WEEK FOUR: Annhilation by Jeff Vandermeer (6)

 

Annihilation is as strange as it can possibly be. The narrator is the protagonist of the story and one of the four experts that goes to this place called Are X which is separated by an invisible gate and somehow they cannot use modern technology there and everything they take has to be at least thirty years old. Area X does something to the ecosystem which affects everything and changes things. Right from the beginning of the book I felt that there is something wrong and I should not be here and it was not even clear why these characters would want to go there if they know that various traumas happened to the people from previous expeditions. There is a great set up of suspense and foreshadowing of what is going to happen. The four women in the expedition are not supposed to know even each other's names which makes the whole thing impersonal but I think that there is more personality in here as it is written not from the neutral outsider’s point of view but as a diary of the biologist. I personally did not like the psychologist because of the description of her so definitely the subjective opinion of the biologist affects the reader. The biologist's character is very elaborate, she comes to Area X because as it turns out her husband was in the last expedition. The monster that makes sounds at night is so deliberate that even though we do not see what it is we feel threatened and scared. The border itself feels like a separate character which has the ability to expand and they have to be hypnotized to go though it because it has weird effects. Jeff Vandermeer does not fully explain what is going on through the story which creates that unease and confusion. The feeling of knowing that something is going on but not knowing what exactly. These four characters being isolated in this vast area and in some sense from each other as well they start to lose the perception of reality and humanity as in this situation it is hard to determine what the term human means.