatedness is based upon insights derived from the new science of ecology, a tension is frequently felt between form and meaning in Matthiessen's work. This tension, in part, accounts for the restless shifting between fiction and nonfiction that has occurred throughout his career, as well as for the variety of genres Matthiessen has used in weaving together his most successful narratives. The Snow Leopard, for example, has been described as travel literature, spiritual autobiography, philosophy, and nature writing. Matthiessen's Far Tortuga has been discussed as a type of pastoral, read as an environmental parable, placed within the tradition of American sea fiction, and viewed as a variation of the Eden story. The sheer variety of approaches suggests the complexity of both books and hints at one of the most intriguing aspects of Matmiessen's work. The problem of form arises because ecological thought, which provides an underpinning of Matthiessen's work, is in itself a critique of older, dualistic ways of constructing the world as a conflict between humanity and nature. Any genre, myth, metaphor, or language that emerges from this milieu is at times bound to provide an uneasy setting for insights based upon wholeness and interrelatedness. The task facing an ecologically sensitive writer, then, is to strive to develop what the poet Gary Snyder has called a "rhetoric of ecological relationships" {Practice of the Wild). It is a task Thoreau alluded to when he asked, "where in all the world is the literature which gives expression to Nature?" At best there is tameness and pale imitation; Thoreau was searching for something far more vigorous:

He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them,—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like buds at the approach of spring…

Frequently implicit within ecological thought's critique of dualism is a concomitant dismantling or modification of traditional forms. Pastoralism rather than providing the prototype for an ecological outlook as Leo Marx has argued, might well contain presuppositions that an ecologically minded author must struggle to overcome in order to convey a perception of the interrelatedness of life. The pastoral story that characterizes nature as "simple," for example, fails to accommodate ecological revelations that insist upon the complexity of nature. In the same way, pastoral stories that rely on a contrast between sophisticated urban life and the simplicity of nature and that invariably end with the hero's return to "civilization," suggest a mode that ultimately affirms a separation from nature. Annette Kolodny, in a feminist reading of pastoralism, goes even further when she suggests that pastoralism is a metaphor that has contributed to an ecological crisis by creating expectations of abundance and ease that were an entirely inappropriate response to the North American wilderness.

One presupposition of ecological thought, at least in terms of its relationship to literature, is that our language itself is replete with the indications of environmental disaster. Nothing could suggest this more than the word "nature" itself, for deeply rooted in its multifarious uses is an assumption that humans exist apart from "it." The American poet Wendell Berry writes of the implications of such an assumption:

We have given up the understanding—dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought—that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land.

It should not be surprising, given such a lack, that writers struggling to develop an ecological perception turn to other languages, cultures, and religions to discover some way of talking about this missing relationship. One of the suggestive concepts of Zen Buddhism is the existence of a Primary Nature that is often obscured from humanity. D. T. Suzuki writes,

When we see a mountain, we do not see it in its suchness, but we attach to it all kinds of ideas, sometimes purely intellectual, but frequently charged with emotionality. When these envelop the mountain, it is transformed into something monstrous. This is due to our own indoctrination out of our "scholarly" learning and our vested interests; whether individual, political, social, economic or religious. The picture thus formed is a hideous one. Instead of living in a world presented to the Primary Nature in its nakedness, we live in an artificial, "cultured" one. The pity is that we are not conscious of the fact.

Throughout much of his career Matthiessen has searched for ways to articulate the existence of a Primary Nature, but his ability to do so is intimately linked to his growing involvement with Zen Buddhism. Although Wildlife in America (1959) is a landmark volume in American nature writing, Matthiessen discovered, after numerous experiences with traditional societies and with religious thought, that contemporary notions of conservation have a limited value, particularly when compared with the complex links between life and land made in traditional societies. Matthiessen's discovery, however, did not translate into a literary celebration of ritual primitivism (the hunting story, the fishing story, the male bonding-inthe-woods "camping" story). It is not enough to respect nature, or to have an appreciation of nature. It is not enough to partake in rituals that temporarily reunite humans with nature. A perception of interrelatedness must be translated into a way of living or being in the world. Such a perception must come from what the philosopher Thomas Kuhn has called a "paradigm" shift, and what poets and mystics call a transformation of consciousness. Accompanying such a transformation, according to Gary Snyder, is the two-fold obligation to consider what symbolic systems constitute obstacles to ecological awareness, while at the same time attempting to create an awareness of self that includes social and natural environments. The question to ask once such a paradigm shift occurs is how the new perception of the world can be conveyed in terms of literary expression. In other words, what literary form would an ecologically minded author chose to express biocentrism; how would such an author express interrelatedness?

Matthiessen's development as a writer offers insight into these questions. The first period of his career is one of intimations and explorations and begins with Matthiessen's earliest fiction. His first stories, written in the early 1950s and the 1954 novel Race Rock deal with humans who are warped and twisted by the uncomfortable knowledge that they do not belong anywhere—familiar enough territory in contemporary American fiction. But this feeling is only a starting point for Matthiessen: he wants not only to describe modern-day dilemmas, but also to find some meaningful response to them. This first period is also one of explorations—a rich and fertile period that includes such diverse works as Wildlife in America, The Cloud Forest (1961), Under the Mountain Wall (1965), At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965), Oomingmak (1967), The Shorebirds of North America (1967), and Sal Si Puedes (1969).

The second period of Matthiessen's work begins in 1970 and is marked by the author's growing involvement with Zen: rather than a conversion, however, this interest marks an intensification of the concerns and insights that first came to him in his work as a naturalist. In an effort to come to the "one mind" revealed through meditation, Matthiessen begins by imagining himself as a deer or a sapling pine. He writes of his early zazen practice:

In the midmorning sittings, I become a sapling pine, wanned by the sun, swaying in wind, inhaling wind, water, minerals, exhaling warm, fragrant amber resin. Though roots budge subterranean rock, the trunk expands, sinewy limbs gather in sunlight far above, new needles shining in new sun, new wind, until the great pine is immovable, yet flexible and live, the taproot boring ever deeper into the earth. Then the tree evaporates and there is nothing, and nothing missing, only emptiness and light. (Nine-Headed Dragon River)

In addition to the great spiritual intensity of his Zen experiences, his continued interest in the natural world is seen in the publication during this period of Blue Meridian (1971), The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972), The Wind Birds (1973), and Sand Rivers (1979). In these years, Matthiessen also experienced his first sesshin "miracle": a sudden, deep insight into the unity of all life. Both Far Tortuga (1975) and the better known Snow Leopard (1978) were written in this time of intense emotional journeying. Both in their varied ways express the unity of all life and both also take risks in terms of their forms.

Matthiessen once described his nonfiction work as a type of "cabinet work… assembled from facts, from research, from observation; it comes from outside, not from within." Although Matthiessen views fiction and nonfiction as two fundamentally different kinds of writing, one could argue that his "cabinet work" is an essential feature of his best fiction. A stubborn respect for "fact" informs the most poetic flights in the lovely "green" novel, At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965), which is closely linked to The Cloud Forest (1960), the nonfictional account of a trip to South America. Matthiessen's brilliant sea novel, Far Tortuga, germinated from accounts of a trip on a turtling boat written for The New Yorker. In both cases the issue, clearly, is why Matthiessen felt the need to go back and reshape his experiences, to express them again through fiction. The answer lies, I think, in what Joseph Campbell has called "creative mythology," that is, in the story teller's ability to make links with the world through art. Although Thomas Lyon makes it clear that nature writers express a "heresy" in terms of their appreciation of the world, the "appreciator," nevertheless, remains an outsider: an observer of the world. In contrast, mythmaking, which frequently utilizes precise observations of the natural world, has a primary function of reconciling the waking consciousness to the "mysterium tremendum et fascinons of this universe as it is" and of rendering an "interpretive total image of the same." Evolution, modified by the insights of ecology, is one of the prevailing myths of our time. As such, it forges links between the human mind and the natural world. The problem is that we have not yet learned to express these insights, and we find ourselves still talking about nature as a separate, uniform "thing." Matthiessen, a writer sensitive to the implications of evolution and ecology, has consistently striven to find ways to express the interrelationships of life. In doing so, he has had to explore fundamental structures in language that have created obstacles to this understanding.

In May 1975, partly on a whim and partly because of a certain unerring accuracy that has brought him constantly into contact with endangered things, Matthiessen found himself walking the still empty beaches of the Grand Cayman island, imagining that he could still sense the presence of the turtles that once made the island their home. After two years Matthiessen was finally able to book passage on one of the remaining turtling boats operating from Grand Cayman. Instead of a fine wind schooner, he found that the boat he had hoped to sail in had disappeared into the jaws of "progress," that the boat's mast had been sawed in half, and that motors had been installed. As he subsequently reported in The New Yorker, the disfiguring changes in the boat were emblematic of changes engulfing the entire region:

The changes in the Wilson, I had discovered, were only a small part of the metamorphoses that was coming fast to Grand Cayman. The first time I had been there, two years before, the tourist had been such an infrequent beast that suntan oil was all but unobtainable. But now there were two supermarkets and a gift shop.… There were water skiis and rent-a-cars, and… a new night club with its own post office on the premises.

In spite of the technological changes overcoming the area in general, the boat has the air of the decrepit about it, as if it cannot decide whether or not to join the twentieth century. A sense of doom mixed with comedy pervaded the whole enterprise. The boat lacked such primary equipment as

running lights, horn, fire extinguishers, and life preservers. Captain Cadie had bought himself a radio-telephone to go with his new deckhouse, but it had never worked. I asked him why he hadn't tried it out before he paid for it and he said, "It had ought to work, mahn, or why in hell dey make it?"

In spite of this atmosphere of folly, in spite of the dangers and bad food, Matthiessen found something invigo-rating in the experience. "On a bright fresh day at sea, the ocean wind against your cheek and the tropical sun on your bare feet can restore childhood's sense of being at the center of time, with no time passing." At one point in the journey, Matthiessen reports that he asked the Wilson's captain why he had not left the boat's spars and sails intact, even if that would have meant running her as a charter for tourists. "He disregarded the tourist trade as something irrelevant to a turtle boat with a long tradition on the banks, and I began to see that he was right." For fishermen, or turtlers, their livelihood is also a complex way of living. Attending to the demands of foreign tourists would begin the long process of alienation from the source of life, from the source of a clarified reality that Matthiessen found aboard the ship and valued so much.

Over the next eight years, Matthiessen worked to reshape his experiences aboard the Wilson into the novel that eventually became Far Tortuga. In between the experience on the turtling boat and the publication of the novel, however, Matthiessen became a Zen practitioner, and this, perhaps more than any other influence, would mark the ultimate shape the book would take. In an interview in Paris Review Matthiessen stated that he was moved by the stark quality of that Caribbean voyage: "everything worn bare by wind and sea—the reefs, the faded schooner, the turtle men themselves—everything so pared down and so simple that metaphors, stream-of-consciousness, even such ordinary conventions of the novel as he said or he thought, seemed intrusive, even offensive, and a great impediment, besides." Matthiessen seems to suggest here that the prose he had used to convey a nonfiction account of the voyage was in some way limited. What he wanted to do in his book was to examine the experience again, not to "reproduce it," but to find a way to direct the reader to an apprehension of the unblinking heart of reality. To do this, Matthiessen found he had to winnow his prose, to strip Far Tortuga, as much as possible, of ordinary conventions, as if in this way he could display to the reader a way to return to the sustaining bedrock of existence.

Through the unusual design of Far Tortuga, Matthiessen suggests the existence of a Primary Nature. He used the sea voyage less for its dramatic possibilities than as a chance to reveal a type of life that is in its essence timeless and elemental. Matthiessen suggests that in "Primary Nature" paradise exists. In contrast to this insight, are the wasted possibilities, the sense of change passing through the region, the dreams and fantasies that obscure the reality of a here and now existence. Matthiessen suggests that we fall into a trap of longing that makes it impossible for us fully to live.

The book is designed to draw things out with a clarity that needs no embellishment. Written without indented paragraphs, the novel features single lines as short as "Cock crow" that are isolated, emphasized, and allowed to resonate in the surrounding white space. Throughout the book the time of day is indicated by small circles, empty in full day-light, partially filled to indicate sunrise or sunset, and blackened to indicate night. Sunrise comes to the Cayman graveyard, touches the tombstone of Will Parchment, a crew member aboard the Eden, and lets the reader know at once what the fate of the crew will be. The ship is not described, but mapped; crew members are introduced through the ship's manifest. All these devices introduce the world of fact, stripped of embellishment. In Matthiessen's aesthetics there is no need to draw parallels between the human and nonhuman world, because properly perceived there is no separation between the two. Hence, with two exceptions, the book is bare of similes and metaphors. The basis of Matthiessen's vision is that we are all a part of one inescapable reality, so every aspect of that reality has its own solidness, its own potential to reveal the underlying oneness of existence.

Within this larger reality is set the smaller social world aboard the Eden. Captain Raib Avers, his son, and his crew of seven other men, argue, talk, laugh, and live much as men live anywhere. Generally, however, the close contact aboard the small ship magnifies conflict, though Matthiessen successfully resists the temptation to turn the men into symbols that are larger than life. Rather, he presents life that is elemental, life further intensified by the flickering awareness of death. Raib says to one crew member,

You hear dat rushin out dere, Byrum? De wind and de sea comin together? Dat de sound of hell, boy, dat de sound of hell. You way out on de edge, boy, you out on de edge of de world. No mon! Ain't no unions on de turtle banks, I tellin you dat! Ain't no rights out here! Ain't nothin out here but de reefs and de wind and de sea, and de mon who know de bleak ocean de best has got to be coptin, and de men don't listen to de coptin, dey stand a very good chance of losen dere lifes!

Raib's character is both dramatic and complex and is achieved without the need to exaggerate certain monomaniacal or dictatorial tendencies that have become the stock and trade of sea fiction captains from Ahab to Bligh. For instance, Raib's insistence on the need for the captain's absolute control at sea is modified by the dynamics of the crew, by his own sense of humor, and by his being caught inescapably in the net of "modern times."

One of the premises of earlier works concerned with nature is that the hero's retreat to nature was a return to "eternal" values; in Green Hills of Africa Ernest Hemingway meditates on the movement of the Gulf stream that has moved since "before man." It is a stream that will flow "as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the American and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone." Hemingway goes on to compare civilization to a high-piled scow of garbage, spilling off its load into the blue water.

The stream with no visible flow takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast it is as clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of our discoveries, and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing—the stream.

Nature in this view is not only "eternal"—it is also all absorbing, self-purifying, and self-renewing. In this passive view, nature can "take" whatever humanity chooses to dish out; this is a cherished belief that somehow has managed to survive the onslaught of technology. Although he knows a continent "ages quickly" once Europeans settle it, Hemingway withdraws from the responsibility such an insight demands. Instead he opts for a "new" country, that special place where it is possible to start all over again—in this case, Africa.

In contrast to this more innocent time, it is clearly understood in an age of ecology that there is no escape; there are no more untouched "good countries," and even the wild ocean has not been left untouched. The bad weather that overtakes Raib and his crew is unseasonable, and Raib can't help thinking that "It must be dat atomic trash and shit de Yankees puttin in de sky; man can't even count on de way of de wind no more." The rapaciousness of human technology is in evidence everywhere: huge new shrimp boats are "sucking de last shrimp out of de sea," and Raib says, "Dey killed off de seals just like dey killin' off green turtle, and de crocodiles before dem. De snipes is gone now. Ain't no iguana left up at Northwest. Mahogany, logwood, fustic—all dat gone now! Dey cutten it all away." If there is any evidence of "eternal nature" anymore, it exists only in the heavens, as Raib points out to his son Buddy:

See, Buddy? Dat de north star. Goes very bright, and den she fades again, every four days. Dat is one thing you can count on. Everything else in dis goddom world chagin so fast dat a mon cannot keep up no more, but de north star is always dere, boy, de cold eye of it, watching de seasons come and go.

Raib belongs to the "back time": he has old-fashioned notions and values that form the basis of his life, but that also hinder him in terms of trying to survive in what another crew member calls "modern time, mon." Raib's attempts to modernize his boat, for example, are disastrous. The Lillas Eden, formerly a wind schooner, has had its mast shortened, engines installed, and a new deck house built that resembles an outhouse. The boat's wheel, remaining in its old position at the stern, is, according to one crew member, "a hell of an arrangement.… De mon at de helm cannot even see where de ship goin." He has all the necessary navigational skills to guide the vessel but is undone by his own equipment; his watch doesn't keep proper time, and as a result, Raib loses the boat's position, endangering everyone aboard. Not having the money to complete the job of modernization means the crew start their voyage with a bent shift in the engine and a leaking cat boat; later it is learned that Raib would need $3,000 just to make the boat seaworthy. To compensate, Raib falls back on the mystique of the captain, emphasizing to his crew his years of experience, his skill, and knowledge. His failures to provide certain necessities in terms of basic equipment (light, fire equipment, life jackets) are overlooked, and he continually blames his crew for not being good enough to be turtlemen.

Raib is described as having lines of merriment that seam his face, but his eyes also have a "mean squint." This combination of toughness, even meanness, with humor and gentleness is seen throughout in flashes. As he baits hooks with strips of flying fish, for example, "his thick hard lumpy fisherman's hands move gently, and though it is dead, he talks softly to the wild-eyed fish as if to calm it." When he sees four porpoises rolling along the hull of the Eden, he plays with them, tossing a pole at them; the "creatures return to be tagged over and over." When Raib, Speedy, and Vernon go ashore in Nicaragua to report to customs, they get bogged down in the muddy channels of the Coco River, but irritation is overcome, briefly, with laughter. Yet he is hard with his own boy, and the crew's mutters, reported in smaller print throughout the book, hint at a dark past.

One of his duties, Raib feels, is to instruct his crew in the importance of seamanship. In part this is to emphasize his own importance and legitimize his status. But in part, too, he is passing on a tradition, telling his crew that he knows every rock on the banks. "It were Copm Andrew Avers dat taught me, and come to pilotin he were de island's best." Over and over again he tells his crew to keep their eyes and ears open so that they can learn from the ocean.

Throughout his difficulties, Raib's pride sustains him; pride, however, also interferes with his ability to survive. Part of the reason Raib gets bogged down in the Coco River is because he will not listen to Byrum, a crew member who had been on the river since the last time his captain had been there. Raib, characteristically, turns on Byrum, "You sayin I don't know my way on de Miskita Coast? By God, Byrum, I never thought I hear dat!" Raib is proud of the turtling tradition of which he is a part, but his idealism and his hubris, expressed in his conviction that he knows all there is to know about the turtling grounds, ultimately interfere with his responsibility as a captain.

Captain Raib is no hero, for as Joseph Meeker points out, an ecological drama has no heroes, only successful survivors:

Comedy is careless of morality, goodness, truth, beauty, heroism, and all such abstract values men say they live by. Its only concern is to affirm man's capacity for survival and to celebrate the continuity of life itself, despite all moralities. Comedy is a celebration, a ritual renewal of biological welfare as it persists in spite of any reasons diere may be for feeling metaphysical despair.

Tragic heroes suffer and die for some great ideal that is more important than life itself; comic survivors muddle through, according to Meeker.

Yet Raib is clearly a finer man than his half brother, Desmond Eden. Unlike Raib, with his sense of pride and tradition, Desmond is an opportunist, on the surface a successful survivor but also a man who in many ways is already soul dead. Desmond scours the sea in a boat taken from Cuban refugees: to Raib it looks like a whorehouse and the very name given the boat connotes frivolity and lack of respect, "A mon dat would call a vessel Davy Jones, funnin with de bleak ocean in dat manner, dat mon can't learn nothin from de sea!"

Desmond fits the sickness of "modern time"; he represents that time's worst, just as Raib represents some of the best of the "back times." Desmond has no respect for anything: not for himself, for his occupation, for other people, for the ocean, or the life in the ocean. His yacht is "decrepit" and littered with refuse. The turtles he has caught are left out on the main deck "unprotected from the sun," and he spends a morning rigging up a logger-head turtle so he can slit its throat for his own amusement. (Raib, on the other hand, throws a loggerhead overboard, refusing to slit its throat, because as he explains, "Don't like de way it lookin' at me, darlin'. Don't like foolin' with dem log'reds—dey looks too scornful." Raib exists in a world composed of other subjects: Desmond lives in a world composed of things.

When Raib goes to confront Desmond on Bobel Cay, he finds a shabbiness found only in the exploited poverty of "modern times"—a litter of tin and broken glass, the smell of human excrement. "Eternal nature" is the hawks-bill turtle, but it is seen pushing aside "torn purslane and trash to dig her nest." On the beach, where Desmond has gone for "rum and pussy," Raib finds a man and a pregnant woman copulating, another man stabbed. In the shallow water on the lee side of the cay "wavelets lift melted labels, floating feces, a pale plastic bottle. In the offal is the bobbing head of a green turtle, its shell and guts are scattered on the sand. Another turtle lies upright on the beach, facing inland. Its flippers are bound, and its great weight, unsupported, slowly smothers it."

In a few tense words Matthiessen catches die devastation and waste of a time that places little value on life. Desmond's entire way of being in the world is profligate and wasteful; Raib's two small actions on the cay underline the differences between the men, while at the same time draw parallels between the misery in all forms of life. When the woman reaches for the bottle her companion clutches, it falls, and its liquid drains out in the sand. Raib rights the bottle. The woman, briefly conscious of the man's action, "raises her hand as if to brush sand from her eyes but does not complete the gesture. The hand falls back. She lowers both forearms to the sand and rests her cheek upon her hands, her mouth forced into odd disfigurement." Raib's second action is to turn the turtle that is smothering under its own weight on its back; "it blinks, gasping its ancient sea sound and sand grains falling from its lids stick in the fluids from its eyes."

Misery is pervasive, yet even here Matthiessen insists on the links between human life and all other forms of life. Human misery has consequences, and the consequences reverberate in the misery and desecration of the entire world. The supposed "purity" of nature can no longer act as a comfort or antidote for the impurity of human life because the two are inseparably related. All that Raib treasures is assaulted in this scene: his sense of tradition, his pride, his need for order. Further, what has been desecrated is not simply inert, a useless, empty cay. The one measurement of value of "modern time" is economic value, but Matthiessen makes the point that deeper values pervade every aspect of creation because everthing in the world is alive: the world itself is a living being. As Raib stands transfixed, everything around him moves; a bleeding-tooth snail, a ghost crab, a white feather, a purple morning glory. Above all there is the presence of "the sea, breathing." Wounds can be inflicted not only on the human body and human psyche but in the body and spirit of the living world as well.

Raib is aware of the changes affecting his ability to make a livelihood; still he clings fiercely to the foolish human belief that while things are bad everywhere else, on Grand Cayman, at least, people still have certain values. But Raib is existing partially in fantasy, in the "back time," and so cannot accommodate the changes in an area where boatloads of refugees are floating out in the ocean, where once-deserted coastal forests are being cleared and burnt, and where old turtling areas are destroyed by gangs of poverty-stricken Jamaicans. According to Raib,

Used to be dat in Caymans a mon respect hisself. He don his job, took care of his family, all of dat. He had his land and his own provision ground; he built his own catboat and hung his own nets. Things like dat.

Contrasted to this bucolic vision of the "back times" is another crew member's depiction of "modern times" when uncontrolled population growth has created a Malthusian state of shortages. According to Speedy, Raib is able to cling to his idea that somehow there are fundamental differences between humans only because there is plenty of water between "you and de world. But you just wait a while, you gone to see. Modern time, mon—dey ain't no place to hide."

Raib, in fact, seems to know that he is no longer able to function properly in the world, and weariness begins to descend on him:

Dis mornin sea tryin to tell me something, Speedy. It so old, mon. Make me wonder what I doin way out here on dese reefs, all de days of my life. (sighs) Life has got away from me, some way—I just goin through de motions.

Raib's weariness and withdrawal from the world as he finds it are a constant contrast to Speedy's energy and immersion in the modern time. When all the other turtling grounds fail him, Raib charts a course for Mistoriosa Reef, a reef so isolated it is not even noted on the maps. Raib dreams of building a little shack out on Far Tortuga, an island in the reef:

Dat island is a very nice place. A very nice place. And dere good shelter in de lee, cause it high enough so it got trees—grape trees and Jennifer trees, and den logwood and mongrove: got a little water dere if you know how to dig for it. Plenty birds. I thinkin one day I might build a little shack out dere on Far Tortuga. Dass my dream.

Speedy, however, replies that he has no dream: Speedy is still part of the world, living with day-to-day contingencies, satisfied with reality. "Got no dream, mon. I got fifty-five acres, mon, and cows. I go along everyday, do what I got to do, and den I lays down to my rest." Speedy exemplifies not only the type of comic survivor Meeker claims as a prototype for any ecologically sensitive art but also a type of enlightened Buddhist, somewhat like Tukten, one of the sherpas Matthiessen admired as a true bodhisattva in The Snow Leopard. Like Tukten, Speedy is bright, quick, and cheerful, a man interested in doing his work well, and ready to learn without being servile. He has an innate courtesy that is found in every one of his actions; in his duties as cook he goes out of his way to make "crude doughnuts" for the rest of the crew. "I hear on de radio about hot doughnuts and coffee makin people hoppy, Mist' Will, so dat is what you eatin dere, hot doughnuts." When Raib hectors his son Buddy, Speedy tries to mediate. "Dat boy seasick again, goddom it." "Well, dat wind cuttin, Copm Raib, it plenty rough. My first trip, I was so green." When Raib complains that Buddy lacks nerve and is always staring at him, Speedy replies, "Maybe he stand dere lookin at you cause he hopin dat one day you look at him."

Speedy also shows a type of impersonal sympathy for everyone aboard the Eden, all those caught in the helplessness of "damnable need," the "pit of longing" that is the common human plight (Nine-Headed Dragon River). All the crew members are suspicious of "Brownie," the Spanish man who seems to be from nowhere in particular and who has nothing but a shady past. He is sullen, touchy, and violent, and the other crew members, with the exception of Speedy, give him wide berth. When they return, drunk, from shore leave, Brownie ranting violently about the whore that laughed at him, Speedy comforts Brown, lifting the man's head into his lap.

The reef Raib sets sail for, that last "good place" of the imagination, is no longer paradise; a group of Jamaican bird-egg hunters have arrived ahead of the turtlers. The paradise Raib has been seeking is, in fact, hell. With this confrontation, it is suddenly clear that the only paradise in the book has been aboard the aptly named Eden. For all the quarreling and complaining, for all the accusations and wounded egos, it is still in the heart of life, whatever its complexities, that paradise exists. For all the diversity of the crew, in terms of race, language, background, and character—Vernon is a drunk, Brown an outlaw, Buddy a studious boy, Wodie a type of mystic, and Speedy a black man from Honduras—they have come together on the boat, amidst life in the ocean, to form a crew, a whole. They are unified in their work and in their pursuit; and on a broader level, they are unified with the sea and the sky and with all the creatures that touch their lives. One of the most shocking events is when Raib strands Vemon; the crew talks about the incident in the dark. "Feel bad about Vemon. He ain't much, but he our shipmate." "Never do dat in de back time. Maroon a shipmate on de Sponnish coast!"

Life for the Jamaican "pan heads," in contrast, consists of nothing more than a degraded sexuality and rum. There is no sense of community, no sense of paradise, no home called Eden. The Jamaicans have been stranded for weeks on the island by Desmond, and are running short of food and water. Afraid that they will return and commandeer the boat, Raib attempts to bring the vessel out of Far Tortuga's reef by night. For a moment Raib is exalted, sure he has brought her through the darkness into clear water; the next moment the ship strikes a submerged rock.

One of the principles of Zen is that to gain satori, or insight into the nature of reality, one must be able to abandon fear of death. That is, one must give up clinging to life. In a discussion of Zen-swordsmanship D. T. Suzuki writes that

We carry on all kinds of imagination in regard to life and death. And is it really this imagination, or strictly speaking, this delusion, and not the actuality of things as they are, that creates in us every occasion for worries, fears, harrowing anticipations? When this delusion is wiped away, would not life itself look after its own welfare as it deems best?

Suzuki also comments on the success that comes to the swordsman able to put the thought of death from his mind. According to Suzuki this is the state of "emptiness" or egolessness that Buddhist philosophers call sunyata.

When there is the slightest feeling of fear of death or of attachment to Ufe, the mind loses its "fluidity." The fluidity is nonhindrance. Have the mind devoid of all fear, free from all forms of attachment, and it is master of itself, it knows no hindrances, no inhibitions, no stoppages, no cloggings. It then follows its own course like water.

Speedy, alone of all the crew, survives because he is not driven by desperation or "harrowing anticipations." Speedy is able to act, without the hesitation and intellectual and emotional machinations that restrain true endeavor. As a survivor adrift in a catboat with two other crew members, Byrum and Wodie, Speedy takes over the task of doling out the remaining water fairly. Byrum, however, soon argues that the water shouldn't be "wasted" on Wodie who is dying. Speedy and Byrum "gauge each other, red-eyed, dry lips parted"; then Speedy says, "Maybe two more days of no wind and dis heat you find a reason to take my water too. Ain't hard to find a reason when you thirsty." Unlike Byrum, Speedy offers no justification for his actions. His knife, "wet with sea dew," lies next to him in the boat, and Speedy is able to use it like a trained samua when Byrum once again threatens the others in the catboat. Here, too, Speedy seems to exemplify the qualities of a Zen master because in his determination he is able to handle his larger, stronger opponent.

Unifying the novel is the presence of the green turtle, constantly felt, much as is the presence of the sun and stars and wind. The green turtle is the purpose for the voyage. It is a mysterious and beautiful creature that all the men aboard the Eden respect and love. Stories are told about the incredible navigational skills of the turtle and about its amazing natural history. The men are excited when they spot their first turtle of the voyage, "inset in the green sea." There is an affection for this ancient creature: the men admire its mysterious nature, that it is quiet and gentle, clean, and pretty. On board ship, in captivity, the turtles sigh and gasp, in ways that echo the sighs and gasps of the crew, again underlining interrelationships that compose the world.

In the Cayman's early history, the turtles were sought because they could be kept alive on board a ship, and so provide fresh meat for the crews. When the Eden sinks, a turtle is placed in each catboat as insurance of survival. Speedy, ultimately the sole human survivor; never reaches the point where he feels he can eat raw turtle meat, and so his final action when he sees land is to set the green turtle free. "Don't cry, girl. Swim. Das very very fine." Speedy celebrates his survival by extending survival to a fellow creature. This is a type of sacrament, a "useless" action in economic terms, but one that briefly suggests a communication between living things that celebrates the survival and homecoming of all.

For Matthiessen, Zen provides a way of looking at the world that heals the pervasive sense of separation between "man" and "nature" within his own cultural heritage. Matthiessen once wrote that if a native American spiritual teacher were available to him, he might have chosen that path of study. What is important for Matthiessen is finding a way to bridge the gap between humans and nature—that terrible gap that turns the rest of the world into a wasteland, a blank place, a thing incapable of speaking to the human heart. His search for a way to close that gap is an underlying motif in all his books, but nowhere more profoundly than in Far Tortuga.