“To be a great reporter required a lot of suffering, a lot of backstory, and I was finding that out for myself.” – Helon Habila 

I listen as my grandmother recounts an event that I, too, experienced. Only, as I listen, I hear nuances that I had once dismissed as meaningless occurrences that had no impact on the meaning of the story being told. I then realize that the selection of detail, itself, impacts the meaning of any story. The way in which history is recorded and retold is telling in itself of societal and cultural values. While reporting is seen as an unbiased entity, the very choice to retell an event is making a statement about the value and importance of that story. The telling of stories, both fictional and non-fictional, is an act of declaring importance to certain issues that would have otherwise been dismissed as meaningless occurrences. Images of the past, memories, and of the future, dreams, have an impact on the perspective that a person has on current issues, and this truth is not exempt from issues involving the environment. The usage memories and dreams is a key aspect to the success that many environmental artist have in communicating the importance of said issues.

In the novel Oil on Water, author Helon Habila utilizes memories as a motif throughout the storyline to demonstrate how the recollection of past events have the power to shape current and future perspectives on problem plaguing African communities. He makes the argument that the telling of these tales of destruction on the African villages due to the extraction of oil will catch the attention of someone and that is when change can happen. The novel’s structure supports this idea because  the author chooses to describe images of the past, or memories, when attempting to explain events that were happening in real time in the novel. Along with structure, the repetition of simple words like “remember”, “tell”, and “truth” supports the theme that the act of remembering and revealing the truth of problematic events will cause change in at least one person’s heart which will then spread to the people they interact with.

The usage of memories is also seen in the short story The Petrol Pump by Italo Calvino. Instead of using memories to tell stories, this piece of literature utilizes memories as a means of forewarning. Since the story in set in a future in which oil is scarce, the protagonist has memories of an “easier” time that serve as nostalgia to a time period of exploitation. This sweet recollection of the destructive dependency on oil in a setting that no longer can exploit the earth demonstrates the sad truth that people may not see how their actions are detrimental until they have security in resources as a memory alone instead of a current reality. This nostalgia is paired with a dream of the future in which there will no longer be a human population because people will no longer be able to support themselves on the depleting source oil. Imagining a future in which humans are obsolete and ultimately decompose into oil instills a feeling of fear that could potentially serve as a means of changing behavior.

The short film Pumzi directed by Wanuri Kahiu draws on this idea of dreams of the future shaping perspective but in a more hopeful sense. Asha, a woman living in a dystopian technology based future who represents Mother Earth in the film, had reoccurring visions of a future in which she was united with vegetation and water. She was then ordered by officials to take her “dream suppressants” so that these images of nature would not haunt her. Suppressing the hope of a future united with nature again was a mechanism that the government used to control the people they were over. These images of fertility and hope pushed her to go against the corrupted system in which she was shackled. Dreams became the motivation to protect the environment even over her own well-being.

The utilization of images of the past and the future serve as bridges to finding solutions to current issues.

Works Cited

Habila, Helon. Oil on Water: A Novel. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print.

Calvino, Italo, and Tim Parks. “The Petrol Pump.” Numbers in the Dark: And Other Stories. New York: Pantheon, 1995. 170-75. Print.

Dodocutepoison. “Pumzi”. Youtube. Youtube, LLC. 2013.