Bewilderment

“He was a boy attuned to loss.” 

Theo is worried about discussing the true nature of the universe with his son because he recognizes the pessimistic, depressing nature of so much emptiness and destruction. Robin recently lost his mother and his dog. Coupled with his struggles at school, Robin’s mental health is tenuous. Theo worries that if he discusses the universe too flippantly, it will affect his son’s capacity to view the world in emotional terms. Robin’s experiences mean that he’s primed to empathize with something as unknowable and terrifying as the emptiness of the universe. Theo doesn’t want to burden him with this potentially terrible knowledge.

“Absolute Intelligence surrendered to nostalgia for the camping and woodcraft of its own lost origins.” 

Theo’s passion for science and astronomy provides him with a paradigm through which he can view the universe. Whether discussing the Fermi paradox or speculating about planets, his knowledge of the universe gives him a useful analogy to explain life on Earth. When he compares Absolute Intelligence to his own nostalgia for camping, he’s using his expertise to acknowledge the fact that he can’t explain everything, from his wife’s death to his son’s medical conditions. His scientific research allows him to come to terms with the unknowability of the universe and of his human existence.

“Our species had grown so desperate for alien contact that traffic could back up for miles at the fleeting glimpse of anything smart and wild.” 

The experience with the bears at the side of the road reminds Theo of the complexity, the variety, and the strangeness of life on Earth. Humans, he realizes, have become so accustomed to the diversity of life on Earth that they’re immune to the collapsing environments and impending ecological destruction. While the idea of distant aliens astonishes people, only an actual encounter with a bear reminds them how amazing Earth and its wildlife can be. Humans have grown so desperate for alien contact that they’ve forgotten that Earth is home to many amazing lifeforms.

“There were creatures that retooled themselves into something unrecognizable halfway through their life.” 

Theo’s passion for biology and astronomy stems from a fascination with life’s diversity. The creatures and lifeforms that he studies—and later hypothesizes about—are metaphors for the plight of humanity. The collapsing environment that the novel portrays shows that humanity is also a species that must retool itself into “something unrecognizable.” The world’s changing state means that humans can’t continue to exist in their current form; even those who are alive will be forced to undergo huge changes to their lives.

“Maybe humanity was a nine-year-old, not yet grown up, not a little kid anymore.” 

In comparison to other species and the universe itself, humanity is still noticeably young. Humans as a species—insofar as humans perceive themselves to possess intelligence, language, and civilization—still measure their existence in the thousands of years. However, the universe is many billions of years old, as is the Earth. Lifeforms have existed on the planet for long before humans evolved. Theo compares humanity’s conception of itself as a mature, intelligent species to a nine-year-old child who thinks the same about itself. Just like the child, humanity might not yet be mature enough to understand how little it truly knows. This passage therefore alludes to humanity’s lack of perspective on life.

“And I lied wildly to him that night, by failing to tell him about the car’s other passenger, his unborn little sister.” 

Theo still mourns the death of his wife. The pain lingers, but he must endure even more pain when he lies to his son by omission. He’s forced to live with the knowledge that his wife was pregnant with another child when she died, meaning that he lost both a wife and a potential daughter. In addition to the grief, he feels as though he’s betraying Robin by hiding this truth from him. Theo willingly takes on the burden of this pain, as he’d rather keep the pain private than force Robin to endure any more grief.

“Do you believe her or don’t you?”

Robin doesn’t easily form emotional bonds with others but has great emotional intelligence regarding his father: He knows how to use his mother’s memory to outmaneuver his father during a discussion. His argument is so skilled and adept that Theo can see it happening but can’t stop Robin’s relentless logic. This reveals Robin’s capacity to empathize and understand other people, which Currier’s experiments heighten.

“Some people will really feel the emotions while others will only think about them.” 

Currier’s comment segregates the world into two categories: those who feel emotions and those who think about emotions. The second category suggests a social alienation in which people lack the capacity to truly engage with an idea emotionally. This suggestion may apply to humanity’s inability to engage with environmental catastrophe, as the novel portrays. Everyone knows that it’s happening, but they only think about their sadness or worry. Instead of experiencing these emotions, however, they only think about them in an abstract manner. Their alienation from these serious issues results in a lack of action.

“I was entrusting my traumatized son to a careerist neuroscientist-birder who still had a thing for my dead wife and decorated his office with cheesy posters quoting Thoreau.”

Theo must give voice to the absurdity of his situation. Through a series of escalating and tragic events, he has found himself in a position that he could never have predicted. For a man who has spent his life speculating about the strange and inventive ways that life might arise on other planets, Theo never predicted that his own life would turn out in this way. The complexity of his emotions and the absurdity of his situation reminds him of the infinite and unpredictable nature of his own life, let alone the universe.

“He slid into the same [...] tube his mother once disappeared into.”

Theo’s memories are complicated and often overlap. When he watches Theo enter the machine, he feels an echo of a distant memory of watching Alyssa do the same. Just like the stream he camped in with both Alyssa and Robin on separate occasions, Theo occasionally feels as though his life is a repeating pattern of events. He sees so much of Alyssa in Robin because he imposes his memories of his wife onto his experience of his son. Gradually, they begin to intertwine and almost become the same person. These echoes almost lead Theo to think that Alyssa’s life continues through Robin.

“The whole kaleidoscopic pageant of them, parading through time and space, was itself a work in progress.” 

Robin’s brain is so young, unique, and malleable that everything is a lifechanging experience. Even though Robin has already endured more lifechanging experiences than most people do in a lifetime, his childhood pulls him in many different directions. Robin’s life is a kaleidoscope, whether he’s mourning his mother’s death, living with neurodivergent conditions, or inventing new ways to save the environment. His world is ever-changing, just as Currier’s research methods change Robin’s brain. Theo may try to shelter Robin from the outside world and its malignant influences, but he can’t stop his son from growing and changing, nevertheless.

“They’re trapped inside themselves, right? Same as everyone.” 

Robin has endured many diagnoses and evaluations from doctors, nurses, and the general population. Many people want to tell him exactly what is wrong with him, even if they can’t come to a single unified theory. As much as they try to diagnose Robin, however, he does the same to them. Robin has spent his life looking at a world of people whose brains function in differently from his own. As a result, he can diagnose the problems with society from an outsider’s perspective. He thinks that most people are “trapped inside themselves” (81) and that this feeling alienates and worries people, causing many of the world’s problems.

“But, addicted to the national emergency, I was no one to talk.”

Theo justifies his fixation with the constant stream of news reports by saying that he’s “addicted to the national emergency” (87). However, Theo’s mistaken. In fact, he’s addicted to the theater of the national emergency. Every day, new and horrific emergencies pass him by, and like others, he doesn’t dedicate his entire life to consuming every scrap of news about them. Instead, this emergency unfolds through the constant chatter of the news networks. Like others, Theo is addicted to watching the theater of the emergency rather than engaging with the actual reality of the event. He’s a passive observer who feels powerless to do anything but watch.

“Or is it more a matter of appropriate response?”

Theo spends his life worrying about his son’s emotional state. He always tries to protect Robin from feeling angry or sad, as he fears an emotional outburst. When Robin reacts badly to a news item, Theo has a sudden rush of understanding: He wonders whether Robin’s extreme emotional reactions are justifiable. Robin is the only person who properly understands the true horror that’s unfolding, whereas “normal” people are disengaged and alienated from reality. Their calm reactions to horrific news are more absurd than Robin’s emotional outbursts. Rather than being emotionally ostracized from society, Robin is one of the few people who can offer an honest, justified emotional reaction to terrible events.

“One of his parents was already homeschooling him.”

The memory of Alyssa provides help with Robin’s parenting. While she may no longer be physically present, Alyssa continues to profoundly influence her son through Currier’s experiments and Theo’s memories. Alyssa’s brain scan guides Robin toward her emotional state, while Theo’s memories provide a yardstick against which he constantly judges himself. Whenever he must decide something regarding his son, he consults his memories of Alyssa and wonders how she’d act. Theo dismisses his own efforts, joking that one of Robin’s parents is already homeschooling him, but his parenting works in tandem with Alyssa’s ghostly presence. She continues to influence Robin’s development—but in an unconventional fashion.

“And that’s when Robin’s future began to get away from me.”

Robin’s life requires careful control. Theo makes a special effort to shield his son from anything that might be too emotional or stimulating. He wants to protect Robin from the world’s dangers and the depressing nature of reality. However, he can only do this for so long. Theo is part of a complicated and evolving society. While he can exercise control for some time, he can’t hope to control every single person, influence, or event. As much as he’d like to, he can’t control Robin’s life. Robin’s future becomes an experiment that slips out of control, drifting toward a tragic end that Theo can’t prevent.

“Robin’s streams were the slightest blip in the race’s desperate search for mass diversion.”

Robin speaks to the world with a clear message of hope and empathy, which he hopes will change humanity’s attitude toward the environment. However, his videos become commodified just like everything else. Theo acknowledges that humanity doesn’t want to engage with the message; they want to be momentarily distracted from the deluge of terrible news. While Robin urges people to engage with the world around them, his videos become an ironic distraction that momentarily diverts people’s attention from the world’s critical issues.

“Do they want me, or do they really want Jay?”

Robin may be an isolated individual whose father has protected him from the world, but he demonstrates a measured understanding of how society works. Even though he’s barely 10, he can distinguish between his own identity and the media creation that has taken the internet by storm. This creation—whose pseudonym is Jay—isn’t the real Robin. Instead, Jay is an amalgamation of desires and fears that people project onto the character in the videos. Robin knows the difference between his real self and Jay, and he wonders which version of him the world really wants to see.

“Finding other Earths was a globalist plot deserving the Tower of Babel treatment.”

The Tower of Babel is a story from the Bible in which a society becomes so blasphemous and arrogant that God destroys it. The highly politicized society that Theo inhabits has come to view everything, including science, as having a political end. Even though Theo views his research as apolitical, something with the sole aim of expanding humanity’s understanding of the universe, the rest of society doesn’t share his view. They consider his research blasphemous, arrogant, and in need of divine reckoning. For all of Theo’s attempts to be apolitical with his research, the political world presses itself upon him and refuses to hear him.

“You’re probably sad right now.”

Robin isn’t like other people. As a person who is neurodivergent, he doesn’t always act like others. He also doesn’t forge the social bonds that others seem to do easily. However, as two police officers harass him for a minor infraction, he’s still empathetic toward them. Robin tries to understand the officers’ emotional state, as Currier’s experiments have trained him to do. That Robin can try to empathize with the officers—and that they refuse to do the same—suggests that they, not Robin, are the problem.

“Remember what she feels like!”

The loss of funding for Currier’s research means that Robin can no longer use the experiment to engage with the scan of his mother’s brain. He begins to change after he loses access to the recording of her emotional state. For a young boy who has already experienced the death of his mother once, this is like losing her all over again. This time, the loss is slower and more profound. The loss of funding doesn’t just cause the end of the experiment but severs Robin’s last remaining connection to his mother and forces him to grieve again.

“Though Robbie flinched at the sight of the tearing beak, he still drew it from memory when we got back to the house.”

Robin loses access to the recording of his mother, and he changes as a result. He can feel this change and refuses to ignore it. Robin forces himself to confront difficult realities, and the eagle killing a smaller bird is a metaphor for this feeling. He winces when he sees the small bird die but nonetheless forces himself to draw it. He doesn’t want to look away and pretend something bad isn’t happening, whether it’s the bird’s death, the end of Currier’s research, his reversion to his previous self, or the collapse of the environment. Robin decides to face up to reality, whatever the cost.

“I don’t want to go back to being me.”

Robin’s reversion to his previous personality is as unstoppable and impactful as the environmental collapse that is happening all around the characters. Just as humanity watches the environmental collapse, Robin can only watch as the change happens. He desperately wants to stop it but lacks the resources, the knowledge, and the skills to do so. Robin becomes a horrified bystander as his personality changes. The personality change, like the environmental disasters, alter his world.