Lunatics and Social Injustice Central Passage: \"So

¶ … Lunatics and Social Injustice

Central passage:

"So it's the most powerful substance in the world," Solly said. "But why us? Why are we here?"

"You don't know?" Jakob said.

"They blanked us, remember? All that's gone."

But because of Jakob, they knew what was up there: the domed palaces on the lunar surface, the fantastic luxuries of Earth… when he spoke of it, in fact, a lot of Earth came back to them, and they babbled and chattered at the unexpected upwellings. Memories that deep couldn't be blanked without killing, Jakob said. And so they prevailed after all, in a way.

But there was much that had been burnt forever. And so Jakob sighed. "Yeah, I remember. I just thought -- well. We're here for different reasons. Some were criminals. Some complained."

"Like Hester!" They laughed.

"Yeah, I suppose that's what got her here. But a lot of us were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Wrong politics or skin or whatever. Wrong look on your face."

"That was me, I bet," Solly said, and the others laughed at him. "Well I got a funny face, I know I do! I can feel it."

Jakob was silent for a long time. "What about you?" Oliver asked. More silence. The rumble of a distant detonation, like muted thunder.

"I wish I knew. But I'm like you in that. I don't remember the actual arrest. They must have hit me on the head. Given me a concussion. I must have said something against the mines, I guess. And the wrong people heard me."

"Bad luck."

"Yeah. Bad luck." (265-266).

Discussion

The Lunatics, written by Kim Stanley Robinson, was first published in1988. The passage chosen for this essay is indicative of the social injustice that prevails in this futuristic setting and it is these inequities that drive the events of the story. Briefly, the story revolves around a group of promethium miners working beneath the surface of the moon. According to the story promethium is "…the most precious element. On Earth our masters rule by it. All their civilization is based on it…" (259). The main characters in the story have all been conscripted against their will and sent to the moon to work the mines.

Throughout the story the miners are subject to cruel and unusual treatment by the foremen. Due to their circumstances and the harsh conditions under which they live the miners from Pen Twelve, led by Jakob begin to disappear. When Freeman, the third miner to disappear after Naomi and mute Elijah, went missing Robinson subtlety alludes to the scheme, "Free at last,' murmured Jakob" (258). On another occasion a foreman confronts Jakob and observes that the miners had started to disappear when he arrived. When Jakob speaks back to the foreman he is beaten for his insolence (263).

Robinson repeatedly refers to the black or darkness that the miners live. This darkness is both literal and metaphorical. "The foreman left, light receding with him until it was black again, the pure dense black that was their own" (258). The miner's work "…under the lash of the foreman" (259) and are forced to mine "The most precious element. On Earth our masters rule by it. All their civilization is based on it…so they condemn us to a life of pulling it out of the moon for them" (259).

The abuse of the miners is further established when Oliver, another of the workers in Pen Twelve, rigs a timepiece with a set of pulleys and a detonation cord and confirms his suspicions that the work shifts are getting longer and at the same time the foreman increase their oversight. When Solly disappears they are again beaten. However, when Oliver shares his fears about the missing miners with Jakob his response is another "Free at last" (267).

In many ways this story is a reflection of the abuses that occurred in the United States before the Civil War in 1860, during the period of slavery, and the injustices that occurred in Germany before and during the Second World War when one class of people subjects another class of people their will due to arbitrary traits or circumstances, what Robinson called "bad luck."