Evolution In James Ballard's Deep End

Each moment spent within the universe is one of change. Galaxies are constantly revolving, stars are continually burning fuel in order to radiate, and black holes are perennially churning different matter. On a smaller, more worldly scale, people are always doing errands, animals are always live and about, and natural processes are occurring without human intervention (such as waves from the sea). It is this change, on a longer scale, that James Ballard presents evolution (and its forms) through his short story, “Deep End”. Perhaps the biggest, and most important form of evolution Ballard presents is one of actual, biological evolution. Through his juxtaposition of humans and a dogfish, Ballard points out how much life has changed since aquatic life dominated the

In the case of the sharks, they “stayed behind when the first amphibians emerged from the seas,” (241). Already having drawn a parallel from sharks to humans as both kings of their respective territories through biological evolution, Ballard uses this as a chance to show that Holliday and Granger are the sharks of their lifetime. They are the sharks in this case that are being left behind, as the other humans have decided to move to Mars, where they may have a better chance to survive (after all, the water ice there is unadulterated, whereas most of the seas on Earth have been drained). Of course, in this case, there is the major difference that while animals evolved to be on land in the case of sharks (and therefore stayed within the confines within a planet), in this case humans are evolving to move to a completely different planet. However, one could also see that for a shark, the land would be a new “world” to discover, as there is no way for them to actually travel across it. In such a case, the other humans are also evolving in order to be able to travel across another