51 pages • 1 hour read
Jeff VanderMeerA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Area X itself serves as a symbol of the uncontrollable and unknowable. The pristine wilderness is filled with strange fungi, mutated plants, and doppelgangers of DNA that enter it (most notably human clones). Though the whole area is symbolic, the border and the Tower represent specific ideas of separation and transition.
The glistening border marks the boundary between the known and unknown, between reality and the mysterious. When Control visits the border, its eeriness is palpable: “swirled a scintillating, questing white light, a light that fizzed and flickered and seemed always on the point of being snuffed out but never was” (135). From the expedition reports, the border takes three to ten hours to pass through and can feel like going underwater, seeing constellations from far and near, or like a vast, expanding plain, proving the border does not give the same experience to everyone. Like the others, Control is struck by the bizarre border, how it works, and why it offers a door for entrance. Area X seems to welcome people inside, transitioning them from one world to the next, but also separates them from fully understanding it. Because the idea of borders is symbolic of the transition, separation, and the unknowable, the word “border” is repeated 123 times in the novel.
Likewise, the Tower is a key geographical landmark in Area X that represents the core of the unknowable. Since the Crawler (once Saul the lighthouse keeper) lives in the Tower and writes the sermon words in plant material with the cosmic “brightness” that created Area X, this underground space can be seen as the original creation location. Further, since it is underground, the Tower’s construction itself represents digging deeper to understand the unknowable. Inside the Tower lives the cosmic horror of whatever alien or otherworldly phenomenon started Area X. This is also the spot where in the first book the biologist inhaled Area X’s “brightness” spores that gave her special powers. Through the Tower’s spores, Area X can expand and spread, making it symbolic of transition too, as it grows and shifts into both infecting and mimicking more DNA.
Lastly, the lighthouse is a significant, repeated symbol of the unknowable and the “brightness.” Similar to the Tower, the lighthouse draws the characters’ attention and curiosity. It is a focal point on all the maps of Area X. Characters like Cynthia become obsessed with it, and people like Control wonder why it draws so much attention. Because the lighthouse offers literal brightness for its function, it also reflects the brightness spores of Area X attaching to any DNA within its borders. Though many characters have hiked to the lighthouse and found plenty of journals, they do not find answers. They cannot understand how Area X is making clones or why they’ve searched out the lighthouse. Overall, these three parts of Area X highlight the novel’s themes of transformation, uncertainty, and the desire to cross boundaries to learn the truth.
The Southern Reach is a symbol of bureaucracy, power, secrecy, control, and manipulation. Since the entire organization is built on bureaucratic processes, when Control makes even a minor change, such as when he does not tell Grace he’s interviewing the biologist at the correct time to exclude her, he opens himself up to rebuke. The hierarchy of the government-run organization centers the power in Central, then works its way down to the factions and employees. The entire system is based on control, having the employees conform to their rules and not worry about anything that is “classified.” Some employees, such as the linguist, cannot even enter the Area X sample room with Control, Whitby, and Grace because she does not have clearance. Many secrets are kept from those in the lower ranks.
For the majority of the book, Control is left with many more questions than answers, and the setting shows this secrecy, control, and manipulation well. For instance, he only discovers some clues on his own, including Cynthia’s writing of the Tower words on the office wall. He is manipulated by The Voice from Central to the point of being hypnotized since he does not have the power to stop Central. Ironically, Control is under the Southern Reach’s control and manipulated into undertaking specific tasks such as asking the biologist certain questions and searching through Grace’s office. The labyrinthine facility is also laid out in a strange manner that fits these symbols of secrecy and control since the oppressive, old building with its many confusing twists and turns highlights the characters’ growing sense of entrapment and unease. Increasingly, Control starts to feel like he is losing his independence at the Southern Reach and is instead a puppet. Ghost Bird feels similarly, as she is trapped in a cell and cannot stand to be imprisoned by and controlled by the Southern Reach any longer.
Rabbits carry several possible symbolic meanings in Authority, including fragility and sacrifice, uncertainty and ambiguity, and transformation. Since rabbits are fragile, docile creatures who are vulnerable to predators, they represent the frailty of humans against the unknown, potentially destructive forces of Area X. In the rabbit experiment conducted before Control’s arrival, hundreds of rabbits were sent into Area X to “overload” the environment, but they never came back. The innocent rabbits were sacrificed in an attempt to change Area X, but the animals were changed instead. Their sacrifice is symbolic of the characters’ hope that something can survive in Area X too: They were “hoping that everything would be all right, that they would come home, that those white rabbits hadn’t just evaporated into their constituent atoms, possibly returned to their most primeval state in agonizing pain” (62). Only a few rabbits survived by avoiding crossing the border into Area X, showing the powerlessness the rabbits—and all those confronted by Area X—have against this abnormal environment. Similarly, Area X has mutated, killed, or infected hundreds of expeditioners who were sent through its borders.
Rabbits also represent uncertainty in the novel, since they are used first as a means of experimentation, and then become a memento of the failure of that experiment to yield any answers. The human explorers never report seeing rabbits inside Area X. Since rabbits normally reproduce quickly, they should have invaded the wilderness, but the creatures are mysteriously gone. Their disappearance shows the disorientation and uncertainty Area X generates, which reflects the way characters like Control are trying to make sense of Area X but find themselves psychologically unraveling as all their explanatory paradigms fail.
The rabbits’ fate, like Area X itself, is ambiguous. They may have transformed into other forms inside Area X; they may have died; they may have met some other fate. Interestingly, Whitby also paints Control as a white rabbit in his secretive shrine/living quarters. This painting is not a coincidence, since Control transforms into a white rabbit in the third book. Transforming into a rabbit gives him the pure, uncorrupted freedom and ability to let go of control that he has always needed.