51 pages • 1 hour read
Jeff VanderMeerAuthority: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Unknowable Forces: Cosmic Chaos
The theme of the unknown is foundational to the plot and characters’ arcs, especially Control’s. Area X’s resistance to comprehensibility, even after numerous expeditions, and its cosmic, uncanny forces provide the sense of unknowability around which both the plot and this main theme revolve. All of the characters’ lives revolve around this great unknown, as Grace explains: “We have been here a long time […]. A very long time. Living with this. Unable to do very much about this. […] it is getting worse. Fewer and fewer journals recovered, and more zombies, as if they have been mind-wiped. And no one in charge has time for us” (39). Part of their struggle comes from the fact that Area X defies the very categories of knowledge that they try to use to understand it. The linguist on the 12th expedition says:
We keep saying ‘it’ […] is like this thing or like that thing. But it isn’t—it is only itself. Whatever it is. Because our minds process information almost solely through analogy and categorization, we are often defeated when presented with something that fits no category and lies outside of the realm of our analogies (113).
As the linguist points out, they lack even the language or cognitive frames to describe the Area X landscape, let alone the scientific tools to study it. They are no closer to grasping its mysteries no matter how many different approaches they try. The unknown in Authority is therefore not merely not yet known, but truly unknowable. It confronts the characters with the limits of their comprehension and control.
Confronting the unknowable pushes multiple characters to change. Both Grace and Control find it incredibly difficult to give up the goal of gaining objective truth about Area X, even when they are faced with 30 years of failed expeditions and scientific study. Area X yields no objective facts. What’s more, as Jackie points out, Area X is an amorphous ecological disaster; it has no leader to speak with, no goals or wants to decipher. Since the characters are all military or government personnel, they believe in facing problems and finding solutions. In this case, answers and solutions may not be possible, which is a hard lesson Control must learn. When he asks Jackie if there is anything they can do to stop the spread, she laughs and replies, “What are we going to do, John? Are we going to combat it by starting a mining operation there? Pollute those places to hell and back? Put traces of heavy metals in the water supply?” (303). As they have discovered, Area X is purely uncontaminated and resistant to influence from outside diseases; that is why the plant in Cynthia’s office never died. Because Area X is immune, they can neither stop its spread nor fully understand its complexity, and Control must accept this losing game. Grace reaches acceptance first, giving herself over to Area X’s influence willingly to follow Cynthia. Control takes longer to give up his authority or accept that Area X is unknowable. By the end, when he jumps into the portal to enter Area X with Ghost Bird, he has changed his name back to John to relinquish his authority, but he still clings to the belief that this new world can be “true” and “knowable” at least in some way. Nevertheless, his experiences with Area X, Ghost Bird, and the hypnosis he was subjected to by The Voice have fundamentally changed what John thinks of as truth, making him willing to accept both Ghost Bird and Area X for what they are rather than trying to contain or define them according to predetermined categories.
Transformation and Mutation
Transformation and mutation take place literally in Area X, which absorbs, transforms, mutates, and/or clones everything it comes into contact with. The most obvious incidence of transformation and mutation may be the footage of the first expedition, which shows the expedition leader with a doppelganger who performs the same actions and speaks the same words as her. When he watches this footage, Control is so disturbed that he feels sick. As far as we can ascertain from the book’s limited evidence, Area X takes the DNA of any organism that enters it and clones it. For instance, the plant from Area X has strange, uncorrupted DNA and is immune to any form of destruction. The plant may have mutated from another plant, or perhaps Area X has mutated all its environments to be free of toxins and invincible. Area X transforms everyone and everything into new, stronger, and stranger versions—as it did with Saul Evans, the lighthouse keeper, who has changed into the Crawler creature from the first book in the series, Annihilation (See: Background).
The most important representative of transformation and mutation in Authority is Ghost Bird, who is the doppelganger of the biologist from the last expedition. She shares the biologist’s DNA, as well as some of her memories, but she is not an exact copy, as she and Control illustrate in the conclusion:
‘I’m not the biologist,’ she said. [...] ‘I know you’re not. You’re some version, though. You have her memories, to some extent, and somewhere back in Area X, the biologist may still be alive. You’re a replica, but you’re your own person.’ Not an answer she had expected. She lowered the gun. A little.
‘You believe me.’ ‘Yes.’ It had been right there. In front of him, in the video, in the very mimicry of cells, the difference in personality. Except she’d broken the mold. Something had been different in her creation. ‘I’ve been trying to remember this place,’ she said, almost plaintively. ‘I love it here, but the entire time I’ve felt like it was the one remembering me’ (336).
The entire story, Ghost Bird knew she was not the biologist, only like her. She has some of her memories, but not enough to reform a life or answer Control’s many questions. As a duplicate, Ghost Bird was not formed to be the perfect clone of the biologist; in fact, she is healthier, stronger, more stubborn, and more open to relationships than the original biologist. Though she is reluctant to speak openly, she develops a bond with Control, whereas the original biologist was a loner. They share the same physical looks, but Ghost Bird has a warmer heart and feels burdened by her containment and strange in-between memories of the biologist’s life inside her head.
Ghost Bird’s hybridity emphasizes the way that transformation and mutation connect the unknown forces of Area X to the known world. As a mutated copy of the biologist, she cannot be understood as either entirely separate from or entirely identical to her. The truth about her—what she represents and who she is—lies in the changes that have and are taking place. The same is true for the transformations that Ghost Bird, and Area X more broadly, prompt in the people and the world around them. When Ghost Bird returns to the northern coast at the end of the novel, she catalyzes another Area X mutation to take over that landscape, and the “brightness” that she carried inside her transforms into a new portal. More figuratively, her relationship with Control sparks his own transformation into John, a new version of himself that is more open to both human relationships and to the mysteries of Area X. Ghost Bird, like the anomaly that made her, transforms everything she comes into contact with.
Bureaucracy and Control
The theme of bureaucracy and control is central to the setting, systems, and interpersonal relationships at the Southern Reach. Bureaucracy in the novel is characterized by institutional dysfunction. Although he has been a military man for years, Control thinks the Southern Reach is a maze. The facility is a strange U-shape that is difficult to navigate, which parallels the tortuousness of the bureaucracy it represents. Due to the politics of the organization, Control cannot even get basic information out of Grace, who protects almost everything as classified. He struggles to get answers from staff to even the simplest questions, such as what the previous director was like or how many expeditions there have been. Infighting between Control and Grace—from Control not telling her about interviewing the biologist to Grace disclosing his harrowing past to everyone at lunch—continues as the main person versus person conflict for the whole book. They are not the only source of infighting, however. For instance, Control learns that Lowry and the prior director did not get along. Many people consider Whitby to be a “loon,” and diminish his far-out theories about Area X. Overall, the organization is deteriorating, with tensions high, numerous personal conflicts, and the stress of being confronted with unknown forces weighing on them.
Furthermore, Central, the shadowy government body in charge of the Southern Reach, attempts to exert total control over the Southern Reach and its employees. They hold strict meetings to know everyone’s whereabouts, and cameras follow their every move. People like Hsyu are not allowed in certain areas of the building, such as the off-limits science lab. These harsh systems are in place to keep them compliant and focused on their duties to study Area X, but the system also causes many of them to work without any meaning since they are left in the dark unless they are the highest members of the Southern Reach or Central.
Their most extreme tactic, however, is putting their employees under hypnosis to manipulate their actions and knowledge. The members of the expeditions were always put under hypnotic control by their leaders, often without their knowledge or consent. Control realizes after many weeks as director that he has been controlled by The Voice (who he discovers is Lowry) via hypnotic commands the entire time. Close readers may have noticed clues, such as Grace insisting Control had ransacked her office when he had no memory of doing so. He figures out how to free himself from The Voice’s control once he identifies the command words that were being used, but the discovery undermines any sense of control that Control thought he had over his situation or himself.
In Authority, all forms of bureaucracy and control eventually break down. The Southern Reach is a crumbling institution, physically and organizationally, whose bureaucratic structures actively impede its goals. Central’s attempts to control its personnel are exposed and undermined, first by Control’s discovery of them and later by Area X itself when it expands to swallow the very facility that was meant to contain it. The characters most preoccupied with maintaining control, Control, and Grace, eventually relinquish it when they choose to follow Ghost Bird and Cynthia into Area X. Bureaucracy, control, power, knowledge—all are proven to be illusions the characters use to try to contain the unknowable. But, as John discovers, the only way to reach the truth is to surrender the illusion of control and open yourself to the impossible.
