Annihilation Essay Questions

What is the significance of Annihilation's title?

The title of Annihilation is quite relevant to the entirety of the work. "Annihilation" means complete and utter obliteration, almost mindless in its indiscriminate destruction. On a basic level, this is the threat posed to the biologist's life on every step of her journey through Area X. The psychologist has programmed trigger words for hypnotic suggestion into all the other members of the Twelfth Expedition, using them to force the women to do her bidding (even leading the anthropologist to her death in the tower). One of these words, as the biologist later finds out, is "annihilation," which is a command for the subject to immediately commit suicide. When the psychologist is dying on the beach, she screams "Annihilation!" at the approaching biologist, who thankfully has become immune to the power of hypnotic suggestion through the spores she ingested.

On a larger, more metaphorical scale, however, "annihilation" has a deeper meaning: it is the essence of Area X. Area X takes what it finds of humanity and nature and corrupts it, twisting it into unrecognizable forms until whatever remains of its former identity has been entirely snuffed out. The horror and beauty of its desolation infest the minds of those who enter, breaking it apart and putting it back together in a new form of existence. In this sense, "annihilation" is the goal of Area X, and the necessary consequence suffered by all who spend time there.

How does the narrative style, told from the perspective of the biologist, serve to augment the novel's effectiveness?

The biologist is a unique and effective protagonist. She is extremely antisocial to the point of isolation, preferring observing nature to interacting with other humans. The way her mind functions is perfect for presenting the essence of Area X to the reader; the biologist takes note of all the plants, animals, and other organisms in the area, and her scientific analyses are the sources of some of the most important information in the novel, such as the former personhood of the various nonhuman living organisms in Area X. In that sense, having a biology expert as the first-person narrator of the story is an effective way to naturally communicate the weirdness of Area X as seen through its natural environment.

The biologist's dissociation from other humans is also a useful tool for narrative; already distanced from the other expedition members, she distrusts them and isolates herself, in a sense becoming closer to Area X than to her fellow humans. This development is manifested in her physical transformation as a result of breathing in the spores from the writing on the tower, making practical a division that was already there in spirit. Her impersonal, emotionless style of narration, moreover, helps to convey the sense of odd, creeping dread, and the description of the alien as natural serves to heighten the reader's feelings that something isn't quite right, but ornamental words themselves can't describe the sensation, so the absence of them works even more effectively.

Discuss three examples of transitional or self-contained environments other than Area X that appear in the novel. How do these examples further our understanding of the biologist's relationship with Area X?

The biologist tells her reader about three environments that have particularly affected her life other than Area X. The first is a kidney-shaped swimming pool in the backyard of a house her parents rented when she was a child. As a result of a combination of her parent's neglectfulness and her own fascination, the pool became overgrown with algae and wildlife. Frogs and fish and birds coexisted and lived off of the plants that grew in the pool. The biologist had names for all of the animals and was able to tell who was who, but she never talked to them or tried to interfere in any way. She just enjoyed observing their interactions. Then one day, her parents had to move, and so her little private ecosystem was torn away from her. The biologist tells her reader that her parents were always lecturing her about how she needed to be more social and make friends, and she felt so misunderstood by them. The ecosystem was something that never judged her, that she could enjoy in isolation, and that required nothing of her.

The biologist tells the reader about a fellowship she earned that let her live for two years in a remote fishing town called Rocky Bay. There, she lorded over tide pools and examined a specific variant of mussel that only occurs in the Bay. Her existence there was a lonely one, and the townspeople seemed just as laconic as she was. But over time, she felt like both a fixture of the town and estranged from the townspeople, known only as "the old biologist," regarded as a kind of loon or spectacle.

The third environment the biologist talks about is a vacant lot near her city house where she lived with her husband. Like the swimming pool, the lot was a place she could go where nothing more was expected of her. Her husband, much like her parents, was constantly pressuring her to be more social and less detached from other people. The animals in the vacant lot behaved differently than animals in the wild. The biologist explains that they are more jaded and cautious, because they've grown accustomed to the dangers of living in cities, so densely populated with humans.

Taken together, these three environments show how the biologist's obsession leads to the failure of her objective perspective that she's supposed to espouse as a scientist. Ultimately, the progression of her interactions with these three environments culminates in her absorption into Area X.

Discuss the role of specialization in Annihilation. How does each explorer's background inform their contribution to the expedition?

The surveyor's military skills allow her to be both a mapper and planner and also, at the same time, anticipate threats and strategize on how to advance through the territory. The surveyor's suspicions about the landscape reinforce the untrustworthy nature of the iconography on the Southern Reach maps; maps are supposed to be representations of the "real," and their only purpose is to provide a reference for what actually lies on the land. But maps in Annihilation also serve as tools of deception, to deliberately mislead and misinform. The surveyor's suspicion serves as a reminder of the manipulation at play.

The biologist's perspective naturally takes center stage, since she is the narrator. She inhabits the important role of interpreting the organisms and natural phenomena that occur inside Area X. The reader is often reminded of her specialization by the way she tends to relate everything she sees and feels to natural phenomena. The interior of the tower, to her, resembles the inside of a seashell. A huge revelation will be "like an avalanche" crashing into her body, and when time feels slow, it is a "cocoon of timelessness" (90).

The anthropologist, though she doesn't last very long into the expedition, had the potential to shed light on the ways in which what was happening in Area X resemble ritual practice, and possibly develop a theory about whether or not the Area is sentient. The psychologist serves as a manager, and she also knows much more than the rest of the explorers when it comes to the secrets of Southern Reach. The psychologist is able, through hypnotic suggestion, to alter the perspectives of the other explorers, which gestures to the larger theme of subjectivity.

Discuss examples of religious symbolism in Annihilation.

The sublimity of Area X and the biologist's frequent inability to express or describe Area X in words gestures to its almost religious quality. But the religious component isn't just implied; VanderMeer peppers in explicit religious symbolism throughout the novel. After the biologist leaves the lighthouse behind, after she reads the many journal accounts of previous expeditions left in the midden, she refers to the lighthouse as "a kind of reliquary," (138), which is an art object often containing a piece of the bodily remains of a deceased saint. The comparison depicts the explorers as saints, which by extension grants Area X a certain godliness, because the only thing that really unites all of the explorers is that they have a special connection with the Area that the rest of the world lacks. They've had direct contact, like saints are thought to have with God.

Twice, VanderMeer conjures the environment of a cathedral. The first time, the biologist is describing the setting of the surveyor's burial as having a cathedral-like quality: "I did not know if she was religious, expected to be resurrected in heaven or become food for the worms. But regardless, the cypress trees formed a kind of cathedral over her as she went deeper and deeper" (148-149). The second time, the biologist is alone in the tower and describes the brightness within her as contributing to the environment: "A cascade of sparks that I knew were living organisms. A new word upon the wall. And me still not seeing, and the brightness coiled within me assumed an almost hushed quality, as if we were in a cathedral" (178). A cathedral gestures more to the sublimity of Area X than a regular church, because cathedrals are known for their hulking, impossibly high ceilings that are designed to make worshippers feel dwarfed in the house of God.