COVE

Author

 Tochi Onyebuchi, seen in the first image at a book signing, is a Nigerian-American author, born in Massachusetts and currently living in the same city his novel takes place in: New Haven, Connecticut, a skyline view of which is shown in the third image. A former civil rights lawyer, Onyebuchi’s novels focus on civil rights and Afrofuturism. His 2022 novel Goliath does the same, also working with biblical themes. Onyebuchi’s relationship to the Bible can be inferred by his first name meaning “praise God” in Igbo. Though explicit biblical references in Goliath are limited (aside from the explicit title), it is evident that Onyebuchi is interested in the Bible as a means of allegory and explanation for ways of life, including and especially power struggles.

Plot

 Goliath, borrowing from biblical stories and themes, is a very different apocalypse story from those before it, even just referring to the fact that it’s post-apocalyptic but only takes place 28 years after the novel’s publication. Earth is decimated by polluted hair, heavy heat, and radiation, and those who could afford to leave did. Those who couldn’t stay on the planet, breathing in the open air and working to sell what they can, plants that they misrepresent as rare, like Sydney, or bricks from abandoned homes, like Linc, to the colonists of newly-established space colonies. The novel focuses on New Haven, Connecticut, a mostly deserted city due to its inhabitability. Entire neighborhoods house only one or two families, and even less as stackers sell the material of homes, the business of which pushes more people out of their living spaces. The people pushed out are Black and brown individuals who were unfortunate enough to have to stay on the planet, and even more unfortunate to not be able to stay even in the places that almost no one wants to. Almost, because some people living in the colonies move back to Earth, the planet they barely remember, in order to find fulfillment. Jonathan and David are white space colonists that want to find enrichment and meaning in their lives, so they move to New Haven. Though they try to escape the privilege they’ve been bestowed, it doesn’t escape them on Earth: they choose a life that the people on Earth they’re joining would do anything to escape. Their gentrification of Earth comes with destruction and death, though they’d like to believe that they are ‘some of the good ones.’

Biblical Materials

The biblical references in Goliath are more thematic than overt. Goliath is described as a “primal biblical epic” on its sleeve, asserting itself as a narrative retelling of a biblical story. Which story that is specifically may be up for debate, but perhaps the most obvious choice is the story of David and Goliath. The Goliath figure of Goliath can also be up for debate. Goliath is a Philistine warrior fighting against Israel, described by David as an “uncircumcised Philistine… [defying] the armies of the living God” (1 Sam 17:26). Goliath, though powerful, is an outsider, defeated by an unassuming—but in his own way powerful—David. Perhaps in Goliath, the Goliath figure is the Black and brown community of New Haven, and the greater Earth as a whole: unwealthy outsiders defeated by an unlikely source of desertion due to an apocalypse. Or, Goliath could be the system that disenfranchises the individuals left on Earth: a powerful giant that requires the right foe to be defeated. Of course, in this story, that system remains powerful, its force never overcome by another. This may be in part due to the participation of characters like Linc, contributing to families being forced to leave their homes so that he and his crew can sell supplies to the space colonies—and this is not necessarily any of their fault. Their lives are destined to be relatively short and obscenely difficult, so they must do what they can to survive and make lives for themselves, done by participating in the very system of racism and disenfranchisement that puts them and everyone else down. There is no way to win; the system takes it all.

Goliath can also be seen as a retelling of the relationship between King David and his close friend, Jonathan, which many modern readings interpret as being a homosexual relationship, which it is overtly in Goliath, a novel that never shies away from—and in fact leans into—many topics and descriptions of graphic scenes, especially sexual ones, including something historians and many Bible readers like to shy away from like a gay relationship. What I take issue with here though, is that David and Jonathan are not necessarily the protagonists of the novel. Though their story may seem the ‘most important’ because of the title, they share the burden of the plot with many other characters, each arguably more important than the two white space-colonist, Earth-gentrifiers. The focus of the novel is on the decimation of the planet and those who are left to deal with it, not necessarily these individual characters who share the names and assumed relationship of Biblical figures. 

This focus of Earth’s decimation draws focus to Revelation. Onyebuchi takes the general idea of the ‘end of days’ that Revelation deals with, but he excludes the more supernatural elements of Revelation. What’s unique about his novel as compared to other sci-fi/apocalypse narratives is his total lack of departure from realism. Though characters do have cybernetic body parts and travel to space, these are grounded in science and present-day reality built by human beings. The entirety of Goliath is grounded in human relationships and stories. So when the end of days comes: sickness, heat, and radioactivity run rampant on the planet, and it is entirely due to human invention. Instead of the ground cracking open and the last judgement occurring, people’s lives just keep going, as they do during everything. Goliath, then, takes place after the onset of “the hour of trial that [came] on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth” (Rev 3:10). People either have to stay where they are or use their abundance of resources to escape this hour of trial. God may still have dominion over space, but those who live here don’t have to face the effects of their actions on Earth.

Intertextuality

Onyebuchi’s use of biblical allusion acts as both a benefit and detriment to the text. On one hand, his references to biblical narratives, characters, and themes enriches the story that Onyebuchi tells. Though his narrative takes place in the future and is defined by present-day power struggles, especially those related to race, they are supported by the ideas of ancient biblical texts: they’re universal and long-lasting, and readers familiar with the Bible will understand this. Even a surface-level familiarity with the Bible will help enrich Onyebuchi’s storytelling; David and Goliath is one of the most-well known from the text, so even if readers don’t recall the character of Jonathan and his relationship with David, something will ring a bell during their reading because of David’s character and the title referencing his Philistine foe. On the other hand, these readings of Goliath are informed by the reader’s familiarity. If the Bible and its stories hold no relevance to a reader of Onyebuchi’s novel, the biblical elements that he plays with will be lost. The question is not if Goliath can stand on its own, but instead how it reads without the aspect of intertextuality. Perhaps a reader unfamiliar with the Bible will pick up on Onyebuchi’s comments on race, prejudice, class difference, and the guilt of privilege and how they interact and still be moved without the enrichment of biblical reference, but the question remains: just how much are they missing, and does it fully change their reading?

Citations

Barneby, Charles. New Haven, Connecticut Skyline from East Rock. 2006. Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_Haven_from_East_Rock.jpg. 

New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press, 1999. 

Plate with the Battle of David and Goliath. 2017. Wikimedia Commons, Medieval Art, MET, NY, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plate_with_the_Battle_of_David_a...

Rhododendrites. Tochi Onyebuchi at BookExpo 2019. 30 May 2019. Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tochi_Onyebuchi_at_BookExpo_(05067).jpg. 

Stanford Torus Space Colony. 2008. Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stanford_Torus_space_colony_exte....