Everyone Has a Crazy Uncle

A family separated by geography and different beliefs. Themes of acceptance and prejudice. A broken engagement. This sounds like HBO’s next tear-jerker series, but it’s actually a story about fish.

Italo Calvino’s “The Aquatic Uncle” is a slice of life story involving pulmonate fish and land animals from over 298 million years ago. In other words, the short story is literary fiction with elements of genre, like science fiction. Hence, the talking fish’s family drama. HBO needs to take notes.

Qfwfq’s Uncle N'ba N'ga refuses to accept the evolution of the Carboniferous period and stays living in water, believing water respiration to be superior to air breathing, while his family migrates to life on land. Qfwfq then falls in love with and becomes engaged to Lll, a creature whose family had lived on land so long they’ve become convinced they’ve never lived elsewhere.

Uncle N'ba N'ga’s portrayal and Qfwfq’s views of his and Lll’s family prompts discussion about accepting new points of view or becoming stuck in old ways of thinking.

Referring to Uncle N'ba N'ga, Qfwfq states, “It just wasn't possible to make him accept a reality different from his own. And yet, his opinions continued to exert an authority over all of us; in the end” (Calvino 2).

Qfwfq later even refers to his uncle as his opponent. But there is uncomfortableness on Qfwfq’s side as well. He has internalized shame for his family’s past ways of living, shown by his embarrassment of his history in front of Lll and his idolization of her land-dwelling abilities.  

The characters continue to experience the dichotomy of the safety of clinging to your beliefs or opening up to new experiences. However, Uncle N'ba N'ga is surprisingly willing to meet with Lll and she is surprisingly accepting of his ways. In the end, it is Qfwfq who carries on rigidly with the beliefs he’s grown up with.

The situation seems to connect to human prejudices about race, immigration, gender, or sexuality. Then, you remember this story is about fish. But thanks to the effective combination of genre and literary elements, the story is still engaging for me.

Worlds collide when Lll wants to breathe underwater. Qfwfq thinks of her desire to learn as a question that shouldn’t even be asked, which shows the dangers of misinformation and shutting down attempts at mutual understanding.

As they keep visiting Uncle N'ba N'ga, Qfwfq describes the setting as “… anyone seeing us from the distance, all close together, wouldn't have known who was terrestrial and who was aquatic” (Calvino 4). The scene shows that the characters are not as different as they previously thought.

However, I can overthink this story all I want. My analysis falls apart at the story’s end, when grumpy Uncle N'ba N'ga steals Lll from Qfwfq, and she lives with him forever underwater.

Qfwfq ultimately reaches acceptance of self in the end, but I still have no idea how to interpret this ending, other than, good for old Uncle N'ba N'ga.