Chapter 14, Winter Haven
Today’s reading brought a big surprise: Carson broke her scientific viewpoint. All along, in every chapter, I’ve learned about wildlife living and dying, eating and being eaten. Carson presents the cycle of life as a passing tableau. Big fish eat little fish. Big birds eat fish. Fishermen catch fish to be eaten. It’s the way of the world.
In “Winter Haven,” we meet a new named character: Lophius, an angler fish, a squat, misshapen creature formed like a bellows, with a wide gash of a mouth set with rows of sharp teeth. (p. 136) After further description of a decidedly odd-looking fish, we find Lophius lying under the prow of a wrecked ship. The angler fish lay motionless, his two small, evil eyes directed upward from the top of his flat head.
Then on page 138: The eiders were watched from below by a pair of small, malignant eyes that belonged to a creature swimming slowly and with awkward motion through the water–a creature like a great, misshapen bellows.
In a book filled with careful observations, attributing immoral intent to a fish seems odd. In the trilogy’s back matter, Carson writes that she “was determined to avoid human bias as much as possible.” Interesting to note that it might have been a struggle at times, even for her.