WEEK 4: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (6)

 Weird is the word I would utilize to describe my experience reading this book. In fact, by the end of the novel, you don’t really know what was real and what wasn’t due to the sheer confusion and dream-like state of the characters. As evidence, the narration in the beginning is meant to create a sense of trust with the audience as the biologist, then hypnotized, seems to describe everything as a matter of factly, with clear lack of bias. However, as she inhales the spores and becomes immune to the psychologist’s hypnosis, the following pages start to mold into a blurry and confusing shape. This alters her perception almost to the point where the death of the other three seemed insignificant. She grew suspicious of the psychologist after finding the body of the anthropologist, but nothing more.

That’s when you start to wonder whether the character was ever sane. In fact, having seen the movie first. In the movie, her reason for entering Area X is to find a cure for her husband, however in the book, her husband already died shortly after his expedition. Which makes you wonder whether her reason to go in was a nihilistic one. Perhaps, she lost her reason to live and decided she wanted to experience the same as her husband. This would explain her decision to stay after meeting the Crawler. In fact, her encounter simply increases the amount of questions and now that she has nothing else to do with her life, Area X seems to be a possibility for her to find meaning or perhaps even her husband, which is the last and most important thing she lost.