Echolocation (Part one) · The Medicine Chest

Title

Echolocation (Part one)

Is Part Of

Human Biology See all items with this value

English See all items with this value

Marine and Antarctic Research Centre for Innovation and Sustainability See all items with this value

Oceanography See all items with this value

Ichthyology See all items with this value

Philosophy See all items with this value

Description

In the spring of 1940, Steinbeck and his very close friend, biologist Ed Ricketts, chartered a boat and embarked on a month long marine specimen-collecting expedition in the Gulf of California, which resulted in their collaboration on a book, 'The Sea of Cortez'. Described as both a travelogue and biological record, it reveals the two men's philosophies: it dwells on the place of humans in the environment, the interconnection between single organisms and the larger ecosystem, and the themes of leaving and returning home. A number of ecological concerns, rare in 1940, are voiced, such as an imagined but horrific vision of the long term damage that the Japanese bottom fishing trawlers are doing to the sea bed. Although written as if it were the journal kept by Steinbeck during the voyage, the book is to some extent a work of fiction: the journals are not Steinbeck's, and his wife, who had accompanied him on the trip, is not mentioned (though at one point Steinbeck slips and mentions the matter of food for seven people). Since returning home is a theme throughout the narrative, the inclusion of his wife, a symbol of home, would have dissipated the effect. Steinbeck and Ricketts are never mentioned by name but are amalgamated into the first person "we" who narrate the log.

Curriculum

The Memory of Water See all items with this value

url

https://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/292283/the-log-from-the-sea-of-cortez/

Creator

John Steinbeck See all items with this value

Date Created

1951

Source

Steinbeck, J. & Ricketts, E. 1951. The Log from the Sea of Cortez. New York: Viking Press.

Resonances

Ed Ricketts See all items with this value

John Steinbeck See all items with this value

friendship See all items with this value

echolocation See all items with this value

marine See all items with this value

ocean See all items with this value

ecology See all items with this value

fishing See all items with this value

exploration See all items with this value

expedition See all items with this value

collaboration See all items with this value

wife See all items with this value

boat See all items with this value

specimen See all items with this value

home See all items with this value

biology See all items with this value

traveller See all items with this value

damage See all items with this value

trawlers See all items with this value

coral See all items with this value

journal See all items with this value

philosophy See all items with this value

female See all items with this value

narrative See all items with this value

symbol See all items with this value

medicine chest See all items with this value

Type

Text

Item sets

Curricula

The Memory of Water

Site pages

Materials