Bewilderment

Alyssa’s death haunts Theo and Robin. Her memory has a profound effect on their personalities, as they’re never able to completely abandon her. They live in the same house, eat the same food, and visit the same places as they did when she was alive. They occupy the same physical space, and it reminds them of her, suggesting that her absence so overwhelms them that they don’t want to abandon her. Theo sees his wife in his son’s behavior, so he consults his memory of Alyssa when he needs guidance. His memory of her shapes his parenting, as he’s always aspiring to be as good a parent as he thinks Alyssa was. As a result, Alyssa still plays an active role in raising Robin. Her absence is so overpowering that neither Robin nor Theo can imagine a life in which she doesn’t play a role. Their sense of loss is so deep that they try to relive their memories of her rather than come to terms with her death.

Robin’s personality changes after Currier’s experiment and then changes again when the treatment stops. Theo feels as though Robin becomes an entirely different and much happier person through the treatment, so the end of the experiment feels to Theo like a slow death for Robin’s new personality. As the treatment fades into the past, Robin’s access to the memory of Alyssa fades. He grieves his mother for a second time, while Theo grieves losing the happier Robin, whom he knew only for a brief time. After Robin’s death, Theo must grieve again. The end of the experiment is an escalating series of unstoppable, overwhelming losses for Theo, and the feeling of loss is overpowering. He watches his wife die, then his son’s happiness disappears, and he watches his son mourn Alyssa all over again, and then he loses Robin. In the end, Theo is so overwhelmed that he gives himself up to Currier’s machine and tries to live inside the digitized memory of his child, which is all he has left.

As well as individual loss and the loss of individuals, the novel portrays the world’s loss of an entire ecosystem. People watch as the environment collapses but do nothing to stop it. The loss of nature becomes a passive, horrific piece of theater that relegates the species that is destroying the planet (humans) to the role of an audience: Although their sense of loss is severe, humans feel incapable of stopping or curbing the destruction. Instead, they watch the news and complain to one another about petty issues via technologies such as the internet. An overwhelming sense of loss renders the species powerless to prevent the increasing destructive powers its inventions have created. Like Theo, humanity gives itself up to the easy, false digital world rather than confront the horrifying reality.