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Archipelago By William Geoffrey Greed Quotes

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Greed at Sea: Proliferation of Materialism in Archipelago by Monique Roffey
Greed is an inevitable truth. In a world of division, self-interest has become the driving force for many. In the novel Archipelago, author Monique Roffey explores the ways that the consequences of greed occur in both the human and natural world through the journeys of Gavin and Océan Weald. To Roffey, water is a transmitter of this greed, allowing it to travel and spread. Archipelago is an environmental novel which portrays greed through symbolism and character foils as a driver of capitalism, climate change and their unjust effects.
The role of the sea is key to the novel, acting as a force of nature – creator and destroyer – and a symbolic representation of greed. …show more content…

In this case, it is the greed of capitalism through cheap slave labor. Once again, the sea becomes a destroyer of human lives rather than a creator due to the greed of others. Throughout the book, Gavin mentions the history of the islands he visits, and how it haunts these areas even today. On Bonaire, he notes the feelings of despair upon viewing the pink slave homes and says that "there are many such places like this in the Caribbean, spots where someone massacred someone else, or where slaves were housed, where the horror still resides in stones, in walls.” (Roffey 123). After Suzy's death and Gavin's travel across the Caribbean, he begins to recognize the pain that human greed has brought the area; the ocean has been home to the pain of millions by fostering the transportation of those with the power to enslave others around the world. Coming to terms with this reality, Roffey encompasses human greed in the history of the world: "Man severed two continents to get what Man wanted. Man sells other men, cuts continents in half, steals hundreds of thousands of helpless tortoises to eat, extinguishing entire species" (Roffey 300). Painfully aware of the troublesome history of the places he visits and their relations to greed, Gavin recognizes that humanity has destroyed others to benefit themselves, but knowing this does not do much to quell his own greed throughout the

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