Monica Irwin

Professor Biegelson
Intro to Literature
11 December 2014
Space Bound
A common question in our society today to get to know someone is If you were to get stranded
up in space and could only bring a certain amount of things to survive and restart your own colony, what
would they be? Normally people would say one sentimental item for encouragement and other items
that would help them survive up there. My typical answer to this was a picture of my family, a lighter, a
knife, a mirror, or other survival items. However, in this circumstance Im only allowed to bring 5 pieces
of literature. Books would not ordinarily be an option for me because Im not a big reader but I feel as if
they would bring me vast knowledge of survival, wisdom to build my own civilization, and maybe a little
entertainment when I have some rest and recreation time. The five literary pieces I have selected are
The Hebrew Bible (Genesis 1-4 to be exact), What is Enlightenment by Immanuel Kant, The Thousand
and One Nights, Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness, and lastly The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass.
Through these five pieces I will successfully start up my own civilization with the help of a small group of
people who are stranded with me and live our lives to the fullest on a distant planet.
Since we will be on a new planet that nobody has ever been to before, the setup and
surroundings could be completely different than what we are used to. In Genesis 1 of The Hebrew Bible
God named all of the things around him and activities that happened. For example, when the sun came
up he called it day and when it was dark he called it night. He also named objects like grass, seas, land,
plants etc. On our planet we will rename everything whether it is what we are used to seeing or if it is
completely new. Since we are starting a completely new colony why dont we start fresh?

A new colony with few people will definitely need to grow if we want to last, so we will have to
multiply. God created humans in Genesis 1 also, and he told them Be fruitful and multiply and fill the
earth and conquer it.. I will say this to my colony so that way we can expand and build our planet up.
Another thing to note is the fact that the group that started this colony lived on planet earth prior to this
new planet which means we know what sin is. God created his man and woman in Genesis 2 but in
Genesis 3 he gets angry at them for disobeying him. Our colony will be forgiving when it comes to sin
because we know from past knowledge that everyone makes mistakes and that is what makes us
human.
On this new planet I want my colony to be full of people with determined minds, strong hearts,
and passion to make our settlement the best it can be. For these reasons, I will read and reread What is
Enlightenment? by Immanuel Kant to myself and to my people for inspiration. In his reading, Kant
defined enlightenment as courage to use your own reason. This will put the judgment of peoples
actions on themselves and give them responsibilities to do what they think is right. This is important
because if you give your people freedom they can take it and show you how well they use it. Kant said
that freedom was the essential ingredient to enlightenment.
Kant believed that one of the main reasons people were un-enlightened was laziness and
cowardice. The people on my colony should be enlightened which means they should not be lazy or
afraid. Enlightenment is mans release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is the incapacity to use
ones own understanding without the guidance of others. Basically Kant didnt think people should rely
on others to do things for them which leads to laziness. I agree with this thought for the most part. I
want my people to get things done for themselves and not ask for favors or help unless it is very
necessary. I do want people however to utilize each others special talents or qualities each person
possess and to combine each others to be efficient. We need to get past our self-imposed obstacles we
have by using enlightenment to help that. Kant does think we should do this on our own and I agree

with him on that. Kants arguments in his piece have some flaws but for the most part I would use it for
my government.
Inspiration and encouragement is extremely important when starting a new colony which is why
I will also be reading The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass on my planet. This novel is one of the
most inspirational tales to read. It is about a slave who suffers through awful misfortune and manages to
overcome many tragedies including losing family members, seeing friends or loved ones being hurt, and
being treated like a piece of property instead of a human being. Douglass makes the best of what he is
given though and turns his unfortunate situation into a challenge to make his life the best he can make.
The reading will show my people that if one person can strive to do great things than as a group we
should have a better chance at being able to do great things together. Like my planet, where we are
pretty much starting from nothing, that is how Douglass started his life. He teaches himself to read and
eventually write by the help of one of his masters wives and then the help of kids who dont mind
helping him even though he is African American.
Which leads into another major aspect of my colony and that is we will not be discriminant at
all. To make this happen it will have to start with our original group of people. I will make sure, and it is
emphasized in Douglasss story, how wrong it is to discriminate against those who are different. In the
story Douglass gets children to teach him to write which would be enormously frowned upon during this
time to help an African American. Since they are children they dont know the difference between
someone who is different than them. As long as a person is nice to them, the color of their skin doesnt
matter to children. The reason for this is because they still have their innocence before they grow up
and their minds are brainwashed by society. Once it is in their heads of my people not to discriminate,
then we wont have to worry about it anymore. As our colony expands the young ones will look up to
the original ascendants of the colony and when they see how accepting they are of different people
then they will follow their lead and so on and so forth. Our planet will get along with each other no

matter the different types of people we will have there. Everyone will love everyone and maybe we can
become the first colony that achieves world peace.
It is impossible to start a colony on a new planet without knowing how to survive. Heart of
Darkness is the survival book we need to read on our planet to give us tips and inspiration to survive
while we dont have much. In Conrads story, the main character Marlow travels up the Congo River to
meet a man named Kurtz. He faces obstacles such as tribal men trying to kill him and that is where he
sees his helmsman die. When on our planet together we are going to experience tragedies such as
deaths but that is something we are going to have to move on from. We are on a new planet and we
dont know what kind of wildlife or natural disasters could occur. Like Marlow in the story, we will
mourn over deaths but then we will bounce back from them and keep building up our colony. Also, since
Marlow and his men were on a boat for so long they did have to fight famine and thirst at times. With
our new planet, we do not know how much food and water we have to survive. We may go through dry
spells and possibly days without eating but this is something we will have to overcome. Hunting may be
one of our most crucial tasks to provide food for our colony. We can help each other to put our minds
over matter on the days we are short of food and drink and are feeling weak. With teamwork we will
survive.
Another key aspect in Conrads Heart of Darkness that my planet will need to keep in mind is
power and corruption. Marlow is traveling to see Kurtz because he hears how great of a man he is but
the longer he travels he starts to hear that Kurtzs power has driven him to corruption. Kurtz is the
leader of a colony and is using his power to kill innocent people. This instills fear in the people which
make them bow down to Kurtz and allow him to have full control over them. There will be no room
allowed for corruption on my planet. We will have someone in charge, most likely me because this is my
planet, but we will form a government type deal similar to the United States to make sure an incident
like Kurtz doesnt occur. In case anyone does get out of hand with power we will have a written

document that says they can be put in prison and taken out of power by a vote of the people. This will
solve all discrepancys we have with power.
All of the stories I have mentioned so far have been inspirational and helpful for our journey on
the new planet. But what is a colonization without a little entertainment? And that is where The
Thousand and One Nights comes into play. This will be the bedtime story we read every night before
bed for some humor and entertainment to end our day. This is a tale of a man who feels betrayed by
women everywhere but can only be saved by a woman in the end. It goes through miniature stories
throughout the whole book about different morals to live by. One important moral is to not judge a
whole group of people from one or two of them that have done something wrong. My colony can learn
from these morals and we can use them to shape the personalities and hearts of our new home.
Thousand and One Nights also supposedly goes on forever, so we could potentially read a story every
night for the rest of our lives and never be bored because every story is a little bit different throughout
it.
Being stuck on an unknown planet with a group of people may be scary at first. Yes we will have
to restart from scratch but we will be able to use the help of The Hebrew Bible for this. We will need lots
of motivation and inspiration to be able to overcome the obstacles of starting it. We can motivate each
other, but on days where everyone seems to be down, we will look to The Autobiography of Frederick
Douglass, for he overcame the struggles of slavery, so we can overcome the obstacles of starting a new
colony. We will also be able to look at Immanuel Kants What is Enlightenment? for help to not be lazy
and if at first we try and dont succeed, then we can try again and ask for help. Corruption will not be an
issue on our planet because we will use Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad as an example of what not
to do by reading about how power turned Kurtz corrupt. Lastly, we will have our bedtime entertainment
and morals taught to us through reading Thousand and One Nights every night for comfort to know

there are still fun things out there to read that also teach a lesson. With these five literary pieces on our
new planet, we will be able to expand our colony into the best place anyone can live.