The Last Murder at the End of the World

Blackheath Institute represents the elders’ secrets and betrayal. All the island’s activity revolves around Blackheath, even though the institute operates underground in secret. Blackheath also embodies questions surrounding The Ethics of Scientific Inquiry. Niema forces villagers to work there while they aren’t conscious of their activity, and she uses the people in the statis pods for her experiments. These experiments take the lives of nonconsenting subjects, ostensibly for the greater goal of fixing one of humanity’s greatest flaws. For this reason, the institute symbolizes the moral problem of whether the ends justify the means. Emory’s discovery of the institute and all the lies that originate there marks the novel’s turning point and the beginning of the end for the elders’ reign over the island. Thea’s death while trying to escape to Blackheath Institute symbolizes the futility of the elders’ project and the impossibility of curing humanity of its flaws.

The cauldron garden represents the old world that was lost during the apocalypse as well as the promise of a new world. Since the elders keep the garden a secret from the villagers, except for a few chosen apprentices, the villagers do not know about the wonders that exist within it. This becomes clear when Clara catches a glimpse of the foliage and wildlife that do not exist on the island. Since the simulacrums originate in the cauldron garden in drops of dew, the garden symbolizes the biblical Garden of Eden. In the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Garden of Eden is God’s paradise filled with fruits, plants, and animals, which he gives to Adam and Eve—the first man and woman—to live in, as long as they do not question his laws. Adam and Eve can eat fruit from any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good an evil, which contains a forbidden fruit, usually represented as an apple. When Adam and Eve disobey, they are banished from the garden to live in misery in the wilderness.

In the novel, the garden is located in the cauldron of a volcano, symbolizing the potential for its idyllic state to be violently destroyed. Like the Garden of Eden, the cauldron garden symbolizes safety and innocence since the simulacrums plan to escape there to survive the fog. Although the villagers do not have to remain in the cauldron garden because they are immune to the fog, the garden serves as a reminder for the promise of a future outside of the island for the villagers’ descendants.