Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1) Annihilation discussion


121 views
Annihilation: Area X and identity

Comments Showing 1-13 of 13 (13 new)    post a comment »
dateUp arrow    newest »

Bethney Ladner I have just finished reading the first novel and would love to have a group discussion about it. I believe this to be a great literary work and I believe Jeff Vandermeer actually put a lot of thought into this work using various literary devices to get his point across. However, I could just be wrong, but I can't help but think there was a reason for everything from the lighthouse to the tower (yes tower not tunnel the biologist is right XD), and from all the nameless aspects of the novel. What do you think? I would like to know and I will contribute as well! Some various themes that I believe would be a great discussion:
1. Identity: Why is this important to the novel?
2. The importance of the "brightness" within her. Why did he write brightness and what did this have to do with what she read in the tower?
3. Another thing I haven't really thought about is all her flashbacks. Why include them in the story? What is its purpose?
4. And really anything else that you may like to discuss.


Josh Santavy 1. Identity.
Exploring Area X is like seeing the world through a child's eyes. I'm not sure if this is what Vandermeer had intended in early or how as a reader, I see Area X that way, from the biologist' eyes. After reading Annihilation, Area X still remains a mystery. Although toward the end, you notice decisions the biologist makes. Her maturity. Presumably What Vandermeer tried to do is let you see the world though both a child and a grown up part of ourself's eyes.
2. The 'brightness.' This one a bit tricky. It could be that Area X blinds you (the biologist) or it simply let you see the reality for the first time. There's a hint where the biologist comes to term that Southern Reach has been lied to her, if not all the volunteers entering Area X from the first expedition. The biologist doesn't try to convince you (readers) to believe anything but rather share her experience the same way her husband shares his with her on his journal.
3. Her flashbacks. As she states at some point that her life in Area X isn't the same as before she enters it. She no longer has name. Everyone ever entered the area became nameless. Their identities are stripped away. They taught to ask only questions to/for complete the mission only. No personal information should be share. Which it what ties in 1. Identity. How entering Area X is like going to school, we're taught to ask questions that will only make us pass our exams to move up to the next grades and so on. Also her flashbacks let you know how she's regretted not trying to get to know her husband better when he was alive. She even mentions guilt at some point.


Benjamin Thomas Interesting concept on children versus adult lenses and the way they see the world. I never thought of it like that. My take on the identity and why there were no names, etc. is that the focus was meant to be on the world itself and the way the biologist (and in turn us) interact with it and the unknown.

The brightness, I agree with you Josh, a hundred percent. It's like the dawning of realization. Realization that things won't be the same, that the Southern Reach lied to her, and as it grows it forces her to mature. Like inner strength.

I think the flashbacks were necessary to add character depth. I don't know if I would necessarily say they were there for a specific reason other than to give depth to her character and illustrate her arc throughout the novel.

Anyways, just my thoughts.


meandermind Oh my gosh there are so many things worthy discussion in this book!
Regarding the flashbacks, as previous entries have stated, it's for character depth. But also a lot of things are explained through the flashbacks. For example, we learn that the biologist is quite the terrible biologist and has lost funding and everything, she just wants to sit and watch a tide pool. This explains a lot of my confusion over the lack of biologist lingo in the book.
Not entirely sure but I think it's mentioned in the book that the biologist suspects that memories might have been implanted in her mind? Or is that just the husband?

4. I would like to discuss the border. You don't get ANY info on how they enter Area X. Is it just in their minds? Is everything Area X and the hallucination/implanted memories the only thing that remains of "our" world? I have not yet read book 2 and 3 so spoiler warnings please.


Mr. Caudillo I also think that Area X is in the mind. They don't remember entering through the border. When the husband tried to reach the border, he could never find it though he traveled for a long time. The "tower" leads underground, and that often is a symbol of the subconscious mind. Even the many flashbacks make sense with this theory. Memories become so hyperactive because Area X is a psychological journey/experiment.

Like others, I haven't read book 2 or 3. Frankly, I was not super impressed with Annihiliation, so it'll be a while before I make time for the next two books.


Kate W I finished listening to Annihilation less than two hours ago, and joined Goodreads specifically to try to have a conversation about it. I loved it, but was disappointed in the narrator, who seemed to be rather uninterested in what she was reading, and as if she couldn’t read it fast enough to be finished. I’m glad the next two installments have different narrators.
What’s going through my mind as I think about what I just heard, is how on earth a movie was made from this material! To me, the written word, language, and the theme of communication were so strong in this book that I am concerned those would be lost to the visual elements in a movie. (Even the lack of names for the characters plays into this : who is a person without a name?) From what I’ve read though, the movie strays quite lot from the novel.

I love the idea that the biologist is literally contaminated by what she reads, and that she metamorphasizes into (what?) as a result: that she becomes luminous. I don’t think it matters too much that the words are quasi-biblical, but the idea that they are formed from actual micro-ecosystems is fascinating to me.

Another thing I was struck by was the obviousness that the tower is the inverse of the lighthouse, or am I over-reaching here? One is an extrusion on the landscape, the other an intrusion, so to speak. But as objects/beings/creations they seem to balance each other out.

Looking forward to the next two installments, but I feel
I need to actually read Annihilation rather than just listen to it.


Paris Harper-Hardy Mr. Caudillo wrote: "I also think that Area X is in the mind. They don't remember entering through the border. When the husband tried to reach the border, he could never find it though he traveled for a long time. The ..."

If you're open to it, you might enjoy the next book more. Authority is much more like a mystery novel, and a more straightforward narrative, than Annihilation.


Paris Harper-Hardy I'd like to throw in that nothing reminds me of the writing on the wall of the staircase so much as the long and rambling print on the side of a bottle of Dr. Bronners!


John Has anyone of us here seen the movie? It was an adaptation of the novel that was very close. The ending of the flick was a mind bender but it really hit the point. Well worth a view, if you have read the book. Keep Reading!


Mr. Caudillo I'm surprised John thinks the film was "very close." I watched it after reading the book and thought that it was not a close adaptation. Other than the general concept of a mysterious alien invasion that is spreading and consuming an environment, the film seems to deviate largely from the book. Most notably, there is no mention of the "tower" or the "writing" which is undoubtedly a focal point in the book. The film was interesting if seen as a standalone, but I didn't like it as an adaptation.


Trevor Williamson Sorry to chime in several weeks after it looks like the thread has died, but I had a few thoughts of my own:

When I read Annihilation, I was reminded of the book Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Lem creates a planet in that novel that is actually sentient, and as the humans studying the planet attempt to understand its unique form of life, they struggle with phantoms gleaned from their memories and become increasingly unable to deal with the reality they feel they are experiencing. Lem's pretense for the novel is that, as a human species, we're really incapable of contemplating what existence could remain outside of that which we believe we can scientifically classify. We think we know how to define what life is, but there still remains the possibility that "life" in the universe can exist completely outside of our observable experiences. In other words, if we hope to evolve, we need to be able to accept that what humans observe as "life" may be too limited in scope, and our ego-centrism may preclude us from even being able to grasp the immensity of what the universe has to offer.

The biologist at the end of the novel remarks that the problem of all expeditions to Area X is that they don't even have the tools to ask the right questions. Everything about Area X represents an affront to the very fabric of our perception of reality. The whole threat of the place is not just that it defies our understanding it, but that it threatens our ability to understand anything.

I think it's funny that we preoccupy ourselves so much on the notion that the characters' identities are hidden, because we associate identity with a name, but that's not necessarily what makes us us. Our identities, on the contrary, are wrapped up in many other facets--memory, for example, is one of the most important elements of defining who we are. In a sense, what really establishes our identity is our histories and our experiences. The biologist in this novel is ultimately the only who recognizes what identity really is--the "brightness" she experiences, I think, is the realization that memory and experience go hand in hand. Her perception of the world is fundamentally altered by Area X in such a way that she's finally able to seize on the truth of our existence: it's limited, and we cannot understand what we are unable to understand. Rather than become frustrated by that limited experience, we should be open to feeling the new experiences we encounter, as they inevitably become part of our identities. The memories she dredges up about her husband are important because they help ground her in a recognition that, like human relationships, there are some things that just end up defying our ability to explain them, and the confusion and messiness of these relationships come to be part of who we are.

The other characters, I think, die off because they remain limited in their experiences and their identities. Far from having had their identities erased, the anthropologist, the psychologist, and the surveyor are all defined by their professions. They are thus trapped in their scientific process of perceiving the world, and insist that they can manipulate their experience based on what they think they know. Only the biologist seems to be able to understand that the alienness of Area X is not so much an existential threat as it is an existential experience. She seems to recognize that maybe life can exist outside of the parameters that human science can explain, and thus decides to become a part of Area X--potentially just as her husband had done.

Just my two cents.


message 12: by John (new) - rated it 4 stars

John Trevor. That was more then 2 cents!More like 50 cents! Well I agree with your comments but....the flick seem to be a call out to for a mate for the biologists' husband, who had already gone to the other side. In the flick he was portrayed as an alien life form that had stepped over. The biologist was picked to be his mate. The movies' ending with her wrestling with the alien life form and that life form winning and cloning into the biologist. Now there were two life forms. One male and one female. The book had her travel farther into the "area". The movie came to an end, and a next step in the alien life forms evolution. Well that is my take. Bye for now. Trevor wrote: "Sorry to chime in several weeks after it looks like the thread has died, but I had a few thoughts of my own:

When I read Annihilation, I was reminded of the book Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Lem crea..."



Atlanta I'll chime in too. I don't think this was a psychological experience, I think it was more like a spatial distortion like you come across in Star Trek Voyager or Enterprise. Analyzing it to Solaris was an interesting point.


back to top