Art in Exchange for Nature (Sea of Dreams by Cixin Liu Essay Example)

Sea of Dreams, by Cixin Liu, forms part of his short story collection book Hold Up the Sky. Sea of Dreams holds a combination between the power of beauty and catastrophe. Using all the Earth’s water, a newly arrived artist creates a never-seen sculpture that eventually leads to a crisis; due to lack of resources, humans start feeling despair over the situation. Willing to sacrifice anything to create one last bit of art before disappearing, pushes a sculptor to come up with ideas to save the planet's ecosystem. Sea of Dreams presents through imagery, allegory, and metaphor the extent to which the destruction of nature is allowed to produce art.

Although the story revolves around the two main characters, Yan Dong who is a sculptor, and the low-temperature artist, art is what the writer focuses on the most. In the first half of the story, Liu utilizes imagery to create a picture of how the low-temperature artist’s passion for art galvanizes her to do extreme things that later cause severe consequences. After her arrival, the artist creates Sea of ​​dreams, an art piece that consequently damages the planet, since as Yan Dong described it: “giant blocks of ice were being frozen and then carried into the air to become one of an increasing number of glittering “space dominoes.” Tidal waves assaulted every major city along the world’s coasts.” (Liu, p. 234). The detailed description of the actions that the artist made through the story, illustrate how her art gradually depleted the existing water, as well, through imagery the writer gives background on how this was not the first time she had destroyed something, “In the course of creation, we’ve often destroyed stars!” (Liu, p. 235).

Furthermore, while the low-temperature artist represents destruction, Yan Dong symbolizes the concession given to destroy things, “in people’s eyes she was seen as the low-temperature artist’s conspirator” (Liu, p. 242). This is portrayed with allegory; both characters serve to relate the story to the current water shortage crisis that the Earth is experiencing. Once the low-temperature artist leaves the Earth, which is the second half of the story, Yan is left with all the guilt for what the artist caused, leading her to try to make amends for the other's mistake by seeking new ideas to return the water resources. Liu’s usage of this literary device leaves a lesson on how humans allowed wasting nature to create works of art and depicts the repercussions of it.

The use of metaphors is particularly prominent throughout the story, the main one being the loss of resources due to human’s vagueness. Liu exposes this metaphor through the low-temperature artist, her mindset, and her art piece Sea of Dreams; the artist didn’t see past her desires and thought creating something wonderful was most important than letting humans live, when asked if art was important to her, she replied by saying “It’s everything.” (Liu, p. 235), and to humans, it was too, since even when they were about to die due to the lack of water, they still wanted to do a last work of art by creating a monument because “This is humanity’s final work of art, and also its greatest work of art” (Liu, p. 244). The vagueness of the character's decisions and thoughts led the natural resources to disappearance, this lesson makes the reader comprehend how all actions have a repercussion, especially the ones you don't give much attention to.

To fully comprehend what the writer wanted the reader to perceive, it is important to state that the relationship between civilization and art is represented in three different stages: development, destruction, and rebirth. Development starts with the arrival of the low-temperature artist, and the astonishment she caused in the citizens; destruction occurs when the artist starts taking the water resources to freeze them and create Sea of dreams, destroying coast cities and making the Earth run out of water; lastly, rebirth is when humans bring back the water from space and decide to dive back into art,  “Finally, they changed themselves from survivors of a disaster back to artists again.”(Liu, p. 254). What these three stages have in common is that they all agree that art and civilization, cannot exist without the other, even if for them, that means damaging the environment.

Sea of Dreams depicts the permission we give ourselves to destroy nature in exchange for creating beauty. By carefully describing the exhausting path of ideas and actions that the inhabitants of the story had to follow to recover their resources after being blinded by the beauty of art, it can be concluded that the extent to which humans allowed the destruction of nature, was big, they were dazed by an art piece that was never seen before and lived up to amend the consequences. Therefore, in order to avoid the damage, there must be a balance between human’s use of natural resources and art, since, in the end, art is the only thing that remains.