The biologist narrator of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annhiliation is fascinated by a tunnel/tower that descends deep into the earth. The team she is a part of stumbles upon this structure early on. One of its most notable features—and notably missing in the film version of the novel—is a strange writing on the wall of the tunnel/tower. Here is how the biologist describes it:
“At about shoulder height, perhaps five feet high, clinging to the inner wall of the tower, I saw what I first took to be dimly sparkling green vines progressing down into the darkness. . . . as I stared the ‘vines’ resolved further, and I saw that they were words, in cursive, the letters raised about six inches off the wall. . . . As I came close, did it surprise me that I could understand the language the words were written in? Yes. Did it fill me with kind of elation and dread intertwined? Yes. I tried to suppress a thousand new questions rising up inside of me. In as calm a voice as I could manage, aware of the importance of that moment, I read from the beginning, aloud: ‘Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that . . . .’ Then the darkness took it. ‘Words? Words?’ the anthropologist said" (23).
These “Words? Words?” continue like a leitmotif throughout the novel as a whole. The words are composed of plant-like forms and the biologist is struck by what she calls a “compulsion” to keep reading (24). But she pauses to consider their materiality, leaning closer in, and breathing in a “tiny spray of golden spores” (25) that, we later learn, make her immune to the psychologist’s hypnotic commands. While the biologist wants to suppress the “thousand new questions” raised by this plant-writing on the wall, I want to consider some of those questions:
· Why are the plants writing on the wall of the tower/tunnel?
· Why is that writing in cursive?
· What is the writing (the novel refers to its origin as “something” rather than “somebody”) trying to say? Does it have a “message” for the expedition? For us?
· In the context of climate change, what does it mean to read the writing on the wall? How do we “read” the plants and our relation to them and their relation to us?
· In this novel, people become plants and plants become people. Why?
“Writing on the wall” is a phrase that suggests at once what is obvious and what is missed. It is also typically a warning about bad outcomes. Does the writing on the wall of the tower work in this way? If it does, does it perhaps suggests that we, too, are missing the writing on the wall even as we try to “read” it?
I agree that we often tend to miss the writing on the wall, as a general collective. Often our set opinions and close-mindedness make us oblivious to the obvious. In context of climate change, there is a definite large group of people all over the world that think climate change is a myth or belief rather than a growing concern backed by science and evidence, regardless of the facts provided for them. The plants that arrange themselves to form words in cursive throughout the novel Annihilation, serve as an Omen or warning of something negative about to happen for the group of expeditioners but also for the novels readers and audience who can then pay closer attention to their environment…
"In the context of climate change, what does it mean to read the writing on the wall? How do we “read” the plants and our relation to them and their relation to us?"
In the context of climate change, perhaps the reading the writing on the wall means to understand the message that we see. We need to open our eyes and look at the writing put in front of us. Maybe we need to see what the message is, perhaps it is to be aware of future consequences that'll happen. However, in relation to climate change, we could read the plants since we are all connected. Plants can be like people as discussed in "The Hidden Life of Trees"…
In this novel, people become plants and plants become people. Why? I think that people become plants, and vice versa, to show that we’re all very similar in nature. People always place a big importance on how humanity is going to survive throughout all of the global warming and climate change, when in reality, we should be thinking about trying to ensure that all living species will survive, not just people. The fact that the plants are showing sentience by having the ability to write coherent words make them even more similar to us.