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Chapter 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Annihilation, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Sublime vs. The Mundane
Nature, Power, and Persistence
Self-Reliance, Mistrust, Secrecy, and Isolation
Objectivity vs. Subjectivity
Summary
Analysis
In the morning, the group discovers that the anthropologist is gone. The psychologist, who seems shaken, explains that what the anthropologist saw in the tunnel unnerved her, and she didn’t want to continue with the expedition, so she went back to the border to await extraction. The surveyor notes that she left her gear, including her gun. The psychologist tries to say that she only took what she needed, and the biologist wonders why the psychologist isn’t using hypnosis on them.
The anthropologist’s disappearance here begins to illustrate how the biologist’s mistrust and self-reliance are advantages in this situation. Even though they’re part of a team, the biologist knows that she has to look out for her own survival, and it’s increasingly clear that the psychologist is untrustworthy, as her response to the anthropologist mysteriously dropping out of the expedition seems suspicious.
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Sensing that the psychologist is lying, the biologist knows that she and the surveyor have a choice: they can accept the explanation or reject it, which would only cause even more conflict. The psychologist quickly changes the subject, saying they should stick with their plan to investigate the tower. The biologist doesn’t want to leave Area X before completing this investigation, so she agrees that they should continue the mission without the anthropologist. The surveyor grudgingly agrees.
The possibility that the psychologist is lying further confirms that the biologist’s self-reliance, mistrust, and isolation is justified. The surveyor also seems increasingly skeptical of the other team members as well, and their expedition is at risk of completely breaking down.
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At the tower, the surveyor and biologist plan to spend the full day inside while the psychologist stands guard at the top of the tower. They have their weapons and breathing masks, but the biologist is wary of the psychologist, wondering what she is trying to guard against. The surveyor says that going down together would be safer. The psychologist replies that there’s no “reward in the risk” of everyone going down, using a tone that hypnotizes the surveyor and causes her to agree with the psychologist. The biologist has no choice but to agree, despite her fear of what the psychologist might do.
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The biologist notices on this descent that the tower is breathing, as though it is made of living tissue. The biologist sits down next to the wall and frantically presses the surveyor’s hand to it, asking if she can feel the wall. The surveyor is afraid, saying that the wall is only made of stone. The biologist wants to explain everything—about the psychologist hypnotizing them—but she doesn’t. She knows the surveyor can’t experience what she’s experiencing, so she has no real proof. The surveyor worries about the biologist, but they continue on, the depths now revealing much greater biodiversity and beauty.
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The biologist chose her career path due to an overgrown swimming pool in her backyard growing up. Her parents were neglectful, and so they did not clean the pool. This led to it becoming a brackish bog with moss and towering plants; dragonflies and beetles; and eventually bullfrogs, local birds, and turtles. Within months of their renting the house, the pool became a functioning ecosystem, and the biologist loved to observe it.
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The biologist’s parents scolded her, thinking that she was too introverted. But when she told them that she was being bullied, they let her continue to observe the pool, day and night. One day, however, her parents couldn’t afford the rent anymore, and they moved to a tiny apartment. The biologist worried about the fate of the pool under a new tenant. She never went back to discover what happened to it, and she hasn’t looked back in any of her projects since. She just waited for the moment it would all be taken away.
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The biologist and the surveyor continue to descend into the tower, and the biologist almost wishes that she weren’t aware of the tower’s true nature, wondering how the psychologist withstood the knowledge. The biologist again observes the words on the walls, which continue in one long nonsensical sentence: “to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives…”
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The biologist and surveyor are both able to see the words and the creatures living among the words. But only the biologist can see that the walls subtly rise and fall, like breathing, or that there are markings of words that had been there previously. The biologist wishes that the linguist was still with them, but eventually she can make out some of the phantom letters discussing “wickedness,” “God’s love,” and a “higher power.” She wonders if they come from prior expeditions and feels defeated not understanding what the markings mean.
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After an hour descending the stairs, the surveyor notices that the words seem to be fresher. The biologist asks the surveyor to turn off her light, and the surveyor hesitates, still rattled from the biologist’s earlier outburst, but she ultimately complies. In the dark, the biologist can see that the glowing colors seem brighter than before, and the words sway with the inhale and exhale of the walls. The biologist says that “something” below them is writing this script, and the surveyor seizes on the biologist saying “something” rather than “someone.” The surveyor then says they should get out their guns, though the biologist is wary of doing so.
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The energy becomes much more charged as the biologist and the surveyor continue to descend, walking more swiftly and speaking quietly. After 20 minutes, they notice a residue on the floor, like slime, as though something has slid down the stairs. There are also a variety of marks and tracks on the ground that the biologist finds fascinating but can’t identify. Then they find a set of boot prints—their own, the biologist thinks, noting they look “so mundane in comparison.” But then the surveyor indicates that it is actually a third set of boots, heading up the stairs rather than down.
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According to the records the group received, the first expedition reported that there was nothing unusual about Area X, but the second and third expeditions did not return, and subsequent expeditions had varying success. The biologist’s husband was on the 11th expedition as a medic. He was recruited by a friend, and though he was unsure at first, their superiors gradually convinced him, which caused a great deal of conflict between the two of them. The biologist hopes that her account shows her to be a credible, objective witness—someone who volunteered for Area X to fulfill the purpose of the expedition. But she knows that she was affected by her husband’s experience there.
About a year after the biologist’s husband left for the expedition, she lay alone in bed at night when she heard a noise—he appeared in her kitchen, eating and drinking furiously. He didn’t remember how he left Area X and had only vague memories of the expedition. He was calm except for moments of panic about his amnesia. He had also lost memories of how their marriage began to disintegrate—he now was as emotionally distant as he accused the biologist of being in the past.
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After talking, the biologist helped her husband shower and change before they had sex, and she realized that he only vaguely remembered her, as if through a fog. The next evening, the expedition’s leaders came to collect him, and the biologist could only visit him in the observation facility afterward. She never really pierced his amnesia, and he died six months later of cancer. Whatever happened in Area X, he had not truly come back.
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The biologist and surveyor continue to descend into the darkness, and the biologist wonders if her husband took the same journey or saw something completely different. The path of slime grows thicker, and despite their concerns, they press on, their curiosity outpacing their fear. But then, the surveyor rounds a corner and immediately doubles back, explaining in fear that there’s a body below them, slumped on the side of the wall. The biologist convinces her to keep going so they can examine the body, and then they can turn back. The surveyor agrees.
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The biologist goes first, and she realizes that the body is the anthropologist. Her face is burned, her jaw is broken, and her legs appear half-melted. Her black box lays crushed several feet from her body, and there are also glass vials strewn around her. The surveyor follows, drawing out her assault rifle and aiming it into the darkness. Above the anthropologist on the wall, words read, “the shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear.” The biologist posits that the anthropologist interrupted the writer of the words.
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Surveying the ground, the biologist realizes that whatever left the slime had turned in a frenzy in a clockwise swirl, but the anthropologist’s boot prints were on top of the swirl. The biologist begins to form an image in her mind of the anthropologist creeping down alone in the dark, perhaps hoping to take a sample. But a dozen steps up, there is another, fourth set of boot prints. The biologist then realizes that the psychologist and anthropologist came down together, and the psychologist hypnotized the anthropologist. She forced her to walk up to the thing that was writing the words on the wall and try to take a sample, which led to her agonizing death.
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The biologist explains her theory to the surveyor, noting that the psychologist has been hypnotizing them while she (the biologist) has been impervious. The surveyor is aghast, wondering why the biologist did nothing if she knew about the hypnotism, and wonders if it’s even true. The biologist tells the surveyor that they may need to restrain or kill the psychologist, because she clearly has some kind of ulterior motive. They put in earplugs, hoping to avert the hypnotism, and turn back to confront the psychologist. Before they leave, the biologist finds one of the glass tubes strewn around the anthropologist with a sample in it.
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As they ascend, the biologist is amazed at her own gullibility and how there was so much misdirection in their mission—starting with the map. Memorizing its details stopped them from asking questions about it, and the biologist realizes that it may have been a cue for hypnotic suggestion. As part of the training, she had become familiar with Area X’s ecosystems, but she also received a refresher course on fungi and lichen that she realizes was likely the true purpose of her studies. The group largely trained apart rather than together, and they knew very little about one another. By the time they were ready to cross the border, they knew “everything… and [they] knew nothing.”
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When the biologist and surveyor emerge, the biologist is shocked at how mundane the outside world feels in comparison. They cannot find the psychologist. Even at base camp, they can’t find her, but she took half their supplies and most of the guns, so they know that she is alive. In less than a week, they have lost three out of five members of their group, and the surveyor decides to believe the biologist’s story. The biologist, meanwhile, is still grappling with the horror that the psychologist coerced the anthropologist into her own death.
With the surveyor wondering what to do next, the biologist decides to examine the samples and photographs they took and return the next day. The surveyor, fighting some internal impulse, says that she doesn’t want to return to the tunnel. Instead, she wants to go back to the border and wait for extraction. The biologist refuses, saying that she’s not ready to go back. The surveyor notes that the biologist really likes it in Area X. To convince the surveyor, the biologist says that they should look at what they brought back, and they can always return to the border the next day. The surveyor agrees. The biologist can’t bring herself to say that they might not really make it back—they might be amnesic, like her husband was.
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The biologist spends the rest of the afternoon looking at samples and developing photographs. She finds most of her samples confusing—organisms that she doesn’t fully understand. The sample that the anthropologist collected, however, is unique. It is brain tissue that looks human, with some irregularities. The biologist questions if it’s actually human or if it’s just pretending to be human, and she wonders how the anthropologist took the sample. She also wonders if, having been infected by the organism’s spores, she might be causing a reaction in the sample.
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The surveyor then examines the photographs they took in the tower, noting that they are all out of focus, as if the walls were emanating something that distorted the image. The biologist also realizes that she should have sampled the walls, because she knows they were part of something living. The surveyor also reports that there’s nothing in the maps and papers, except that they all seem to be focused on the lighthouse. The surveyor asks what to do now, and the biologist says they should eat dinner, look along the perimeter for the psychologist, and think about what to do the next day. The surveyor insists that they’re not going back into the tunnel.
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The familiar moaning begins at dusk again, but the biologist hardly notices it. It begins to rain as the biologist and surveyor eat in silence, and then when they set off for bed, the biologist and surveyor take turns standing watch in the storm. When it’s the biologist’s turn, she steps outside into the storm and feels as though the life she left behind was a dream, and that this is the only place that exists. Through the darkness, the biologist sees a flicker of orange, which she realizes must be coming from the lighthouse. After a few minutes of flickering, it becomes snuffed out, and the biologist grows restless.
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The final weeks before the expedition, the biologist and her husband argued violently. She shoved him and threw things at him to break his resolve, hoping to prevent him from going on the mission. Their relationship had already been struggling, because he was gregarious, and she preferred solitude. This once brought them comfort, as they balanced out each other’s personalities, but no longer. She thinks that at first, she must have been mysterious to him, like a puzzle to be solved. He thought she pushed him away—even saying her isolation caused him to want to go on the expedition.
Once, the biologist told her husband about the pool, which made him think there were more revelations to come. He said he would have found her surly and grim at that age, but also fascinating—he would have followed her anywhere. They took pride in having a strong relationship as opposites, until their marriage revealed the difficulties in this fact and “destroyed [them] over time.”
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The biologist brought up none of their arguments when her husband returned from his expedition, knowing that their time together was likely running out. He was blank and mournful, which he had never been before, and this frightened her. They talked about his journey—though he remembered little—and about her new research, which was rather boring to her. They had breakfast, had sex, watched television, and tried to play a board game. But the fact that he was not entirely present and had gaps in his memory became more and more apparent.
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After a nap, the biologist realized that her husband had left their bed. She panicked, eventually finding him on the side of the house, standing in front of the boat he bought a few years earlier. He looked at it as though he remembered that the boat was important to him but not why. After a while, she couldn’t take his silent distress and brought him inside; he didn’t resist.
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After dinner, men came for the biologist’s husband in unmarked cars with a surveillance van. They approached him with watchful gentleness, like he was an unexploded bomb, and he left without protest. The biologist couldn’t have stopped him, but she also didn’t want to. He was a shell of himself—someone she never knew—and that’s why she called the phone number to take him away.
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The biologist later visited her husband in the observation facility, where he had little to say except to express a deep and unending solitude, which eventually killed him. However, the biologist wondered if the solitude would have killed her if she went on the expedition, too. As she labored at her job, she kept thinking about Area X, wondering what it would be like to go there. Several months after her husband died, she volunteered for the next expedition. She thinks they accepted her as an experiment, but she wonders if they always expected her to sign up.
At base camp in the morning, the biologist feels a “brightness” spreading through her chest from the spores. She now has a decision to make, because she knows someone was in the lighthouse the evening before, and she’s torn between the lighthouse and the tower. The surveyor has no interest in either, even though it might be the psychologist in the lighthouse—she’s worried that the psychologist will have a much better vantage from the lighthouse, and there are weapons there. The biologist argues that it’d be better to find the psychologist before descending into the tower.
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The surveyor scoffs, realizing that the biologist still thinks that they’re continuing with the mission. The biologist says, “There’s no reward in the risk of going back to the tower right now.” The surveyor is temporarily disoriented, but it becomes clear that she knows the biologist tried to use one of the psychologist’s hypnotic cues and resents her for doing so. She says that the biologist would do anything to get her way, and the biologist starts to get nervous that the surveyor is the one holding the rifle.
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The surveyor explains that she has been bothered by the fact that everything they have is made from 30-year-old parts, and that they’ve been living in some sort of reenactment. The biologist doesn’t respond to this, but she instead asks if the surveyor will stay until the biologist comes back. The surveyor grudgingly says yes, and the biologist says not to promise anything she can’t back up—the biologist no longer believes in promises. The surveyor curses at the biologist, who sets off for the lighthouse.
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