Essay: “The Briefing” by Arundhati Roy: An Environmental Literature Examination of a Changing Climate

As the humans face the pressing issue of the changing environment and the nature of such a fragile state of life, there comes cries for help. If politicians and the upper elite will not heed the call of a dying planet, people who are impassioned by such a pressing issue will speak out for the great damage done to humanity’s only habitat. These cries come in various forms, but in the world of literature come in the form of environmental literature. These works are focused on the mostly damaging touch of humanity and the problems that arise from such continuously (and in some cases) heinous actions. Arundhati Roy’s “The Briefing” although slightly confusing in content at first glance, it does raise some interesting questions of short stories being used as rhetoric. Rhetorical use is what drives Roy’s short story here. It is what separates the elites that stand idly by against the “normal people” who must stand in the way of such people. Roy’s elevation of environmental battles to the level of climate change fails to account for the qualitative rather than simply quantitative dissimilarities between these problems. One cannot simply stand atop a hill and survey the wasteland from such a vantage point. To take such an idle approach or one that is wholly disinterred is what can lead the human race into its extinction. In this essay I argue that Arundhati Roy’s “The Briefing” uses this short story as a framing device for environmental rhetoric to speak out against capitalism, the elite upper class, and climate change.
There is to be in put in place some reflection or mediation of some kind (whether scientific or not) is needed to “see” or “feel” the Anthropocene and its human made effects. The search to find solutions to climate change requires a radically different scale and kind of environmental thinking. “The Briefing” is a fictional response to a prompt asking contributors to “meditate on the idea of a fortress that has never been attacked.” Roy describes “The Briefing” as an allegory told by a “phantom narrator” addressing his or her troops. The narrator wonders whether the fort is a “fragile testament to trepidation, to apprehension, to an imagination under siege” that leads to the greater messaged being unknowingly told by the narrator. The narrator explains that there is said to be gold in the fort, free from the “Snow Wars” in the changing climate. Corporations have begun trying to make artificial snow that can survive in slightly warmer temperatures. Recently MountainWhite has been competing with “Scent n’ Sparkle.” The corporate Snow Wars have now begun with citizens not to lucky to be hearing this environmental briefing at the mercy of some sort of capitalist-like shadow force working in the background. “The Briefing” depicts this leader addressing his troops as they prepare to assault the supposedly impenetrable yet never previously attacked fortress while still being worried about the amount of snow that will fall or be made from the ski resorts. The narrator’s speech is the author Roy condemning such environmentally destructive actions and to defend against such actions. “Go well, comrades, leave no footprints” says the narrator telling an audience as seen as passive observers, but still implicated in the fictional environmental struggle (or lack there of) for these types of higher classed people. Although this short story has its roots in very present times, Roy also intertextually invokes Macbeth. Specifically, the march of trees from “Great Burnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill” is Macbeth saying that trees can excise themselves from the earth and continue to do so. By calling on such a widely familiar cultural reading in this manner, Roy creates a form of textual network, one which draws the reader in to the author’s own concerns. If we can understand how nature might shift out of joint through the murder of a king in Shakespeare, then it is possible though not certain we might conceive the scope of climate change in our modern and pressing ecological times.
Although the people that Roy addresses in this short story are fictional, her authorship does address very real implications of a group of high-powered individuals behind the scenes. Those that uphold this idea of an “elite capitalism” makes for further separation between those who simply cannot be bothered with the passing thought of climate change. The way in which Roy employs this type of writing can be affective, but the general public do not (as this fictional group of elites) really seem convinced that climate change will eventually affect every single one of us. If it is out of sight, it tends to be out of mind. If this short story was given a larger platform then maybe more eyes can see it and therefore act upon it. As it stands, more people can benefit from reading this and allowing themselves to place their own context in the all-encompassing threat that is climate change along with humanity’s tendency to place the needs of more affluent people over poorer groups. In “The Briefing,” perhaps the most basic question within climate change debates: “What is the real world? Are things we cannot imagine, measure, analyze, represent and reproduce real? Do they exist? Do they live in the recesses of our minds in a Fort that has never been attacked? When our imaginations fail will the world fail too?” Hence while recognizing the ever-present difficulty in imagining climate change, Roy reiterates the importance of such an effort nonetheless. In order to do so, she suggests, we must start by thinking small. It is a testament to the importance and penetration of Roy’s writing that her vision brings to the surface such crucial debates. Through her effort to imagine climate change via a set of proliferating micro-narratives, rather than the feature length book or film, she offers a new and viable strategy for engaging world-wide climate issues. Roy’s basic eco-political project, which seeks to build imaginative collectivities across different spatial and temporal boundaries, is both productive and fundamentally thought provoking so long as it includes a self-reflexive attention to recognizing crucial differences between the masses and these secret societies that pervade the public eye and as the speaker says “[c]hoose your targets carefully.”
Roy’s short story brings attention to an emerging genre of literature. This is one that addresses the Anthropocene on not only our environment but on the literary texts. “Cli-Fi” (climate change science fiction) books sharpen this focus by taking it even further, by bringing climate change and its effects from the background into the forefront, to consider the specific problem of human-made climate change and its effects thereof. It will be critical to raise awareness and put the spotlight on the implications of climate change, on the planet, on societies, on individuals. Could these pieces of literature be the catalyst to activate change within out society? They are a step in the right direction. Works of fiction can contribute to saving this planet and to awaken something in humans despite their all their differences. Climate change is the one commonality humans face together, and it will surely be a difficult battle to win. Fiction that is concerned with the environment imagines Earth’s dystopian future in some cases. Ordinary people can step up and be involved, be inspired by a writing such as Roy’s. Climate change may seem inescapable, but at the very least, this literature can drive home the enormity of what awaits us if we don’t change through stories that engage us and help us comprehend what lies ahead, and in doing so spur us and inspire us to do our bit in doing something about climate change.