Small Boat – Vincent Delecroix
Small Boat is a small book. It is a translation of a book written in French. The book’s events are based loosely on a real life event.
The book, Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix (Author), Helen Stevenson (Translator), was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. There are some books whose narrative voice and choice of perspective makes all the difference. Small Boat is one such book. In all of 100 pages, the book makes you think of moral dilemmas, and the apparent lack of them too.
The book is based on an incident of a boat full of refugees drowning in the British Canal a few years back. The incident happened on Nov 24th 2021. In it, a boat with 33 people capsized, and 27 people drowned at sea.
Perspective:
Usually, the perspectives we hear or write about are the ones we hear on the news. With social media blowing things out of proportion all the time, news and ethical questions take on a new meaning. Polarization makes it hard to hear any one person’s perspective.
Small Boat approaches the night in question from the perspective of the naval officer who took the 14 phone calls from the drowning refugees. Her increasingly exasperated responses played out on the air waves and televised on loop notwithstanding, there is the ‘I didn’t ask you to leave!” echoing across the seas.
The premise is that the emergency naval officer in charge of despatching nearby ships to rescue the passengers failed in her duty, citing the boat was technically in English seas, and therefore not in her jurisdiction.
Excerpt:
“Empathy, I said to the police inspector, is an idiotic luxury indulged in by people who do nothing, and who are moved by the spectacle of suffering. Good for them. But the truth is, you can’t do both at once…My job is not to take an interest in people’s lives or to be moved by their suffering, feigned or real, it’s to fish them out of the water when I have to. I don’t want to know these people…their existence, their story, what they’ve done, or what they are worth, and especially not what drove them to be fools. All I care about is life stripped bare.”
The naval officer goes on in this vein for a few more sentences.
“Even though what I was saying was completely obvious, the police inspector looked disconcerted (or alarmed maybe?) “
The mid-section of the book pivots into the perspective of the refugee. The only one who had enough charge and coverage to make the emergency phone calls, even as their little dinghy boat filled with water. Their feet, their torsos, and then like a beacon of light, holding the phone above his head as he was pulled under by the relentless seas.
I expected the third section of the book to be from the police inspector’s perspective, but it pivoted back to the naval officer.
Dum inter homines sumus colamus humanitatem
The small book about the small boat leaves us with big questions about big topics. It reminded me of one of my favorite sayings by Seneca: As long as we are among humans, let us be humane.
- What does empathy mean, and is it something that determines our humanity?
- It isn’t our job to determine whether a life is worthy of being saved or not: why or why not?
Ultimately, is our work a calling? A duty? A means to an end?