Annihilation: How to Develop Characters Without Understanding Them

Annihilation is a novel written by Jeff Vandermeer that details an expedition of four female scientists into a mysterious region named “Area X.” We, the readers, see this story through the first-hand account of one of the four scientists, a character only referred to as “the Biologist.” Throughout this novel, we quickly see the situation descend into a mysterious experience that challenges how the Biologist has understood her own life as she suffers a Kafka-esque transformation. While reading this novel, particularly the first half, a great sense of anxiety overtook me. At the time, I did not understand where this feeling was coming from. It was not until I reread it that I realized it had to do with how the novel characterized the mind of the Biologist. In this essay, I will outline the way that the author developed, or willingly failed to, his characters. This essay will first go over the book's introduction, how the Biologist grows throughout the story, and how we see the other characters develop through the eyes of the Biologist.

Vandermeer builds the cast of characters uniquely, by getting to know them in the middle of their story, after the team arrives at base camp and discovers the “Tower.” Having the story's first line relate to a narrative event under way alters how we perceive the characters. We never get to see a before and after of the characters, no slice of their life to anchor our thoughts about them. Now, their lives are connected to the Tower and the greater Area X. After the first paragraph, we are given the basic rundown of our characters: that there are four of them, that they work for the government, that they are scientists, and that they are women. Quickly following this dive into the narrative is an explanation of the command structure, a basic situation breakdown, and a general description of where the women are. These descriptions notably lack personal details, names of people or places, physical characteristics of the scientists, or anything that could be used to humanize the characters. Later on, the Biologist explains the reason for this absence of details, that it was an “attempt to weed out bias” (10), even though she added that it was “hopeless” to do so (10). 

It does not take too long after the opening to encounter another unique tactic the author employs. Most forms of media would choose an “everyman” character to serve as the audience’s stand-in. This character's reaction mirrors how we would respond in that situation. With Annihilation, the everyman is not the Biologist: it is the Surveyor. The Surveyor is the one who regards the strange occurrences in Area X with caution, acting in every situation with the goal of self-preservation. She does not behave like a horror movie character whose aim is to die for the audience's pleasure.

Regarding the Biologist, if I were to assign her a more fitting role, she would be the “host,” corrupted by the opposing force in the story, whatever that may be. The host acts as a cautionary tale, displaying what happens when you get infected by whatever is happening. It is also common for them to become secondary antagonists within the story. The Biologist’s journey through Area X boils down to the following: She becomes infected by a single mold spore and starts changing. At first, she seems normal, but then it becomes apparent that she is changing strangely before becoming “recognizable to the Crawler” (180). We learn that the Biologist becomes a part of the very thing they are trying to stop. With this assignment of roles in mind, I now understand where much of that anxiety I mentioned earlier came from. We do not witness events through the viewpoint of the character most like us, but instead, we see Area X through the eyes of someone who becomes less and less like the average individual. The Biologist is the infected individual who becomes stronger and stranger before ultimately becoming an avatar of the very thing they are trying to defeat. We realize that nothing left Area X, only strange echoes of them, and, as the Biologist herself said, “there was no place I would rather be than in Area X” (136).

By seeing the world through the eyes of an infected individual, we gain a new appreciation for things. We see beauty in the absence of people, the isolation that can only come from being away from everyone and everything, and the complexities of wildlife. However, through this process, we also gained a distaste for things that seemed reasonable when we started the book. Fear of the unknown is an emotion we all benefit from, a response that keeps us safe and stops us from poking something that may poke back. Throughout this book, it becomes something disgusting, an embodiment of everything we hate. The Psychologist, the group's " leader, " is afraid of what is happening to her. She travels down the Tower and finds something that terrifies her, and instead of working with the others, she runs away. Her secrets, lies, and commands all come at the cost of the others, their sanity, and their lives. Even in the end, she refuses to let go of the control that she had; she still “knew so much more than she had told” the Biologist(130). The Surveyor is another person we come to hate. Initially, she was cautious, and her resolve, as the psychologist put it, was “wavering” (127) after her first encounter with the uncanny. The Biologist “saw fear in the Surveyor’s eyes” (53), and the Surveyor despised her for that. Our stand-in, the everyman with whom we could relate, is now our enemy. In a sense, we become a threat to ourselves, and the person we were before we read this book is trying to kill who we become after reading it. We do not want to fight her, but we do not want to give up or give into logical fear as she does. The final confrontation with her seals our fate when we cannot even tell her our “God damn fucking name” (145). We are no longer afraid, and that revelation is horrifying in and of itself.

To summarize, Annihilation is a novel where we have the reason and logic that has before served us, the whole of humanity, turned on its head. We never get to know these people, the explorers; they were never anything more than scientists to us. What we do learn about them is passed through the lens of someone so different from the average reader that the facts she transmits are alien to us. Even the people we could understand and emotionally connect with become objects to fear, things we push past and forget. This novel is about change, and we see how the characters change. Change takes and twists them beyond all recognition and, by extension, twists us. As I worked to place myself in their shoes, I realized that I had become lost, just like the Biologist. I know this because, as I was writing the fourth paragraph of this essay, I unconsciously stopped differentiating myself from the Biologist, much like she became one with Area X.