BEWILDERMENT

Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said has written that “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Said also said that exile can become “a potent, even enriching” experience. In Bewilderment, Robin, a 9 year-old boy, experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” which is located inside his dead mother’s brain. This character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and this experience illuminates the theme. Author Richard Powers seeds catastrophic rifts throughout the novel to further emphasize the climate change issue floating closer to humanity in the modern world. He reveals the meaning of his work through distinct characterizations, strange imagery, and relentless lessons from natural flora and fauna. “May all sentient beings be free from needless suffering.” A small boy named Robin recites every night before he sleeps, like his animal-activist mother once did.  

Robin has been diagnosed with anger issues, OCD, and two other adjacent illnesses. He is an eccentric, quick-witted fourth grader suffering heavily from his mother’s devastating death in a car accident. He is introduced while camping in the Smokies, where his attitude is tolerable and controlled. The woods are a calming sedative, aiding a boy gone wild in the consumerist world he is unfit for. It is one of his homes. He speaks about this and his mother simply, “Remember how she used to say: ‘How rich are you, little boy?’ ‘I remember.’ He held up his hands to the moonlit mountain evidence. The wind-bent trees. The roar of the nearby river… His face, in the dark, struggled for accuracy. This rich. That’s how rich,” (Powers, 28). Robin’s characterization throughout the story envelops the reader with hope and sadness, connection and exile, for a boy struggling in a world not built for him. 

Robin’s father, an astrobiologist named Theo, finds a colleague who begins training Robin’s brain with recorded brain scans of emotions at a university science lab. Robin learns to control his mind, his anger, and his feelings. He spins further and further into a well-tempered boy who seldom has time for tantrums as he is too busy painting every endangered animal to raise money at a farmer’s market. He is looping deeper and deeper into appreciation for the community around him. His dad is ecstatic at this change of character with natural methods, and no psychoactive drugs circulating in his 9 year old. But, eventually the treatments and practices stop working and Robin sinks back into himself. His view of the world darkens and his father notices when they are discussing aliens one night. “That’s why the universe is silent, Dad. Everyone’s hiding. All the smart ones, anyway,” (Powers, 136). When Robin’s treatment begins to fail, and his learning plateaus, the human world around him is the first item his mind grasps and injects with hate. Desperately, Theo agrees to let the scientist use an old recording of his wife’s brain experiencing euphoria. And again, Robin is thrust into a world of bliss, thus reconnecting him to society. This reconnection symbolizes Robin as the climate-anxious generation of youth currently training and learning in their adolescent years. The exile from and reacclimation to society that Robin experiences portrays the climate change fear gripping an entire group of people. It is a metaphor for activists everywhere. As Robin starts to spiral in a downfall, he is unable to enjoy the natural world around him which further decreases his love for community and humanity, two things needed in a world threatened by climate disasters. Activists should be able to peek behind the words and see that this is the reality many of them are living. As they pull away from the natural world, like Robin does without following his mother’s brain patterns, they regress into fear and focus on the negatives of the community they are fighting for. They make their cause everything about themselves, a fatal mistake that quickly causes burn-out. No one can fight forever. This characterization of Robin to encompass a coming generation is expertly portrayed. He grounds himself with his home in the Smoky Mountains and in his  dead mother’s brain patterns. Every activist has a home they are trying to save or change. When he is able to be a part of his “home,” he is more at peace and in control of himself. Activists are able to remember what they are fighting for, and they are no longer just a cause, but a place that molded them. Humans are able to mold and change any environmental attribute, so it is refreshing to find natural land wonders that are still able to mold people. 

As Robin becomes exiled from his home, his character darkens and sinks fluidly into the pages. He becomes hard to handle for his father, Theo, who desperately tries to pull him out with trips away from school. His home becomes threatened by the President of the United States who evaporates the funding and support for the experimental project. Through anti-science authoritarian actions, Robin is thrust into exile for the second time. It is different from his first exile: using his mother’s brain instead of random people’s patterns. There is no hope for a return to home. Home as he knew it, has been forbidden. Robin shows that people without a home desperately look for something adjacent. Theo goes through his journal and finds a shaky, scrawled note, “Remember what she feels like! You can remember!!!” (Powers, 239). Robin is desperate to feel the voice and enveloping figure of his home and thus, his mother. His exile from his special place makes him realize how important the place isto him. To continue with the activist metaphor, a mass amount of people who lose their home due to environmental degradation that could have been prevented will be a new type of political refugee. Instead of fleeing bombs, war, or political party majorities, citizens will be fleeing the trees they climbed as children, the acidified ocean water lapping at their feet, and the eroding hills their homes sat on. These citizens will be aliens, lost and exiled from their homes. Robin explains his exile simply, “Dad. I’m going backwards. I can feel it… Like the mouse, Dad. Like Algernon,” (Powers, 243). 

Scientists studying climate change in the 1900s did not have to worry about the polarization their findings could bring to the table. Conservations concerning warming climates, oil spills, and rising sea levels were full of concern, not political party propaganda. It was factual and it was simply the truth. It was the same as discussing the rainy Saturday morning the day before, or the coming holiday. It was an unbiased truth. As Robin compares himself to the mouse from the story Flowers for Algernon, the comparison of modern-era climate change as the devolving mouse if further supported. Robin believes he is regressing into anger, and losing the hard-fought control over his emotions he had. Climate change studies are not regressing, but their support is, even though at this time in the world it is imperatively necessary to act and take a stand to protect these wild lands. If activists lose their wilderness areas they are protesting for, they too, will face a regression of hope, control, and faith in the democratic systems in place. If corporatist greed and consumerism remain in place, every single one of us will eventually be exiles.

Powers’ vivid descriptions gnaw at reader’s consciences. His story about a young boy learning of the world around him and the endangered environment can trigger a similar experience: the day they, too, learned about a bipartisan issue growing more and more grim every day. The effect of exile on Robin drives Theo to take his son up to the Smokies to camp like they first did in the beginning of the book. The natural world should house him well enough as he grows accustomed to no treatment. He has, in essence, lost his mother again. The activists, in essence, are trying to start again. Robin revels in the world around him. He is at peace, for the first time since his treatment was taken away. He is past tantrums and rage. He says, “Listen to that… Can you believe where we are?” (Powers, 269), referring to the infinite stars above his father and his head as they sleep on a mountain with thousands of other interdependent beings, but Robin is disturbed by the cairns that have disrupted the natural habitat. The next morning, Robin groggily leaves the tent to pee. Theo wakes up to silence and looks for him. “A muffled moan came from the stream, a few feet away… He was curled over a boulder in the middle of the flow, embracing it… He’d been dismantling cairns. Turning the river back into a safe home. He was soaked up to the top of his rib cage. His whole body was quaking. He tried to reach out, but his arm swung limply in the air. Slurred sounds come from his mouth, nothing like words… He felt so cold,” (Powers, 273). Robin’s death at the end of the book is devastating, but necessary. Climate change metaphors must stop ending happily. His death represents the death of thousands of activists and conservation organizations killed by human ignorance, at best, and by  human inaction, at worst. Robin’s attempts to destroy rock cairns, which uproots animal habitats as a trivial enjoyment for people. Robin is trying to fix human destruction in the same way activists are trying to fix human ignorance. 

In the end, Richard Power’s book is about failing to fix the climate change problem. It shows a population made destitute through inaction, and a population unable to surpass polarization to provide utilitarian effects for the future generations. Recently, a new United Nations study, concerning climate change, was written by 270 researchers from 67 countries.  António Guterres, the UN secretary general, says the report is “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” The question is who failed us first? The elected leaders, the scientists, the fake media, the conservatives, or the tree-huggers? It is a good thing no one will have to give a definitive answer to this international question. There will be no one left to convince who’s fault it was, and who should have acted first. Blame will become an exile, too. 

Sentience can be defined in a myriad of ways. Sentience in Bewilderment is simply to be aware. The ability to understand and to feel; to be sensitive. For the current state of the world, those who are aware feel devastated. Robin’s characterization shows that people without a home, who have been thrust into exile, desperately look for something adjacent, but there will be nothing like Earth in time. The climate solutions are too far away, and the clamor to heed them is too quiet. May the activists find rest in something else, or somewhere else. May Robin be at peace. May the exiled find a temporary home before this end. “May all sentient beings be free from needless suffering.”