Re-Configuring the Self and Environmental Influence in Annihilation (novel) and Stalker
Disclaimer: Includes Spoilers!!
Our environments dictate how we live and interact as individuals living within larger communities. Living within these communities helps form our identities, but they can also keep us numb as a result of pack mentality or other societal pressures. Separating ourselves from societal constraints can then enable us to fully confront our vulnerabilities. During these moments of escape we may become more aware that we are not invincible and the natural world can easily strip and consume us. Terrifying? Yes! But there is a kind of freedom granted in accepting the heavier aspects of life, including uncertainty, failure, pain, death, i.e. all matters we try to fight against or manage while living within a community. What these moments can help us realize is that as our environments change we must let go of our past selves or identities to fully adapt and form new ones. In the film Stalker and novel Annihilation, protagonists try to escape the constraints of societal living in what is essentially the pursuance of their own true realities.
In Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, three men (a writer, professor, and stalker - a navigator of sorts) enter a quarantined area called the Zone. As the men travel deeper into this region, they must confront surreal phenomena while also confronting themselves in the process. Stalker is slow and atmospheric, providing many moments of contemplation which are displayed through the men’s steady movements through the Zone. At one point within the film the stalker makes it clear that “what comes true here is that which reflects the essence of your nature.” This strange environment essentially becomes a reflection of the men’s deep-rooted fears and self-consciousness. The deeper they involve themselves, the more they are willing to accept the past and shed any preconceived notions of reality.
A similar understanding is developed within Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation; a sci-fi thriller following a biologist and four other women as they explore a strange region of land known as Area X. They are the twelfth expedition formed to investigate an expanding area where inconceivable events take place. There are rarely survivors from the previous expeditions. Those who have come back are described as shells of their previous selves and eventually die of cancer - the biologists’ husband being one of them. The story is told from the biologist’s perspective and the deeper she involves herself in Area X the more she begins to lose her connection with the outside world. We never fully understand the roles of the other women, only that the biologist is in some way different. Whether this is because she is described as solitary and exceptionally introverted, or if it’s a result of her breathing in strange organisms at one point, it’s never clear. It is evident that the biologist volunteers for the expedition as a way of trying to understand what really happened to her husband: “I was trying to reclaim remnants of the man I remembered, the one who, so unlike me, was outgoing and impetuous and always wanted to be of use” (57).
In Stalker and Annihilation the protagonists enter these restricted areas to gain knowledge or understanding. What they leave with (if they leave at all) is more terrifying. Area X and the Zone force the characters to confront themselves and their problematic pasts. It is not entirely clear what or who is controlling the Zone and Area X, only that these areas are exceptionally dangerous and result in deep introspection. In the film, the stalker continuously warns the other men of carrying out certain actions or movements to avoid traps that may result in death. In Annihilation, the only survivor of the twelfth expedition is the biologist as she allows herself to become consumed by Area X, unlike the other women who all perish.
Despite the violence that can result from exploring these areas, the stalker and the biologist each feel as if they belong in Area X and the Zone. Once the stalker has reached the Zone he declares, “here we are, home at last. It’s so still. It’s the quietest place on earth. It’s so beautiful, there’s no one here.” He takes in the atmosphere with wonder and an air of respect, while at home he feels imprisoned by duty and societal expectations. The biologist also expresses a sense of belonging: “it hardly mattered what lies I told myself because my existence back in the world had become at least as empty as Area X. With nothing left to anchor me. I needed to be here” (12). In the first few pages of the novel, VanderMeer establishes the biologist’s need to escape. This is later confirmed through her amazement of Area X’s beauty:
“I liked climbing. I also liked the ocean, and I found staring at it had a calming effect. The air was so clean, so fresh, while the world back beyond the border was what it had always been during the modern era: dirty, tired, imperfect, winding down, at war with itself. Back there, I had always felt as if my work amounted to a futile attempt to save us from who we are” (30).
The biologist’s description of the world beyond Area X is also a reflection of how she feels about her life before the expedition. Only by completely submerging herself in Area X can she escape the modern world and feel “clean,” and “fresh.” The biologist’s environment becomes a direct reflection of her truest self. She becomes inextricably tied to Area X and feels cleansed by a sense of freedom that could never be felt in “the modern era.” Both the stalker and biologist are able to easily adapt because of their need to escape society and establish new identities. Albeit, this can be accomplished only after a life-threatening test representative of acceptance and change.
At the end of Annihilation, the biologist encounters an organism or creature called the Crawler. During this interaction she is taken over by an immense, burning light while simultaneously feeling as if a “raging waterfall crashed down on [her] mind” (181). Although she recalls “it was the most agony [she] has ever been in,” she survives by accepting the Crawler’s probing (181). When the ordeal is over the biologist explains, “throat raw, my insides feeling eviscerated...apparently, I was recognizable to the Crawler now. Apparently, I was words it could understand...I felt the utter relief of having passed a gauntlet, if barely. The brightness deep within was curled up, traumatized” (182). Although it is never entirely clear what happens to her, the combination of burning light and raging water indicates a purification. The biologist has woken to a new reality: “When we wake, it is because something, some event, some pinprick even, disturbs the edges of what we’ve taken as reality” (188). The existence of Area X, and the biologists' exploration of it, give her the ability to conceive of an entirely different existence she could never have imagined otherwise.
Similar, maybe less drastic, events take place within Stalker. Each of the men must pass a sort of invisible gauntlet that forces them to face their innermost concerns. The writer, for example, wants to change the way people perceive the world through his work. Instead he admits that his readers change him “to fit their own image,” and becomes lost within his own writing. By the same token, the professor calls and confronts a man that slept with his wife, while the stalker admits to being a terrible father and husband. These acts of acceptance may at first seem trivial, but each of the men speak with agony and have been tormented by their pasts. By accepting their circumstances, the men survive the erratic environment. Ultimately, Area X and the Zone allow the characters to shed societal expectations that lead to the re-creation of their identities. The surreal environments additionally create a space for introspection, enabling the nameless characters to move forward and embrace the future, no matter how painful.
“I felt in that moment as if it were all a dream -- the training, my former life, the world I had left behind. None of that mattered anymore. Only this place mattered, only this moment” (75).
VanderMeer, J. (2014). Annihilation. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.