Department of Speculation Blog 4

When it comes to The Department of Speculation, I’m not sure that there could possibly be a better word to describe the overall analysis of this work than “speculation”. The author, in this case, has managed to craft such a compelling piece of literature that it not only transcribes multiple genres, but also creates some confusion as to whom this book is written for, and indeed, to whom the protagonist, the wife, is speaking to.

 

The very fact that for the latter half of the book, the narrator describes herself as nothing more than “the wife” as if she were an outsider looking in on her own life, takes the almost journalistic first person POV early on in the book and flips it entirely on its head. Not only that, but it also complicates the matter of what exactly the narrator’s purpose is in telling this story, transcribing it for others to find. Who is the intended audience, if there is one at all? Perhaps this entire text is nothing more than a rambling stream of consciousness, an outlet for a poor, downtrodden wife as she falls further and further into the grips of despair? There are many questions raised by the overall narrative of The Department of Speculation, not the least of which is whether or not there is an explicit intention for this work to be read by others (outside of, of course, the fact that the real-life author of this book wishes to make sales off their work), and I will do my best to address the possibilities of whom the intended addressee is throughout this fourth blog post.

 

As mentioned, throughout the first half of the book, the novel is written in first person, through the POV of a woman who goes unnamed. We learn early on that this woman is an author with great aspirations for a bright future that include taking advantage of all that life has to offer, being both independent and possessing a fairly positive outlook on life. The stream-of-consciousness style in which this book is written still lends a somewhat chaotic vibe that a simple journal entry would lack. In fact, it is almost as if the reader is being plunged headfirst directly into the mind of the narrator, the woman, and experiencing each and every sporadic, spastic thought that crosses her mind.

 

This is perhaps the most intriguing element to this novel, the fact that the addressee would seem to be someone that is allowed to peer directly into her mind as if a window were literally installed in the back of her skull. This is also what makes the book so entertaining and thought-provoking to read, as it prompts the reader to empathize with the woman in the sense that we, as human beings ourselves, can understand and accept that this is in fact how most of us think on a daily basis, from moment to moment; however, seeing such a detailed and thorough outline transcribed onto pages through the written word is something thnat most of us have rarely, if ever, experienced.

 

On the other hand, if one is to view this as a more literal journal entry, just one that happens to be written with a stream-of-consciousness fashion, then there are several possibilities as to whom the possible target audience is. It could be that the author wrote this in the style of a journal like most people keep, one that is to be kept private for therapeutic reasons. Perhaps the journal was meant to be passed on one day to the woman’s husband as a way of detailing how things went so horribly wrong, and using that for alternative therapeutic reasons in something like marriage counseling as a last ditch effort to save their failing marriage. Maybe the journal was meant to be passed on to the wife’s daughter when she grew older, serving as a cautionary tale of sorts, warning against letting go of her dreams and settling down too early and easily for her own good, as the book clearly demonstrates the wife’s slow descent into madness.

 

The final option would rest in the fact that, as we are made aware, the wife is both a teacher and writer by profession. She could, in fact, mirror the author herself, with the target audience consisting of those who would be inclined to pick up and read such a narrative from the local bookstore. The alternative possibility here is that she could be writing this all down for her students, for much the same reasons mentioned as that for her daughter, serving as a more broadened cautionary, yet entertaining tale for the younger generation to consume, take heed, and hopefully find some sort of entertainment from

 

At the very least, the author’s inclusions of jokes and explicit ways to make her transcribed thoughts more entertaining point towards the fact that The Department of Speculation goes far beyond a simple journal entry, meant to be kept secret for the entire life of the wife. Such an example can be found on page 124,

 

“Why couldn’t the Buddhist vacuum in corners? Because she had no attachments.”

 

The inclusion of simple jokes such as these speak volumes as to the exact type of addressee that the author, or the wife herself, would be writing all of this for. The humor is one way of providing entertainment, but the high-brow twist provided by the fact that one must first have knowledge of Buddhist principles to understand the joke speak towards a more scholarly reader, one that is fairly worldly and enjoys thinking critically. Basically, the intended addressee may indeed be the philosopher, much like the one she speaks of throughout the novel.

 

Rather, I believe that the scenario of the wife, a writer herself, directly mimicking the author, or the possibility of her writing this for future generations as a sort of cautionary tale are the more likely scenarios. As such, the intended addressee would be either the widespread audience that would be drawn towards a unique, compelling twist on the standard tale of a housewife that lost her way in the local bookstore, or the wife’s students, including her own daughter.

 

Lastly, I do think that the inclusion of so many high-brow jokes, philosophical diatribes, and internal monologues of quite the philosophical nature mean that this book was meant for those who, above all else, wish to shift their perspective inwards. To better understand the inner workings of their own mind, and maybe even how they got to the situations they are currently in right now, just as the wife did. After all, the wife was not aways the wife. At one point in her life she was a naive child, one that could have very well used a book such as this to guide her along the way, because, “No one young knows the name of anything.” (177)

By Jordan

Dept. of Speculation Blog 3

Speculating Codes

                                                                    by Alex Geffard

In our first blog, we offered our first impressions of Dept. of Speculation, and explained a network of controlling values. In our second blog, we looked at the genres and forms present in the novel. In this blog, we’ll look at a couple of Intertextual Codes.

 

Kaja Silverman, in The Subject of Semiotics, paraphrases Roland Barthes by explaining that “a code represents a sort of bridge between texts. Its presence within one text involves a simultaneous reference to all of the other texts in which it appears, and to the cultural reality which it helps define-i.e. the particular symbolic order.” Think of the code as the connotative meaning of a word or phrase. There are many different codes, each which invoke some kind of other meaning or thought.

 

The two codes that I want to look at in this post are the Semic and Cultural Codes- which I found to overlap nicely.

 

The Semic Code, as interpreted by Rowan University Professor Andrew Kopp, “Defines characters, objects, and places through repetitively grouping a number of signifiers (“semes”: words and phrases) around a proper name….the semic code sets up relationships of power that often reinforce cultural codes.” The semic code highlights the words or phrases associated with characters, objects, and places, such as the epithet “Alexander the Great”, and hints at their meanings (Alexander was a great conqueror who took over many lands).

 

Naturally, Cultural Codes, as defined by Silverman, “speak the familiar ‘truths’ of the existing cultural order, repeat what has ‘always been already read, seen, done, experienced'”. This has to do with the ideas and thoughts we get after reading certain words or phrases. What appears in our minds is influenced by our culture and society. An example of this as an untrue stereotype is “the blond girl in front of me complained that she didn’t understand the math test.” When we read that the girl is blond, with think about the cultural idea that blonds are generally dumb.

 

In Dept. of Speculation, the Semic and Cultural codes are linked together. The words the author uses as placeholders for the characters are the semic codes, and the stereotypical positions that our culture sees these words are the cultural codes.

 

When the narrator changes POV from first person to third (page 95), she refers to herself as The Wife.  When we see this placeholder, we think literally that she is someone’s wife. She is married to someone. She doesn’t see herself as her own person. She believes that she cannot be referred to without hinting at her connection to her spouse.

Culturally, when with think of a stereotypical wife’s role, we typically picture a 1950s nuclear family, where the wife is a stay at home mom taking care of her child and cleaning and laundry. The breadwinner of the family is the husband, and she is submissive to him. Now the narrator is not the type of woman to be like this, because she works hard for herself and is normally a very independent woman (initially, she didn’t want to be a mother). But once she is married and has a child, she starts to see herself assuming the stereotypical role, having to stay at home and take care of the child. She finds herself emotionally connected to her husband:

• “After you left for work, I would stare at the door as if it might open again.” (page 24)

 

The Husband is the placeholder for someone’s… husband. It implies that the husband is a “he”. He is connected to his wife, a protector and leader for his family. He is his own person, who chooses to be tied to the wife.

 

Culturally, we think of husbands, in the 1950s nuclear family, as the patriarch of the family. The breadwinner. He is honest and strong, confident and kind. Now, in the modern view, our thoughts are less kind. Husbands are thought of as the person in the couple who will generally cheat. Husbands are less trustworthy than wives, and are often thought to be distant from their family. There’s the stereotype that all African American husbands leave their families behind, often to sleep with younger and hotter women. The Wife in the story sees her husband more in the modern sense, sensing him to be distancing himself from her in everything they do, less trustworthy:

• “ Some nights in bed the wife can feel herself floating up towards the ceiling. Help me, she thinks, help me, but he sleeps and sleeps.” (page 108)

 

This novel is rich with Semic and Cultural codes that really elevate it to a more universal level. They make the story almost seem allegorical, like the characters are modern archetypes.

Dept. of Speculation: Changing the way we look at fiction.

I cannot believe that my group is on our final book already. (Where has the time gone?!) For our last group of blogs, we decided to read Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill. Although this book falls under the genre of fiction, we see that its form is a bit unconventional; Experimental to say the least. As you can see in the example below, the short chapters are broken up into little paragraphs that has little to no organizational order.

I must admit that it took me awhile to adjust to this new form of writing, but by the third chapter it was all starting to fall into place. What occurred to me, at first as random unrelated thoughts, soon started to form a visible pattern. By stepping back and treating each paragraph as its own entity, I was able to decipher the meaning of the paragraphs individually, as well as altogether.  As I continue reading this book, I keep reminding myself that the narrator is telling this story as a stream of conscious. So it would only be fitting that the chapter would be sporadically composed, because it is realistic to how our minds think throughout the day. We usually do not think in clear, concise patterns, but instead we experience a million random thoughts one after another.

In Dept. of Speculation, we are in the mind of our narrator who is thinking back to all the things that have become her life. In a sense, we are joining her in reflecting on the rollercoaster ride of life. She is an artist, who after marrying her husband and having an unplanned baby, has let go of her dreams for a lack of time. We get a sense that she is overwhelmed and is finding it difficult to balance the scary reality of being a wife and a parent and all that entails. She captures this unease by referring to the following quote:

“What Keats said: No such thing as the world becoming an easy place to save your soul in” (P. 46).

In other words, life is hard and it is something that one must come to grips with in order to succeed.

The form is doing more than just craftily demonstrating her stream of thought, it is also successfully evoking emotions in the reader. Kenneth Burke found that form has five aspects that create an “arousing and fulfillment of desires. A work has form in so far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence” (124). Although the text is filled with many instances of all five of these aspects, for my blog I will only be concentrating specifically on the Qualitative Progressive form.

Qualitative Progressive form is responsible for evoking emotions in the reader, thus promoting a natural flow from one emotion to the next. For example, in class Dr. Kopp described to us how without happiness we could never experience sadness. You cannot have one emotion without the other. This example alone is played upon a few times in the text, in the ways that the narrator is describing both happier times and sadder ones. We know in life that good times do not continue forever and we will eventually come to some bumps in the road.

A specific example of the Qualitative Progressive form at play begins in chapter four where she recalls the very first interactions between her now husband and herself. The relationship is described in the little moments that portray how exciting and new this relationship was to them.

“Lying in bed, you’d cradle my skull as if there were a soft spot there that needed to be protected. Stay close to me, you’d say. Why are you way over there?” (P.18).

As the story progresses, we begin to that infatuation fade and a distance start to wedge between them. She writes…

“After you left for work, I would stare at the door as if it might open again” (P.24).

And later still…

“And then there is the night that he misses putting their daughter to bed. He calls to say he is leaving work right when she thinks he will be home, something he has never done before” (P.96).

Because of the way these moments are presented, we can infer that the narrator is feeling overwhelmed and therefore experience it with her. It also sets up the framework for the reader to predict that, if this progression continues, the marriage is in danger of ending. It is also interesting how she decides to flip points of view midway through the book from first person to third. In a sense, this portrays to the reader how the narrator is kind of distancing herself from reality. It is almost as if she is taking a step back and reflecting on her life, pretending that it is all someone else’s truth, and not her own.

In the end, I am lead to believe that, although the relationship between the husband and wife might not be saved, our narrator will at least find balance in her life once again. I am able to make this prediction because the Qualitative Progressive form that is present in the text helps me understand this rollercoaster of emotion that is being portrayed. Just as life cannot be happy all the time, we know that sadness will eventually change back to happiness in a never-ending cycle.

GIFs from GIPHY

Cover Photo

For the Wife and her Speculation on Life

Dept. of Speculation – Blog One

Of the books we have read so far, Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill is the most vague, yet painfully specific narrative. The story follows a woman, that calls herself the Wife (95), and the beginning and possible end of her family unit. In the first few chapters we read as she falls in love, gets married, and has her first child.

“What did you do today, you’d say…and I’d try my best to craft an anecdote for you out of nothing” (25).

The Wife tells her story in bursts and jumps sprinkling in seemingly disconnected facts or quotes. The epitaph says “Speculators on the universe…are no better than madmen” which is a quote from Socrates. To open a book called Dept. of Speculation, this quote immediately makes me think that the narrator finds herself to be some kind of madman. Or at least her speculation is driving her somewhat mad.

I found this book extremely easy to read. The short paragraphs and seeming random nature of outside information only kept me reading. I sat down to read just a few pages to get a feel for the story and I found myself halfway through without even trying. I thought then, I was already halfway there. The narrator resonated with me. She has a dual nature, two perfectly opposite desires, one never possible if the other is true. This contradictory nature is something I believe I fight with.

She struggles with what she once wanted from life, and what her life has become. On page eight she says “I was going to be an art monster instead.” In the past she never wanted to get married and have children but by chapter 12 she’s done both of these things. But also, she no longer knows what she wants, or why she isn’t satisfied with what she has.

What do you want?                                                                            I don’t know.

What do you want?                                                                            I don’t know.

What seems to be the problem?                                                      Just leave me alone” (39).

The narrator can not rectify that she is a wife and mother, working a job that the husband would probably call “only vaguely soul-crushing” (34) if the roles were reversed. The narrator also says that someone asks her about her second book (38) which isn’t written yet. Another thing she’s had to give up so far.

“A few days later the baby sees the garden hose come on and we hear her laughing” (32).

I think mostly, the narrator is struggling with herself in these first few chapters. If she was an art monster who didn’t care for mundane things (8), then she would have never known the laughter of her daughter (32), but by giving up that part of her she loses a light that shines within (30). Then again, by giving up being that monster she can be apart of a society that thinks she is doing all the right things, but by being a part of this society she fades, becoming one of the mothers who do not show up early (42).

This progression is the start of the novels network of controlling values. These values can be found throughout the novel, but specifically in the in first 12 chapters. A controlling value for any given person is a cultural narrative their life follows. People will see any event or action through the lense of their own controlling values. This is how people with opposing views will always think their way is right even when given evidence that may prove the opposite. Controlling values are at the base of all judgments and projections. In Dept. of Speculation this is one of the dominant networks of controlling values that I found: 

Controlling Values

Context: Being selfish and concerned only with oneself and the creation of art, one loses out on the biologically and societally driven happiness that having a family and children provide.

Purpose: By forgoing some personal desires and giving oneself fully to the life of family, one will be wholly rewarded in the delights of children and die knowing that they have left something behind to continue to grow and prosper.

Opposite Controlling Values

Context: By giving up agency to focus on having a family and following social norms, one loses the spark of originality and light that made them an artistic creator.

Purpose: Accepting that the creation of art takes sacrifice, one can be a greater asset to society by allowing themselves to break free of social norms and do what they were meant to do, create.

“The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness. Of these, only three involve misery or suffering. Most of us spend our time moving back and forth between these three” (11).

But even this seems to not encapsulate the whole story for the narrator. I wonder if she really gives anything up to continue creating. She has her family, and she has her second book, so to speak. She has gone through hardships and made sacrifices, but in the end it looks as if the only thing she truly loses is the city.

Yet still, she is never truly happy. Even she quotes “The third is an understanding of the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary experience,” while talking about the Buddhist’s three marks one must reach to attain wisdom (47). I think she may have discovered a kind of wisdom, but she feels “There is such a crookedness in my heart. I had thought loving two people so much would straighten it” (44). This is the conflicting nature the Wife lives in, not fully apart of either ideal, for both are perfect opposites to her.

Annihilation Blog #4: An Expedition Into the Narrator and the Addressee

   

   Over the past three blogs about Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, my group has come up with a network of controlling values, looked at form and genre, and searched for intertextual codes. In this final blog for the novel, I want to address (pun intended) who the narrator and the addressee are.

 

   The narrator is the Biologist. We do not know her name, but her title gives away her profession. We also know that she is headstrong and likes to think for herself. While Area X is very dangerous, we learn that she is interested in exploring it. Unlike her the other women on her expedition, she doesn’t follow the psychologist (of course, inhaling the spores helped her to resist the hypnotism). As a researcher, she is very smart, and as a Biologist, she tries to study her environment.

 

   She is an expert at what she does, so as readers, we automatically believe that what she is saying is the truth (“I believe I qualified because I specialized in transitional environments”-pg. 11). Though, she does indicate that Area X can mess with people’s minds, so maybe not everything she says is as it happens.

 

   From the very first pages, we learn that the narrator is the Biologist (“I was the Biologist.”-pg. 3), and that this book is entries in a journal she is required to write in (“It was expected simply  that we would keep a record, like this one, in a journal, like this one”-pg. 8). As the quote mentions, the members of the expedition were given journals to keep records of their expedition. This could be because unexplainable things happened to the very first expeditions, so each subsequent one was required to keep a record.

   If something else happens to these expeditions, someone may be able to find out what happened to them.  The Biologist becomes that someone when she finds the other journals (including her husband’s) in the lighthouse.

   At the end of the story, the Biologist tells us that she plans to do the same as the people from the previous expeditions, and leave her journal in the lighthouse to be found.

   “I have spent four long days perfecting this account you are reading, for all its faults, and it is supplemented by a second journal that records all of my findings from the various samples taken by myself and other members of our expedition…I have bound these materials together with my husband’s journal and will leave them here, atop the pile beneath the trapdoor.” (P. 193)

   The Biologist chooses to explore on, leaving her records at the very top of a pile of multiple journals  to be found by someone else. That someone else is the addressee.

 

   Just to clarify, the addressee is the audience, the people who are reading or listening to the story. According to Peter Rabinowitz, there are about three types of audience, with the most straightforward one being the actual audience– the characters in the story who are listening to what the narrator has to say.

   I believe that in Annihilation, the character(s) reading the Biologist’s journal are part of the 13th expedition. Like before, a new expedition is sent into Area X to find out what happened to the previous expedition. The 12th expedition (in which the Biologist belonged to) never came back, so the 13th expedition was sent to investigate (this could have happened years later, as the 12th expedition was expected to remain in Area X for a long time, with no means to communicate to the outside world). Eventually, someone from this new group would find their way to the lighthouse and discover the journals. What the someone does with that information is another question.

   I think the Biologist hopes that the person who reads her journal is someone like her- someone who will think for him/herself. If the government group that sends the expedition includes another hypnotist, or just uses individuals who follow directions, whoever discovers the records might not do anything about them. Someone like the Biologist will learn from the journals and try to find out more about Area X.

 

   I mentioned earlier that Peter Rabinowitz has three different types of audience. The second of these is the hypothetical audience– the people the author envisions will read his book. He bases his writing style and artistic choices based off this assumption. At its most simplest level, Jeff Vandermeer seemed to be writing an interesting story for fans of the science fiction/horror genres. But I also think he assumes that we as readers we do not fully trust the government or any Big Brother organization. We live in a world where secrets are kept from us, and we are being monitored almost at all time. Vandermeer hopes that we are like the Biologist, who thinks for herself, and follows what she believes is right (this will make our connection and understanding of the Biologist greater).Like the Biologist, we have learned to question things and investigate on our own.
   We need to become the narrative audience– the readers who who understand what the story is an imitation of  real life. As the best case scenario, we need to assume that we are the addressee that the Biologist hopes will read the journals- the person who knows not to trust the big organization and to think for him/herself. The fictional world is an imitation of real life, and as we see that the Biologist is someone who has a very similar mindset to us in the real world, we are clued in to imitate our ideals as the actual audience in the novel. We have to believe that the character we are in the narrative thinks like us and the Biologist.

By Alex

Annihilation: Area X the new Area 51

My group members and I are about ¾ of our way through the crazy adventure of Annihilation. For those of you just joining our conversation on the book, Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer is a part science fiction part thriller novel that follows four members who are researching this mysterious area referred to as Area X. This location has been cut off from the rest of the world by a border for reasons that are unknown to the public. Throughout the reading, I have noticed that many of Barthe’s intertextual codes are evident in the text, but the one that stuck out the most to me was the Semic code. Barthe Describes the semic code as a technique used to define a character, object or place.

“The semic code defines characters, objects, and places through repetitively grouping a number of signifiers (“semes”: words and phrases) around a proper name. Because this code defines characters, objects. and places, the semic code sets up relationships of power that often reinforce cultural codes. (Barthe)”

In other words, the Semic code is responsible for creating connotated meaning that delves deeper than the denotative meaning. I believe that a perfect example of this is Area X itself.

In the text, we follow four scientists who are recording and mapping observations of a location referred to as Area X. I could not help but recognize the references, or similarities, to Area 51. In fact the only major differences between the two locations is that one is located in a desert (Area 51) and the other is in a location that is overpopulated with lichen and other plants (Area X). Both places, however, are characterized by being a Government contained area that host mysterious and secretive activities. We see here that on page 94, Area X is described as a result of military research.

“The government’s version of events emphasized a localized environmental catastrophe stemming from experimental military research.” (P.94)

This is interesting considering that Area 51 is also an area characterized by government military research. I believe that Area 51 is included in the text to be used as a metaphor, a semic code implemented to define Area X to the readers, so that they can better relate to the text.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Area 51, it is an off limits military air force base located in a remote desert area in Nevada. The area is surrounded by a border that is guarded by cameras, a drop gate, and men with guns. Many claim to have seen unidentifiable flying objects (UFOs) and alien life forms wandering around. The government claims to use the base as an area to test air crafts. However, because of its mysterious nature, It has long been an inspiration for many other books, movies, and tv shows.

(Area 51 video)

Often times throughout the text, Area X is described as a mysterious, eerie, and oddly beautiful location that is surrounded by a border and full of life forms, some alien or unknown, that have adapted. This border is continually expanding and the government sent the group in to attempt to figure out why. Past expeditions have ended in death and the members of the twelve expedition must avoid becoming contaminated.

So why would Jeff Vandermeer decide to reference this in the text? I think this intertextual play reinforces the network of controlling values that my group identified in blog 1.

By comparing Area X to Area 51, the reader begins to understand how mysterious and unknown this location is. You begin to realize how the members of the group could blindly be lead into danger. For example, our narrator, the biologist, is faced with the choice of either following the leader blindly, knowing that the leader may know something that she does not, or questioning what she is told. We see this is evident on pages 38-39 when the biologist realizes that the psychologist maybe withholding information from the group.

“We had a choice now. We could accept the psychologist’s explanation for the anthropologist’s disappearance or reject it. If we rejected it, then we were saying the psychologist had lied to us, and therefore also rejecting her authority at a critical time”. (P.39)

It is at this moment in the text that the weight of how serious and dangerous this situation could be hits the biologist. We get a sense that the government may be lying to our characters and leading them unwillingly into danger. It is almost as if the members of this expedition are lab rats or guinea pigs, sent in to see what is going on in this area to the benefit of the government. To prove how indispensable the members are they are not referred to as their real names but their job titles. Again the semic code is evident in this piece of text. “There were four of us: a biologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a psychologist.” (P.3) This demonstrates how they were treated as test dummies rather than living breathing humans with families and outside lives. This reinforces the cultural code of it is a “dog eat dog world.” We hear the statement all the time but what does it mean? According to the Cambridge English dictionary, the phrase “dog eat dog” is used to “describe a situation in which people will do anything to be successful, even if what they do harms others.”  Kind of like, how these government officials are inviting these members in knowing they most likely will not survive.

As my group members and I finish up this book, I am curious to see if the cultural and semic codes that I have identified still ring true. Also note, that this is an example of only one way to look at the text. There are many other possibilities of values and controlling ideas that are evident in the text.

GIFs from Giphy

Cover Photo

YouTube video

Genre and Form: Annihilation​ Blog 2

 

“When you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside of you” (6).

Annihilation is part science fiction, horror fiction, and fantasy fiction; three genres that create something more for readers to experience. Science fiction, many times, is a futuristic tale, or story that is technologically advanced, or even a story dealing with some kind of extraterrestrial. While horror fiction has elements that leave a reader scared, or uneasy. Then fantasy fiction deals with magic or the supernatural and many times isn’t set in the “real world.”

So far Annihilation is mostly a science/horror fiction novel. From the beginning, an air of uneasy mystery is brought to life. The Biologist says of Area X that “All of this part of the country has been abandoned for decades, for reasons that are not easy to relate” (3), which makes me wonder. Why is it not easy to relate? I feel that if something happens in an entire part of the country, as she says, that people would know what happened, or at least something easy to relate. On the same page the Biologist then says, “I do not believe that any of us could yet see the threat” (3).

The book continues in this way, making everything about Area X uneasy. This type of tension fits into the category of horror fiction, while the findings in the Tower lend itself to science fiction. The writing on the walls comprises of organisms that the Biologist can not fully identify. She says about the organisms in the letters, “most of these creatures were translucent and shaped like tiny hands embedded by the base of the palm” (24-25).

 

“Desolation tries to colonize you” (6).

These elements create a mysterious, ominous feeling. This mystery and slight fear of what’s to come keeps people engaged and ready. In the first fifty pages only about a day and a half pass in the book but it reads quickly. Many things are being set up (what’s so important about the lighthouse?), and many things are happening (goodbye Linguist) but the pace doesn’t feel rushed. It’s almost like the untouched wilderness is growing around the reader without them realizing they’re being trapped.

This situation, a world that was never what it seemed, requires there to be something more. I think that to most people the world is just as it seems with the simplest explanation being the right explanation. People want to step into a world like the one Annihilation is creating, a world where the calm is not calm, and a tunnel is not a tunnel, but a tower.

The form of the text also adds to the expectations created by the genre, it also circumvents those expectations. The qualitative progressive form evokes a mood from inferred qualities and allows the reader to move into a certain headspace, and progress with the text’s mood (Kopp).

 

“Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner” (23).

So far we have read that the Biologist in not just like her colleagues, she prefers solitude to people, and she not only fully accepts the dangers of the exhibition, she wants to be there. She wants to be there so much, even after three of her colleagues “leave” the exhibition she is still prepared to press on. Everyone else’s mood fits perfectly with the unease that surrounds Area X. The ominous nature of the uninhabited wilderness seeps into the others but not the Biologist.

 

I would argue that a qualitative progressive form surrounds the Biologist and her contamination. She says that her senses become heightened and that she is elated in the midst of the terrible things happening. On page 92 and 93 she worries herself out of this elevated mood with all of the questions about the Tower and the thing she names the Crawler, but finds that she slips back into it. She says that;

“The brightness in my chest, continued to sculpt me as I walked, and by the time I reached the deserted village that told me that I was halfway to the lighthouse, I believed I could have run a marathon” (93).

This statement comes after she has found a body, seen mysterious lights in a place no one should be and discovered some kind of creature. This circumvents the normal genre expectations. Under normal circumstances, I would expect the Biologist to be losing it, or making some crazy plan, or escaping. It’s unexpected to be that she’s feeling so good. But while I’m in this mood, or headspace, I am immediately thrust back into the ominous unease of the area. She continues to say that “I did not trust that feeling. I felt, in so many ways, that I was being lied to” (93).

Am I being lied to?

 

Me entering Area X.

 

This change in mood makes me wonder where the story is going next. The genre would have me predict that either the Biologist is destroyed by Area X, or she somehow destroys Area X’s mystery or an entity inside of it. I’ll have to wait and see.