Pines

“It was the strangest sort of fear. Unspecified. Like walking in the woods at night, not knowing exactly what you should be afraid of, and the fear all the more potent precisely because of its mystery.”

Ethan doesn’t know why, but his instincts tell him not to go to the hospital. The fear is intuitive, though whether it is based in Ethan’s past experience or something imagined is unclear. By instilling these vague fears in Ethan, Crouch opens a space of uncertainty in the narrative, leaving room for questions about Ethan’s reliability as a narrator.

“He caught a glimpse of his bare legs, and as always, the nexus of scarring jogged him out of the moment, fighting to pull him eight years back to a brown-walled room whose stench of death would never leave him.”

With the sight of his scars, Ethan slips back to the scene of his own torture during the Gulf War, although this connection hasn’t been made explicit in the text yet. Ethan’s trauma from his imprisonment and torture is something that he hasn’t wanted to face, yet something that he will be forced to deal with during the course of the novel. Pilcher strives to exploit this trauma to integrate Ethan, taking advantage of The Destabilizing Power of Trauma to blur Ethan’s reality.

“And still, he was here. And by virtue of that fact, or rather because of it, this place wasn’t perfect. His experience, there was darkness everywhere human beings gathered. The way of the world. Perfection was a surface thing. The epidermis. Cut a few layers deep, you begin to see some darker shades. Cut to the bone—pitch black.”

As a federal agent, Ethan knows from experience that superficial perfection often hides corruption. He doesn’t know yet the depth of Wayward Pines’s superficiality; he simply applies what he’s learned as a federal agent, assuming that this place and these people are no different. This perspective will be both validated by the dark violence of the fêtes and challenged when the reasons behind Wayward Pines’s culture emerge.

“It took him back to his childhood in Tennessee and those mid-October evenings sitting on the screened porch while his father smoked his pipe, staring across the soybean field when the chorus of crickets had dwindled down to a lonely one. Hadn’t the poet Carl Sandburg written about this very thing? Ethan couldn’t recall the verse verbatim, knew only that it had something to do with the voice of the last cricket across the frost. A splinter of singing. There it was—that phrase he’d loved.”

In this quote, Ethan references “Splinter,” a poem by Carl Sandburg, a renowned American poet. The poem, like Ethan’s thoughts, is melancholy and nostalgic, talking about a change of season. The cricket connects Ethan to his childhood, filling in some of his backstory. A connection to his own father will also become important in the context of Ethan’s relationship with his son, Ben. However, the cricket turns out to be fake, serving as a symbol of Wayward Pines’s insidious superficiality.

“One by one, each child turned and stared at Ethan—blank expressions that he could have sworn contained some element of thinly veiled hostility. He smiled through the pain, gave a little wave. ‘Hey, kids.’ Not a single one of them waved back or otherwise responded. They just stood frozen in place like a collection of figurines, only their heads turning as they watched him pass out of sight around the corner of the gymnasium.”

Something is very wrong with this town—even in pain, Ethan can recognize this. Crouch cements Ethan’s impression through the children’s behavior. Their eerie stillness as they watch Ethan pass, with none of them responding to his wave, supports his suspicion that the people here are under some form of duress. Although this perception will be somewhat undercut when Ethan realizes how terrible he looks after the accident, the strange silence of the children touches on another horror genre trope, signaling worse things to come to the reader.

“He always shows up on lists of the world’s richest men. One of these reclusive billionaires. Never talks to the press. Owns a bunch of biopharmaceutical companies.”

David Pilcher’s name first emerges when Ethan tells Sheriff Pope that Pilcher was the reason for the investigation that resulted in Agent Evans and Hewson’s disappearances. Pilcher will remain a background figure until much later in the book, when he is revealed to be the mastermind behind Wayward Pines and its hidden leader. In fact, Pilcher is Ethan’s antagonist, appearing in the guise of Dr. Jenkins and obstructing Ethan’s search for the truth, as well as his escape.

“The Biergarten was open and empty save for one bored-looking bartender sitting on a stool behind the bar reading a paperback novel—one of F. Paul Wilson’s early books.”

In this scene, Ethan meets Beverly for the first time. When he initially sees her, Beverly is reading the work of a well-known 1980s science-fiction horror novelist, best known for The Keep. With this veiled reference, Crouch subtly reinforces the genre of Pines as a science-fiction horror novel. In addition to reinforcing the sense that Wayward Pines is not what it seems, the reference also sets up Beverly to be someone who sees the darker side of the town.

“She hadn’t had this much to drink in ages, knew she’d pay for it in the morning, but for now, she reveled in this beautiful padding that protected her from the sharp edges of reality—the unanswered questions, the fear that was always with her. That haunted her dreams.”

In Chapter 4, the narrative shifts to follow Theresa, Ethan’s wife, on the day of Ethan’s memorial. She and Ethan’s friends are celebrating his life, memorializing him despite the fact that his body was never recovered. Unlike the unnamed fears that Ethan faces in Wayward Pines, Theresa’s fear is very specific—the fear that Ethan’s life insurance won’t pay out. This switch to Theresa’s perspective places the reader back into everyday life, which contrasts with Ethan’s surreal experience in Wayward Pines, emphasizing just how strange Ethan’s predicament is.

“Forgive me if I don’t take your word on that. ‘An abnormal condition of the mind, generally characterized by a loss of contact with reality.’ That’s the textbook definition of psychosis, Ethan. It could’ve been caused by the car accident. By seeing your partner killed. Or some buried trauma from the war resurfacing.”

When Ethan wakes in the hospital the second time, Dr. Jenkins, the psychiatrist, is at his bedside. The doctor questions Ethan’s mental health, pointing to both his recent activities around town and his experiences during the Gulf War. As Pilcher confesses later, this attempt at using The Destabilizing Power of Trauma to undermine Ethan’s hold on reality is another way in which they tried to integrate him into Wayward Pines. Ultimately, however, for Ethan, The Need to Know prevails.

“‘When you live in a place like this,’ Ethan said, gesturing to the surrounding mountains, ‘why would you ever leave?’”

Ethan has stumbled on a neighborhood barbeque and is making small talk with the residents. Ethan’s comment is the perfect example of small talk with a tourist, which is what Ethan is claiming to be. The irony of Ethan’s statement is that, despite the idyllic surroundings, Ethan very much wants to leave Wayward Pines.

“‘Who are you?’ the sheriff roared. Ethan couldn’t have answered if he’d wanted to, his consciousness slipping, what he could see of the interrogation room beginning to spin, interspersed with snapshots of another.”

After pretending to agree to an interrogation, Ethan instead attacks Sheriff Pope, only to be overcome by the sheriff’s response. They fight, with Pope gaining control and beating Ethan severely. Ethan’s mind again returns to the torture he survived during the Gulf War, and he begins to conflate the two experiences. Pilcher’s plan, though not completely successful, does cause Ethan to doubt himself, highlighting again The Destabilizing Power of Trauma.

“He had to admit that the last time he’d woken in the hospital and spoken to Dr. Jenkins he’d run through a patch of self-doubt, wondering, fearing that maybe he had suffered some injury that had impacted him neurologically. Skewed his perception of people and space and time. Because nothing in Wayward Pines made sense. But these past few moments—Nurse Pam’s sociopathic behavior, their refusal to heed his objections to surgery—had confirmed it: There was nothing wrong with him beyond the fact that people in this town meant him harm.”

Pilcher’s plan to gaslight Ethan nearly worked, as Ethan admits he did doubt his own perception of reality. However, the accumulation of hints ultimately confirm for Ethan that he is not experiencing a psychotic episode, as Dr. Jenkins claims. Pam’s unleashed anger validates Ethan’s perspective once and for all. Despite Pilcher’s efforts to cause Ethan to doubt himself, Ethan always returns to the validity of his own perspective and his commitment to learning the truth, illustrating the power of The Need to Know.

“She said, ‘I’ll never forget the day I arrived, because in some ways, it’s like the day I died. Since then, nothing’s been the same. It was a beautiful autumn morning. Sky a deep blue. The aspens turning. That was October third, 1985. In fact, next week is my anniversary. I’ll have been in Wayward Pines a whole year.’”

Beverly tells Ethan the story of how she came to be in Wayward Pines; like Ethan, she is eager to escape and sees her imprisonment in Wayward Pines as a sort of death. When Beverly tells him the date she arrived, nearly 30 years before him, a new wrinkle is added to Ethan’s understanding of his situation, as Beverly asserts that, from her perspective, she arrived only a year ago. This instance, as with Theresa’s memorial for Ethan, 15 months after his disappearance, reinforces that time is operating differently in Wayward Pines than it is outside of the town.

“Ethan braced for the impact of that piece of information, but he was only vaguely aware that he should be scared shitless, something he knew but didn’t feel, his mind already roping itself off, sliding into that numb, adrenalized state of rote survival he’d tasted those few times in his life when he’d had the misfortune to lock eyes with dead. No place for extraneous, wasted thought or emotion. All power diverted and channeled so it could heighten the only thing that could keep him alive—sensory perception.”

Beverly has just told Ethan that the residents of Wayward Pines have been ordered to find and kill him—he is being hunted. With the news, Ethan experiences a familiar feeling as he moves past fear into a different state. His ability to set his fear aside and focus on his survival is a skill he learned as a soldier. Although Pilcher tries to use Ethan’s war experience against him, it turns out to be an asset. Ethan evades capture, using his battle-honed capacity to set emotion aside and his fierce drive to learn the truth to prioritize the immediate threat.

“A night for humanity in all its evil, joy, and madness. A celebration in hell. Her five years in Wayward Pines, there’d been only four fêtes. Tonight makes five.”

The narrative returns to Theresa’s perspective, and she offers the reader more context about what is happening in the town. Calling these events fêtes, Pope creates a carnivalesque atmosphere that, as Theresa observes, elicits the best and worst of the human species. This quote also offers, in an off-hand way, the information that Theresa and Ben have been in Wayward Pines for five years, again complicating the issue of time in the novel.

“Standing on a brick planter, head and shoulders above the crowd, an immense figure caught his notice. The monstrous man was dressed in the fur of a brown bear—still pinned with his brass star—and he wore some sort of metal headpiece mounted with antlers, his face streaked with lurid war paint, a shotgun slung over one shoulder, a sheathed sword hanging off the other.”

As sheriff, Pope is the acknowledged authority in Wayward Pines. However, his role in the fête shows the darker side of his leadership—Pope doesn’t just condone the fêtes, he promotes them. Later, when Pilcher leaves Pope to die, saying that Pope wanted to lead, Pilcher implies that Pope was attempting to assume authoritarian control of the town. Pope’s swipe at more authority than Pilcher feels he should have is, in the end, the reason for his death.

“He craved violence, a small voice inside him suggesting he go down there into the crowd with the machete right now and hack away. Yes, they would eventually overpower him, but God there was nothing he wanted more than to go slashing through the masses, a one-man massacre. But then you’ll die. Never see your family again. Never know what any of this was all about.”

Ethan watches out a window as the crowd descends on Beverly and slaughters her. As a federal agent and former soldier, Ethan fights his instinct to take action. The only other instinct that combats this urge, besides his desire to see his family again, is part of what makes him a good federal agent—an insatiable need to find the truth. In the end, The Need to Know overcomes Ethan’s impulse to attack the crowd.

“He passed into a grove of soaring pines. The rocky ground gave way to soft, moist earth covered in a cushion of dead pine needles, Ethan thinking, Worse comes to worst, I’ll sleep here. Wasn’t ideal—too close to the river, no branches to cover himself with, and anyone tracking him couldn’t help but find him. But at least he’d have some protection under the canopies of these ancient pines.”

Throughout Ethan’s various attempts to escape, the pine forest becomes his goal, acting as a symbol of safety and escape. He is comforted by the trees’ timelessness and feels protected in the forest. Later, this symbolism will be a point of irony. When Ethan discovers the truth about Wayward Pines and the world around it, he realizes that the pine trees, rather than offering protection, form part of a dangerous environment. Further, the ancient qualities that he so admires mark his own isolation, indicating that the forest has been untouched by humans for nearly 2,000 years.

“And the longer he crawled in that confined darkness, the more aggressively one thought kept eating at him—None of this is real. Not Wayward Pines, or the canyon, or those creatures, or even you. So what is this? Where am I? In a long, dark tunnel. But where do you think you’re going? I don’t know. Who are you? Ethan Burke. No, who are you? The father of Ben. Husband of Theresa. I live in a neighborhood in Seattle called Queen Anne. I was a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the second Gulf War. After that, a Secret Service agent. Seven days ago, I came to Wayward Pines—Those are just facts. They say nothing about your identity, your nature.”

Ethan has finally made his way inside the vent that leads to the bunker. But as he crawls through the darkness, he once again questions what is real. This section of the text continues to probe The Destabilizing Power of Trauma. Further, as he crawls, Ethan probes the core of his identity, recognizing that much of how he once defined himself has fallen away, leaving him painfully aware of The Malleability of Identity.

“Are you losing your mind? I sometimes think I’m still in that torture room. I never left. Are you losing your mind? You tell me. I can’t. Why? Because I am you.”

As Ethan’s trip through the vents continues, he holds a dialogue with himself in which he questions his identity and reality. One aspect of Ethan’s identity that he has never dealt with is the aftereffects of the torture he experienced during the Gulf War. This experience causes him to doubt his current reality throughout the novel, especially when Pilcher begins to use it against him, but as a result, Ethan is forced to deal with memories he has long been avoiding.

“Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve treated our world like it was a hotel room and we were rock stars. But we aren’t rock stars. In the scheme of evolutionary forces, we are a weak, fragile species. Our genome is corruptible, and we so abused this planet that we ultimately corrupted that precious DNA blueprint that made us human.”

Finally, Ethan hears the true story of Wayward Pines from Pilcher. Pilcher reveals the irony of humanity’s current situation, in which the abbies, far superior predators to humans, are the result of mutations that evolved as the human body’s attempt to grapple with the new environment resulting from climate change. Recognizing this looming problem early on, in the 1970s, Pilcher began early to develop his plans for Wayward Pines.

“Freedom is such a twenty-first century construct. You’re going to sit here and tell me that individual freedom is more vital than the survival of our species? […] Dignity is a beautiful concept, but what if they made the wrong choice? Like that first group. If there’s no species left to even perpetrate such an ideal, what’s the point?”

Pilcher argues that personal freedom is secondary to the survival of humanity, making it irrelevant whether the residents of Wayward Pines are there by choice or not. Ethan’s desire for freedom, in other words, doesn’t matter in the face of the larger challenge of protecting and promulgating humanity. When Ethan agrees to accept the role of sheriff, he shows at least a tacit acceptance of Pilcher’s point of view, even as the idea is antithetical to everything he has stood for in the past.

“The lights of Wayward Pines glowed against the cliffs that boxed it in, and for the first time, those steep mountain walls seemed inviting. Fortifications against all the horror that lay beyond. Shelter for the last town on earth. Would it ever feel like home? Would it be all right if it did?”

With Pilcher’s revelation of the truth about Wayward Pines and the world around it, Ethan’s perspective on the town completely shifts. As they return after their trip outside its confines, for the first time, Ethan finds its lights comforting, rather than stifling. He is resigned to spending his life there now, but he still wonders if, by doing so, and by getting comfortable and participating in the new reality, he is doing the right thing. Thus, although Ethan understands Pilcher’s motivations now, he is still unlikely to fall into line without questioning or pushing back against Pilcher.