The Back of the Turtle

The creation myth of “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky” remains significant to the narrative. In addition to somehow being connected to the GreenSweep project, it is retold by the residents of Samaritan Bay as they look for guidance on how to build a world from scratch. If Crisp and Sonny are to be believed, the community’s rebirth may be right around the corner, foreshadowed by various odd happenings in and around the town. Crisp continues to make enigmatic predictions about the future. He refers to the other residents as if they are characters in a story about Samaritan Bay’s future, and he is especially fixated on Gabriel, whose arrival seems to be the final piece that Crisp has been waiting for.

These chapters introduce the theme of the Eternal Recurrence and the Triumph of Life. The eternal recurrence is the Nietzschean idea that everything within a finite universe repeats ad infinitum. Eternal recurrence characterizes time as a flat circle, meaning that the future, present, and past all exist at once, although individuals can only see whatever point they are at on the circle. Crisp is the exception to this limited viewpoint, seemingly seeing the entirety of the circle at once. His absolute certainty that life will one day return to Samaritan Bay implies that he possesses prophetic knowledge that the other characters can’t access. This, along with his strange turns of phrase and appearance, suggest he is perhaps something other than human. Like a figure of providence, Crisp holds together all the disparate threads of the characters’ storylines, gently manipulating them to guide them toward what he sees as their destined roles.

The presence of the “Jabberwocks,” too, supports the idea of time as a cycle; they are back in Samaritan Bay to pitch an oil pipeline, an event that has happened at least once before during Crisp’s residency in the town. This plot point parallels the real-world events surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), an oil pipeline project that, in 2016, Energy Transfer Partners attempted to build near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. This proposed expansion posed a large contamination threat to the Reservation’s water supply, and the protests from the Indigenous community were met with violence from law enforcement. Though the DAPL protests occurred years after The Back of the Turtle was published, the parallels demonstrate how the narrative’s themes tap into contemporary societal issues.

The Jabberwocks’ return for a second time implies that the Samaritan Bay residents successfully fended them off the first time. Crisp seems unconcerned about their return, implying that he knows how the negotiations will play out and further feeding into the idea that he can see into the future.

The story of The Ruin remains elusive, but the narrative floats several hints: Gabriel’s obsessive cataloging of human-made ecological disasters and the repeated mentions of GreenSweep suggest that The Ruin had something to do with Domidion. Domidion is certainly capable of environmental destruction, as proven by the leakage of their holding pond at the Athabasca River and their mishandling of the Anguis. Dorian doesn’t try to disguise his disregard for the environment except when facing the press. In the privacy of his office, he hopes to himself that a ship carrying tons of bio-waste will sink near a country that isn’t on good terms with the US or Canada. Domidion serves as a proxy for the countless real-world corporations whose practices massively negatively affect the Earth.

Dorian’s isolation is apparent in this section of the novel. He is a self-interested hedonist, reveling in the sensual pleasures afforded by his wealth—yet his life is devoid of meaningful relationships. His wife is consistently absent, and his marriage gives him no sexual or romantic fulfillment. He’s happiest when alone or with his emotionless assistant, Winter.