The Contrasting Perceptions of Nature

                There are clear and distinct parallels between the portrayal of nature in both “Through the Arc of the Rain Forest” and “Wide Sargasso Sea”.  In both, the tropical natural environment is almost treated as its own distinct character, with personalities and story arcs to rival that of the main characters.

                An even more distinct parallel, however, is how nature is viewed and interacted with by the characters within the stories.  On the one hand, those native to the land share an intense feeling of connection and admiration for the wonder of nature.  In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette comments how “[Her] Garden was large and beautiful as the garden in the Bible-the tree of life grew there.” (10-11 WSS)  Meanwhile, in Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Chico Paco shares a feeling of divine wonder for the Brazilian landscape, specifically “The Matacao, [which he] was sure, was a divine place.”  (24, TtAotRF)

                However, this all stands in stark contrast to the way that many people from outside Brazil or Jamaica view the natural landscape.  Antoinette’s unnamed husband is very explicit in his disdain for his wife’s homeland.  “…I understood why the porter had called it a wild place,” he reflects to himself, “Not only wild but menacing.  Those hills would close in on you.”  (41, WSS)

"What an Extreme Green." -Antoinette's Most Astute Husband 

                In both Wide Sargasso Sea and Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, this disdain and distrust of nature seems to stem from the very fact of being a foreigner.  Both Antoinette’s Husband and JB Tweep, for example, seem out of place and lost in these new world.  “I hated the mountains and the hills,” the unnamed Englishman surmises as he prepares to leave for England, “I hated its beauty and magic and the secret I would never know.”  (103, WSS)  Meanwhile, “JB had never been to a foreign country and was initially alarmed at what he felt to be a sudden listlessness in his third arm…he actually thought his third arm might be atrophying in [the] hoe tropical weather…how could a third arm possibly survive in a place like this?”  (page 75, TtAotRF)

                In essence, both Wide Sargasso Sea and Through the Arc of the Rain Forest seem to be making a comment on the contrast of how nature is perceived by people.  Characters such as Antoinette and Chico Paco, who spent their whole lives enveloped by nature, open their hearts to it and treat it with reverence and respect.  Meanwhile, characters such as the Unnamed Englishman and JB Tweep, who are both foreign to their new environments and are only there to earn money, have only disdain and distrust for nature, and are thus much less receptive towards it.