Challenging Anthropocentric Attitudes through More-Than-Human Narration in Monique Roffey’s Magical Realist Novel The Mermaid of Black Conch Emily Anderson Introduction In Monique Roffey’s 2020 novel The Mermaid of Back Conch, a unique form of more-than-human narration is introduced through the supernatural character Aycayia, a 2000-year-old cursed mermaid who is forcefully returned to land and influences the islanders’ ways of living. What makes this novel specifically interesting regarding the effect of the more-than-human is its magical realist setting, in which such fantastic creatures as the mermaid can effortlessly exist within our ‘reality’ and represent the more-than-human. Bernaerts et al. (2014: 70 ff.) claim that a more-than-human narrator may fulfil various functions such as creating satire, having a didactic purpose or emphasising ethical dilemmas. And while in other genres such as children’s literature, fairy tales, or fantasy, the presence of a more-than-human narrator “is not so exceptional in view of the relevant generic conventions”, in magical realism these fantastic more-than-human narrators most prominently create a deliberate ontological paradox when integrated into a realistic setting (71). In Roffey’s novel, the more-than-human narrator Aycayia is represented as realistic and neither challenged nor fully explained, leading the reader to encounter the supernatural paradox of the mermaid which undermines the rigidity of anthropocentric binaries such as animal vs. human and magical vs. scientific. This can, of course, be a tricky undertaking since the existence of the mermaid in an otherwise entirely realistic setting creates an impossibility which calls for explanation. Jan Alber et al. argue that anti-mimetic narration offers a possible approach to dealing with such a paradox. They use this term to describe narratives that DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 may have temporalities, storyworlds, mind representation, or acts of narration that would have to be construed as physically, logically, mnemonically, or psychologically impossible or highly implausible in real-world storytelling situations, but that allow readers to interpret them as reliable, possible, or authoritative by cuing them to change the interpretational strategies. (Alber et al. 2013: 104) Both the existence and the narrative perspective of the mermaid Aycayia are a challenge to the interpretative frames of the reader, since her immortality, her supernatural hybridity, as well as her sudden appearance in an otherwise entirely realistic setting, appear to be ontologically impossible. As Alber et al. aptly surmise, this causes the reader to develop new frames of interpretation to be able to encompass these impossibilities. Since the main supernatural element of Roffey’s magical realist narrative simultaneously represents the more-than-human, such an engagement I suggest, may prompt the reader to expand their awareness towards the more-than-human. Therefore, Aycayia’s more-than-human narrative perspective “aggressively challenges the mind’s fundamental sense-making capabilities”, “urges us to create frames that tran‐ scend our real-world knowledge […] [and] addresses the question of what these impossible blends say about us and our being in the world” (Alber et al. 2013: 109). Employing fantastic creatures such as mermaids, I suggest, can give rise to a re-evaluation of what it means to be human and what it means to be a human living in the Anthropocene and thus provoke a “responsible approach to living in the world that alleviates many of the problematic behaviours that have produced the Anthropocene” in the first place ( James 2019: 6). Therefore, this essay aims to explore the potentials as well as the limitations of destabilising anthropocentric attitudes based on binaries such as the animal vs. the human and the magical vs. the scientific by engaging with Aycayia’s supernatural presence and more-than-human perspective. Mermaids in the Anthropocene The mermaid is a monstrous, fantastic creature that has existed in cultures worldwide for millennia and has become an archetypal image branded into humanity’s collective imagination, reflecting both human desires as well as fears. We encounter mermaids in our everyday lives not only printed on the Starbucks coffee cup, which will end up as plastic waste floating in the ocean, but mermaids “have been used to market everything from bath salts to cigarettes, canned salmon and gourmet coffee but they have also been appropriated as powerful symbols of body positivity, feminist emancipation, and LGBTQ[+] empowerment” (Mortensen 2018: 204). Mermaids are creatures DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 156 Emily Anderson of the in-between. Living both in the ocean as well as occasionally on land, portrayed as alluringly innocent girls as well as volatile seductresses luring men to their deaths, they “inhabit a liminal space between the familiar and the foreign” (Robertson 2013: 307). However, no matter how the mermaid is portrayed throughout history and in different cultures, her “power to fascinate […] stems not only from her female gender but also from her uncertain species identity” (Mortensen 2018: 204). Their hybridity is what makes them both fascinating as well as estranging and unsettling, since they are neither entirely animal nor human and therefore neither entirely foreign nor familiar to humans. Especially the merging of the boundaries between the human and the animal makes mermaids particularly unsettling for anthropocentrism’s rigid binaries. By blurring human-animal distinctions, in other words, mermaids highlight the restrictiveness of anthropocentric ideology and signal the possibility of critically revisioning human being-in-the-world. In their improper cross-species corporeality and ontological liminality, mermaids carry the implication that human beings are themselves ‘composite creatures’, profoundly intertwined with other entities, despite the proud claim of autonomy made by the human race and each human self. (Mortensen 2018: 204) Mermaids, therefore, are the ideal fantastic half-half creatures to challenge the rigid binaries of the Anthropocene, described as the geological era in which humans “have become geological agents capable of shaping, in more and more profound ways, the very geology of the earth” (Monaco 2025: 9). And yet, while this description may initially sound neutral, the term has an inevitably negative connotation, since the era of the Anthropocene goes hand in hand with certain ideologies and attitudes that have led humanity to slowly but systematically destroy their own planet. Anthropocentric ideologies include the attitude of dominance over the more-than-human world and with it the assumption of an innate right to exploit its resources without consideration for the impact this has on the planet’s health and its human as well as more-than-human inhabitants. Ben Holgate emphasises the subconsciousness of the anthropocen‐ tric attitudes humanity struggles with, claiming that “[w]hile humans demand increasingly more of our planet and its natural resources, we remain largely ambivalent about nature, confused about the actual condition of the nonhuman, and often exhibiting contradictory behavior towards ecosystems, sometimes inadvertently harming the environments we attempt to protect” (2019: 26). This subconscious ambivalence can also be seen in Roffey’s novel in which the characters, even if they successfully empathise with the mermaid and gain a deeper understanding of the more-than-human, end up endangering DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 Challenging Anthropocentric Attitudes through More-Than-Human Narration 157 her by attempting to re-humanise her and to keep her on land. However, as “[m]ediators between land and sea, animality and humanity, mermaids may possess the monstrous power” to narrow the gap between the human and the more-than-human and thereby reveal and challenge the anthropocentric attitudes substantiated by such binaries (Mortensen 2019: 205). Narrative voices and perspectives The novel is told from multiple narrative perspectives. While the actual story takes place in the late 1970s, the narrative perspective changes frequently from an omniscient heterodiegetic narrator to retrospectively written accounts by two of the main characters, the fisherman David Baptiste and the mermaid Aycayia. David’s narrative sequences are told as diary entries from 2016, providing his memories of his relationship and experiences with Aycayia. Aycayia herself also provides a written account in the form of verse monologues, written at an unspecified later time, after David has already passed away. She explains how, as a creature of the ocean, she is able to write down her story: “I find a pencil floating from a boat / that was smashed on some rocks / I find paper in that wreckage / Long time events pass / and yet I can remember it all” (Roffey 2020: 53). On these pieces of paper, she paradoxically writes in a voice that is both simple and childlike due to her limited grasp of the English language as well as deeply insightful and reflective due to her millennia of living and experiencing both the human and the more-than-human world. Furthermore, Aycayia’s name literally translates to ‘sweet voice’ referring to her ability to sing for which she was well known in her Taino community, and which was also represented as a significant aspect of her allure on men. Her verse monologues, therefore, are reminiscent of both the oral traditions of Taino culture as well as the image of the singing siren whose song tempts men into the ocean. And yet, Aycayia is not the only more-than-human entity in the novel with a narrative voice. The ocean itself is anthropomorphised by the Black Conch fishermen and endowed with a cautioning voice that reminds them of the ocean’s agency. While fishing with the American tourist fishermen Thomas and Hank Clayson, a father and son from Miami, the local fisherman Nicer Country provides his impression of the ocean: The sea, that expanse of nothingness, could reflect a man back on himself. It had that effect. It was so endless and it moved around underneath the boat. It wasn’t the same thing at all as being on any expanse of earth. The sea shifted. The sea could swallow the boat whole. (Roffey 2020: 14) DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 158 Emily Anderson Nicer acknowledges the sea’s power, its Otherness from terrestrial soil which appears safe and firm compared to the volatile fluidity and contrariness of the ocean, which is anthropomorphised in the novel as a female entity that strikes fear into the hearts of men who want to dominate and exploit her. This type of “fluid metaphor bring[s] the porous boundaries between the human and the nonhuman to the fore” (Monaco 2025: 148). And yet, similar to the mermaid, whose representation is most often a reflection on humanity’s changing norms, attitudes, and desires, the ocean is said to “reflect a man back on himself ” (Roffey 2020: 14). How humanity chooses to portray and anthropomorphise these more-than-human entities reflects on their own fears and desires, such as the fishermen’s uncanny realisation that the ocean “could swallow the boat whole” and the uncomfortable experience of “the sea reflect[ing] back their very souls”, forcing these men to confront themselves and their relationship with the ocean (14). And yet, this representation of the ocean differs greatly depending on the perceiver. While the ocean may appear dauntingly powerful and uncanny to the human fishermen, Aycayia has a strong, intrinsic connection to the sea both from her previous life in the indigenous Taino culture she was born into as well as by her life within the ocean. For her, the sea means safety and power; for her the sea was “a silent but sentient world [and] she had come to love parts of it” (136). Furthermore, she can reflect on the differences and similarities between being human and being a mermaid, living on land and in the ocean. After several months back on land and returned to an almost human form, Acyayia begins to miss the sea: She missed the hiding she could do in it. She missed her tail. She had been a tremendous mermaid. But there was something in her old power that hadn’t come with her, that had fallen off with her tail. On land she was a small woman. In the sea, she had swum alongside whales. (163) The ocean provided protection, immortal life, and tremendous physical and magical power even though her original transformation into a mermaid was due to a curse placed on her by a group of women who had become jealous of Aycayia’s beauty and sexual allure. Aycayia’s hybrid mermaid body combines both the strength and instinct of a marine animal and the memories and consciousness of a human. She is described as a powerful and frightening mermaid rather than the timid, voiceless, and innocent version introduced by Hans Christian Andersen’s little mermaid. “Her torso was sturdy and muscular […] her spine spikes were flat […] but when they flared and spread, they revealed a mighty dorsal […] Her tail was curvaceous and strong and shot through with oily rainbow colours” (Roffey 2020: 30 f.). This power did not transfer to DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 Challenging Anthropocentric Attitudes through More-Than-Human Narration 159 her human form, “she already looked smaller than when she was in the sea” immediately after she was violently pulled from its waters (30). The ocean is portrayed as a sentient and powerful more-than-human entity with immense agency and influence on animals, humans, and supernatural, liminal creatures like the mermaid. And it warns the fishermen, both local and foreign: “Be careful what you ask for. I am bigger than you. Take only what you need” (14; original emphasis). “Science explains that we emerged from the sea - our blood a tide of oceanic ions […]. And yet our general obliviousness to the gigantic bodies of water surrounding islands and continents is astonishing”, surmises Yaeger (2010: 525). This obliviousness can be challenged and potentially lessened when confronted with the narrative perspective of both the ocean itself and a supernatural hybrid creature such as the mermaid. Fantasies of dominance The ocean’s warning, unfortunately, is not heeded by the fishermen who forcefully rip Aycayia from the sea. A blatant difference of anthropocentric attitudes is revealed between the local fishermen and the two foreigners, who become the object of Black Conch gossip as soon as they arrive to hire a crew of local fishermen as guides. “All agree they didn’t know Black Conch waters, let alone its ways. The old man, they say, had failed at everything he had tried in his life” (Roffey 2020: 13). Thomas Clayson lives in an unhappy, unfaithful marriage and brought his son Hank onto this fishing trip in hopes of “teaching him a thing or two about life, nature, even women, when they got drunk” (54). “His son was ‘sensitive’, his wife had said. Like a friggin plant”, an utterance that already suggests his disrespectful attitude towards the natural world, since he equates plants with fragility and weakness (19). As soon as an apparently strong and heavy sea creature gets hooked on Hank’s fishing rod, Thomas “wanted his son to catch the fish, wanted that more than anything on earth […]. Imagine the pride of having a son capable of such a conquest” (20). As it becomes clear to them that the creature they have captured was not in fact a blue marlin but a mermaid, the word ‘conquest’ takes on new meaning. Thomas Clayson wants for his son and himself to not only conquer nature in general but also the mermaid in particular, a “woman hooked, clubbed, half-dead”, and belonging to an indigenous culture that had been wiped out by the impacts of Western colonisation centuries ago (30). As she surfaces for the first time and the fishermen “saw her head, her breasts, her belly, the pubic bone of a woman where it met the tail of a glistening fish […] all five men were horrified as she hit the water, thrashing” (21). Instinctively, Nicer “knew they’d hooked something DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 160 Emily Anderson they shouldn’t have” and that “the mermaid, or whatever it was, deserved to stay in the sea” (21). But the two foreign tourists disregard the opinions of the local fishermen, who had grown up to be wary and superstitious but also respectful towards the ocean and the legendary creatures said to hide underneath its surface. While the local men “felt a sense of blasphemy” while hauling in the struggling mermaid, Thomas Clayson “could hardly wait to see her strung up on the jetty” (28). Even his son Hank, who had so far been rather frightened and hesitant towards the mermaid, reconsiders that “big game fishing was exciting after all” since “for the first time ever, he’d hooked a woman” (32). “The novel represents masculine violence […] [and] a mercenary lust for control” through the two tourist fishermen (Mentz 2025: 102), however, later in the novel several local islanders like David’s neighbour as well as several police officers will also display the same mercenary and violent behaviour towards the mermaid. During this violent extraction of the mermaid, she causes a variety of conflicting and juxtaposing emotions within these men. The local men are fearful and feel a deeply unsettling sense of wrongdoing while the tourist fishermen are set on conquering and exploiting the mermaid they pulled from the ocean. And yet, Thomas Clayson is well aware of the problematic aspects and the general unfairness of humanity exploiting nature for sport and to establish dominance over the more-than-human: “He’d caught many big fish and he understood, deep down, the nature of this game: that this was always an unfair fight. While there was skill to reeling in a game fish, there was no skill at all in the odds” (Roffey 2020: 28). And while there is a difference between the reactions of the local fishermen compared to the tourist fishermen regarding their relationship and attitude towards the ocean and its inhabitants, all men involved in the capture of Aycayia experience one feeling in common. “Every man could feel a sense of wonderment, at this half and half ” (30), and yet, accompanying this sense of awe is a derisive, abusive sexual desire to dominate the creature they had just violently captured. “Each man felt a deep tug in his crotch. The old man wanted to take out his dick and piss all over her. The younger men fought hard to keep a cockstand from bouncing up in their pants. She was like a magnet” (30). Their desire to dominate is twofold in Aycayia’s case: The men both experience the thrill of the chase in the hunting of an ‘animal’ they naturally assume they can overpower, and also the sexual desire towards the mermaid’s human female side. And while anthropocentric dominance must not necessarily be based on male sexual fantasies, in the novel’s context, Aycayia confronts the fishermen with the grotesque appeal of a creature both alluring and repulsive leading the men to attempt dominance over both her animal as well as her female body. DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 Challenging Anthropocentric Attitudes through More-Than-Human Narration 161 In turn, Aycayia’s “eyes flicked over them, full of stark contempt” (30), a gaze that both frightens and provocatively challenges the men that captured her, since this fierce “nonhuman gaze […] correlates with uncertainty about human mastery over the animal in question”, challenging humanity’s assumption of self-evident superiority over the more-than-human (Armstrong 2025: 143). Changing perceptions towards the more-than-human So, in spite of the ocean’s ominous warning, the mermaid is taken on land and strung up on the jetty “alongside the two marlin for all to see, her head hanging downwards, her deadly hair trailing, her arms lashed with rope behind her back, her breasts naked” (34). David Baptiste, who had interacted with the mermaid several times up until this point by singing to her from his boat while admiring her appearance, saves Aycayia from the dock and temporarily places her inside a bathtub full of saltwater in his house. David, who spent his entire life living close to the sea and fishing its waters marvels at her strangeness, at “the face of a human woman who once lived centuries past” and the power and beauty of her animality (2). He is frightened but not repulsed and once they cautiously interact, David’s perspective begins to change: “She open my heart, one time, that mermaid, Lawd. She made my heart swell up in my chest, just like that. She open my mind, too, to other animals and fish we don’t know about” (9). David, instead of wanting to capture and abuse her, embraces her hybrid nature and reflects on the incredible “things a man could see, especially if he connect to nature, and live close to the sea” (9). For the next several weeks David witnesses Aycayia slowly returning to an almost human form, a magical transformation that is grotesque, painful, and frightening for both of them. Aycayia is cautious of David’s help due to her experiences with human men, and David, obviously, has no experiences dealing with a supernatural situation such as this. He attempts to make sense of her by assuming “she come from some half-space in God’s great order, like she was from a time when creatures were getting designed. She was from when fish was leaving the sea behind, growing legs, turning into reptiles” (10). A biological exception that was somehow left out of the evolutionary process of life moving from the ocean onto land is now going through this process in rapid procession when deprived of the ocean’s protection and power. “Her hands were the first to change; the webbing fell off in clumps, like grey-pink jello, to the floor […] the dorsal came of next, the spikes on her back had been dissolving […] it had begun to rot and turn gelatinous” (60 f.). Her animal body slowly dissolves, and David observes that this transformation is extremely unsettling to Aycayia. “One day, DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 162 Emily Anderson I woke up early and found her tail on the floor. It was off, completely. Large and ragged and smelling not too good. I looked at her and she looked at me and I swear I saw that she was upset and maybe even miserable to lose it” (61). This empathetic assumption of David’s is seconded by Aycayia’s own account of her transformation when she writes: “[m]y new old self start coming back / I was a woman again and I was frighten bad […] One day my tail fell on the floor / all in one piece a big part of me / How could I swim away? ” (65 f.). For Aycayia, her mermaid body provided strength and protection; protection from the abusive sexual advances of men in both her past and present life on land, protection from the colonial violence which destroyed her people, as well as from the consequences of anthropocentrism which entirely changed humanity’s perception and attitudes towards the more-than-human world compared to the biocentric relationship Aycayia knew from her Taino culture. Though her existence in the sea is often referred to as a solitary existence and was the result of a curse placed on her by her own people, it nonetheless appears safe and tranquil in comparison to the struggles on land. Eventually, the anthropocentric attitudes of some of the characters engaging with Aycayia’s relationship with and representation of the more-than-human begin to change. Aycayia came “to Black Conch waters / on the currents with the leatherbacks”, moving with their annual migration cycle and orienting herself according to the natural movements of marine animals rather than a human understanding of time (53). Therefore, her attention to the changes of nature is much more pronounced. Especially during the time Aycayia is yet unable to verbally communicate, David as well as the white landowner Arcadia Rain and her deaf son Reggie notice Aycayia’s distinct attention to nature. Aycayia has developed her own way of communicating with the sea creatures around her and is only vaguely aware of the changes that took place on land over the millennia she has spent in the sea. “I lived in the kingdom of the sea for long long time”, she writes, [w]orld of silence but they talk down there in their own way […] For many years I live with fish Did not know how many centuries pass I see canoas get very big engines loud loud I stay away from them I see people in canoas who wear clothes I figure to keep away (Roffey 2020: 81). DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 Challenging Anthropocentric Attitudes through More-Than-Human Narration 163 Once back on land, she struggles with contemporary society and the English language and for the first few weeks David and Aycayia rely on interpreting each other’s facial expressions and body language. While Aycayia is not entirely an animal, the first few attempts of communi‐ cation are reminiscent of a human attempting to interpret and empathise with the perspective of a frightened animal. “I try everything to make her feel safe”, David writes in his diary during the time he attempts to figure out how to help Aycayia during her transformation, experimenting with what to feed her and how to take care of the wounds inflicted on her during her capture (59). And yet, Aycayia is wary and agitated, going through emotional and physical turmoil, unwilling to allow David near her. However, while an actual animal perspective would involve a certain degree of anthropomorphising due to the inability of humans to truly know an animal’s cognitive and empathetic abilities and processes, Aycayia is a liminal, supernatural creature who was once a human cursed into a half-animal shape and is now neither one nor the other. Due to Aycayia’s supernatural more-than-humanness she can therefore be seen as a “bridge character” who “acts as a conduit between the readers and [animals]” ( James 2019: 593). “This [more-than-] human figure thus becomes the target of reader’s empathy on behalf of ” animals but “is not in itself anthropomorphised” (Caracciolo 2023: 92; original emphasis). The effect of this empathy for other animals which results from empathising with Aycayia’s half-half existence, quickly takes root in David. While cautiously exploring what Aycayia likes to eat, which turns out to be an entirely vegetarian diet, David remarks: “I lost my appetite for fish. I couldn’t eat nothing like that ever again - nor since” (62). As a fisherman living on an island that relies on fish as its main source of income as well as a major source of sustenance, this change is surprising and a clear result of David empathising with the marine animals he has caught and eaten his entire life after his interactions with Aycayia. And yet, this example also reveals the limitations of empathising with the mermaid as an approach to understanding and accepting the more-than-human, since David’s newly-acquired respect for the more-than-human is very much in consequence of his romantic emotions for Aycayia and her female, human side. While David certainly gains insight into the more-than-human world through engaging with Aycayia’s perspective, this is a result of him empathising with the mermaid’s humanness rather than her animality. So, the question arises if it is only possible for Aycayia to have such a noticeable influence on the other characters due to her humanoid form and her eventual development of human language? DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 164 Emily Anderson The influence of Aycayia’s communication This assumption is only substantiated by how strongly Aycayia’s influence on the other characters develops once her form of communication progresses from entirely non-verbal towards sign-language and eventually spoken English. Arcadia Rain, who functions as a local governor on the island, accidentally becomes aware of Aycayia and invites both David and the mermaid to visit her home after her deaf son Reggie takes a shine to Aycayia. Reggie can easily connect with the mermaid due to some shared struggles such as Reggie’s deafness as well as him being “half and half too / Half black half white”, while his mother Arcadia can relate to Aycayia’s struggle of belonging, since she is from a white, colonial family but was born and raised on Black Conch, a combination which has often led to her being an outcast in her own home (80). While, with a fully nonhuman narrator such as an animal, the communication with humans would be an obvious barrier, Aycayia, as both human as well as animal, can bypass this difficulty of nonhuman narration and achieve great impact on the islanders’ opinions as soon as she relearns verbal communication. Her attitudes and opinions actively begin to challenge some fundamental anthropocentric attitudes the characters represent, once more proving that humans are more susceptive towards a supernatural creature that looks and speaks like a human, making them more familiar and understandable compared to a nonhuman animal narrator. Miss Rain teach me the language of Black Conch island She say it was a type of English parlance She teach me like she teach Reggie her own son born with no language so we had that in common I had forgotten mine thousand year old language vanished from my mouth (Roffey 2020: 122) Arcadia Rain tells Aycayia that her family owns half of the island of Black Conch, their ownership dating back to the first European landand slave-owning settlers of Black Conch. Aycayia merely replies, “land is not to be owned I tell her”, thereby undermining the basis of the anthropocentric attitude of owning and exploiting land for personal gain (124). The mermaid has a different connection to the more-than-human world which both predates and transcends anthropocentrism. David romanticises Aycayia’s previous indigenous life, especially considering Aycayia’s marginal‐ isation and the curse placed on her by her own people, when he assumes that DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 Challenging Anthropocentric Attitudes through More-Than-Human Narration 165 she came “from ancient times, from times when people knew magic, when people saw gods everywhere and talked to the plants, the animals and even the fish in the sea” (70). Even though her people “made little distinction between human and animal … as a young woman, she had been cursed to cross the slight boundary between them” and come to terms with her liminality and her solitude in the ocean (222). And yet, though the memories of her previous life include the marginalisation she had to suffer due to her sexuality, she gradually reconnects to her old life on land by refamiliarising herself with nature, “she had recognised many things on the island: the smell of it, the night sounds, the type of daylight in the mornings […]. Then there were the birds and the plants, the trees all around, the warm earth; all of it flooded back, her world of living gods” (111). Aycayia’s memories of terrestrial nature predate Western anthropocentrism, originating in a culture that was able to live much more harmoniously with nature and whose religious and spiritual beliefs were founded on animism. These biocentric “indigenous philosophies stand in opposition to the Western, scientific, rationalist view of the natural environment as a site of exploitation for private profit and economic gain which is fundamentally separate from humanity” (Holgate 2019: 29). In addition, her experiences in the sea as part human, part animal provided her with the ability to represent the more-than-human world as a mediating figure between humanity and animality as well as between the land and the ocean. Thus, she undermines several anthropocentric ideologies such as the assumption of humanity to claim ownership over land and water and their resources as well as the anthropocentric necessity to maintain the animal-human binary, in order to justify the exploitation of animals and their habitats. Even though Aycayia’s supernatural existence was originally the result of a curse, to David it was “like she’d opened a door in the universe, showing him the first people who had lived long ago in these islands”, presenting him with an alternative way of living compared to the anthropocentric attitudes that most humans, including himself, have subconsciously internalized and are continuously acing upon (Roffey 2020: 105). Thus, Aycayia creates an alternative narrative for both the characters and the readers to consider and learn from, which brings humanity closer to an understanding of the more-than-human. By undermining the animal-human binary needed to justify the exploitation of animals and their habitats, rejecting the ownership of land which in turn condemns all forms of colonialism and even disturbing social binaries such as gender, ethnicity, and species identity, the mermaid can offer an alternative perspective, opposing common anthropocen‐ tric attitudes. “She had changed his comprehension of what it was to be human”, DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 166 Emily Anderson David concludes, admitting that through her paradoxical half-half nature and her memories and attitudes which represent a time before anthropocentrism as well as the more-than-human world removed from anthropocentrism, he has re-evaluated his own humanness (82). Empathising with a more-than-human perspective such as Aycayia’s, even though this empathetic process does partly rely on Aycayia’s humanness rather than her animality, “inherently involves looking at the extratextual world from a different perspective so that readers are prompted to at least consider how they might adjust their lifestyles, both individually and collectively, to protect the environment and persuade others to do likewise” (Holgate 2019: 26). The storm’s impact Unfortunately, not all characters achieve a positive development and “as Aycayia comes to understand the island, she recognises that her hybridity, her fish-ness, exceeds what the human system can tolerate” (Mentz 2025: 101). The curse placed on her has only temporarily subsided and uncanny natural occurrences begin to accumulate towards the novel’s ending, warning of the inevitable return of Aycayia’s curse. While walking through the forest with Reggie, who introduces her to some of his favourite ancient trees, live fish start falling from the sky. “More fish cascaded. And then, an unmistakable cackle. The laughter of many women up the heavens. Then the sky opened. Hundreds of silver carite rained down through the trees” (Roffey 2020: 137). The curse cannot be reversed and finally Aycayia’s fish-ness returns, fine scales spreading on her skin like a rash and the webbing on her hands and feet grows back. While David frantically tries to keep Aycayia with him on land and in human form, she already knows there is no escaping her curse. David reflects in his diary: “I wanted to keep her safe, or so I told myself, but maybe I fool myself too; maybe ‘keep’ was the problem” (159). Aycayia belongs in the ocean, “the sea had never washed out of her”, and just as humans struggle to ‘keep’ and control nature, David realises that this possessive attitude is problematic and harmful towards Aycayia (196). Finally, the choice is taken away from both of them when David’s neighbour Priscilla reports the mermaid’s existence to the police, who in turn contact the tourist fisherman Thomas Clayson. Unable to stop the greed driving these characters to violently recapture the mermaid from David’s house and imprison them both until they can sell her to the highest bidder, Arcadia Rain and her returned lover Life Baptiste decide to help break them out of jail and return Aycayia to the ocean for her own safety. DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 Challenging Anthropocentric Attitudes through More-Than-Human Narration 167 The concluding chapter describes the impact of the fictional hurricane Rosamund which sweeps the mermaid back into the ocean. This hurricane, which David describes as “just about the most devastating storm ever to hit Black Conch”, is not a normal meteorological occurrence, but the violent enforcement of Aycayia’s curse (224). David writes in his journal that this storm “was because of the mermaid. I’m sure of that. It came to claim her back. All during that time in the howling of the winds, I could hear those women laughing” (225). In this example, since the curse was originally placed on Aycayia by her fellow humans but now utters itself in a violent meteorological occurrence, human and (super-)natural agency merge to undermine the anthropocentric assumption of human superiority over nature. The hurricane “wipes the slate partly clean and creates new possibilities for the future”, ushering in a final opportunity for the characters to develop and change (Mentz 2025: 102). “Under cover of the storm, Aycayia returns to the sea, the Rain’s colonial house gets ripped from its foundations, Arcadia’s former lover decides to stay with her and their son, and the Yankee fisherman’s son admits his bisexuality to his domineering father”, Mentz aptly summarises the visible changes (2025: 102). However, characters such as Thomas Clayson, David’s neighbour Priscilla as well as the police officers who took part in the capture of the mermaid clearly have no interest in understanding the more-than-human, justifying their abusive behaviour by dehumanising Aycayia. “It wasn’t like he was selling one of his own people, she wasn’t from Black Conch. No. She wasn’t even human”, the police officer in charge of her capture justifies himself (Roffey 2020: 206). These characters have failed to empathise with Aycayia’s perspective and continue to intentionally hierarchise the human/ animal binary, perceiving her as more of an animal than a human, which, in their binary view of the value of the human over the animal would justify their treatment of Aycayia. This once again reveals the limitations of the novel’s anthropocentric criticism by using empathy for the mermaid in order to enhance an understanding of the more-than-human, since the characters who develop a positive relationship with her subconsciously focus more on her humanness and the characters whose perception remains negative justify this by focusing on her animal side, thereby partly maintaining the animal/ human divide. In the end, the devastating hurricane “was sweeping things away in its path”, revealing humanity’s ecological vulnerability through its destructive nature (Roffey 2020: 244). However, this was the storm’s “grand design, its meaning for them all”, ushering in possibilities for change and development which can now include more consideration of more-than-human perspectives and an awareness of how humanity, both consciously as well as DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 168 Emily Anderson subconsciously, maintains anthropocentric ideologies and how to potentially change such binary attitudes in the future (Roffey 2020: 244). Conclusion Aycayia’s supernatural presence and perspective sheds light on the difficult relationship between humanity and the more-than-human world, ultimately leading some characters to revise their anthropocentric attitudes and “learn[ing] what it means to be just one actor in an entangled world rather than the dominant being in a human-oriented hierarchy” (Fenske/ Norkunas 2017: 107). Since the mermaid appears in a magical realist novel in which her supernatural, more-than-human nature stands in tension with the realistic setting she is placed in, the readers are invited to make their own sense of her existence, thereby enabling a thorough individual engagement with her more-than-hu‐ manness. As Holgate suggest, “magical realism as a non-realistic form of writing enables the author to reveal interconnections that might not be perceptible through literary realism” (2019: 227). And yet, the novel also reveals the characters’ empathetic limitations and their tendency to foreground either Aycayia’s human or animal side in order to justify their respectful or abusive treatment of her. While it is understandable that humans tend to empathise more with what is familiar to them, this tendency still substantiates the binaries of human vs. animal, natural vs. magical, familiar vs. Other, that the mermaid allows to bridge in the first place. Aycayia does not define herself nor does she act according to an anthropocentric hierarchisation into binary categories, since she has never lived in an anthropocentric society, neither during her human life as an indigenous Taino woman nor as a supernatural liminal creature living in the ocean. However, the human characters’ reactions to her reveal how they, some more and some less intentionally, act in accordance with anthropocentric distinctions between such binary categories and that, even if they are willing to broaden their understanding of the more-than-human, they are still trapped within an anthropocentric worldview that limits their capacity for change. Nonetheless, characters such as David, Arcadia, Life, Reggie, and even Hank Clayson, though they subconsciously still rely on humanising Aycayia to better understand and empathise with her, gain substantial insight into the agency and perspective of the more-than-human world, resulting in formative and long-lasting changes in their attitudes towards their own existence in an anthropocentric world. Erin James claims that “we have told ourselves stories about the environment that permit and encourage destructive behaviour” and it has become increasingly important to “call for the exploration of new, more en‐ DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 Challenging Anthropocentric Attitudes through More-Than-Human Narration 169 vironmentally responsible ones” (2022: 7). Supernatural creatures representing the perspective of the more-than-human world in magical realist fiction, “not only reflect on their specific realties but also create them” (Fenske/ Norkunas 2017: 106), thereby revealing and challenging the attitudes and ideologies humanity has subconsciously internalized and offering an alternative narrative to our current destructive anthropocentric reality. Works Cited Alber, Jan/ Iversen, Stefan/ Skov, Henrik/ Richardson, Brian. 2013. “What Really is Unnatu‐ ral Narratology? ”. Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 5, 101-118. Armstrong, Philip. 2025. Disturbing Nature in Narrative Literature. New York: Routledge. Bernaerts, Lars/ Caracciolo, Marco/ Herman, Luc/ Varveck, Bart. 2014. “The Storied Lives of Non-Human Narrators”. Narrative 22/ 1, 68-93. Caracciolo, Marco. 2023. Contemporary Fiction and Climate Uncertainty: Narrating Un‐ stable Futures. London: Bloomsbury. Faris, Wendy. 2004. Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Fenske, Michaela/ Norkunas, Martha. 2017. “Experiencing the More-than-Human World”. Narrative Culture 4/ 2, 105-110. Holgate, Ben. 2019. Climate and Crisis: Magical Realism as Environmental Discourse. New York: Routledge. James, Erin. 2019. “Nonhuman Fictional Characters and the Empathy-Altruism Hypoth‐ esis”. Poetics Today 40/ 3, 579-596. James, Erin. 2022. Narrative in the Anthropocene. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Mentz, Steve. 2025. An Introduction to the Blue Humanities. New York: Routledge. Monaco, Angelo. 2025. Water Stories in the Anthropocene: Anglophone Climate-Change Fiction. New York: Routledge. Mortensen, Peter. 2018. “Half Fish, Half Woman”. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 29/ 2, 201-221. Robertson, Venetia. 2013. “Where Skin Meets Fin: The Mermaid as Myth, Monster and Other-Than-Human Identity”. Australian Religion Studies Review 26/ 3, 303-323. Roffey, Monique. 2020. The Mermaid of Black Conch. London: Penguin Random House. Yaeger, Patricia. 2010. “Editor’s Column: Sea Trash, Dark Pools, and the Tragedy of the Commons”. PMLA 25, 523-545. DOI 10.24053/ REAL-40-0008 170 Emily Anderson