Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Final Thoughts
Chapter 23 -- Girls, Too!
It's been a free-wheeling, these chapters of juvenile literature review. Some of the works have
been well crafted and some have been taxing, but all draw us into spaces where only the author
knows the exit.
Before we exit the library, however, we can make a brief pass through the passages we've
quoted in our several chapters on fiction. While our sample is not random, of course, a word
count reveals something of the impressions the authors wished to convey. Here are a few
comparisons:
Words signifying darkness
e.g., dim, shade
Words signifying largeness
e.g., great, ceaseless
Words signifying quickness
e.g., rapid, sudden
Words suggesting negativity
e.g., monstrous, dread
: Words signifying brightness
e.g., brilliance, sparkle
: Words signifying smallness
e.g., small, tiny
: Words signifying slowness
e.g., slow, sluggish
: Words suggesting positivity
e.g., fantastic, splendid
The quintessential tale: the adventurer embarks on an illuminated underground river, sees
awesome sights and rushes onward, barely escaping misfortune.
Here are a few of the fictional rivers' common attributes.
Unlike a river on the terrestrial surface, underground waters have a roof of stone arching above.
While the closed spatial dimension shouldn't affect any adventurers but those in aircraft -- which
indeed we have noted -- the roof remains a barrier to freedom. A voyager on an underground
river is to some degree a captive.
As a current is prone to do to do, these rivers propel the characters onward. More commonly
than not, the voyager is drawn into a sequence of increasing adventure. The option to turn back
is lost and what's ahead isn't foretold,
Homer's River Pyriphlegethon was of fire and Dante's River Phlegethon was of blood. The rivers
of more-recent writers, however, are of -- well -- just water. Familiarity helps us board the boat,
so to speak. From our upper-world experiences, we know how a craft rocks as we shift our
weight, how it spins as it shoots the rapids, how it may capsize where the channel is deepest. It's
real.
For similar reasons, the underground oceans of fiction are reasonably free of sea monsters and
the like, objects of danger which might enliven a normal adventure under the upper stars. A
protagonist entering into the earth to face but the nemeses above ground isn't much of a yarn.
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