60 pages • 2 hours read
Naomi AldermanThe Future
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
AUGR
AUGR is the name assigned to the software program that Martha employs to convince the CEOs to buy into the apocalypse: “The name could be both an augur (a prophet) and an augur (a tool) that drills down” (180). Thus, the name signifies that the software could predict the future and get down to the bare facts of the matter, whisking the CEOs to safety before the apocalypse becomes threatening to them or their livelihoods. Ironically, however, as Martha later reveals to Zhen, the software itself does not work as promised; it functions like any other navigational software, or primitive AI, in that it can investigate the possibilities and provide options. It does not know the future. As such, it symbolizes the concept of the future that unfolds in the novel: a highly combustible and completely unpredictable phenomenon.
AUGR is not the only reference to prophecy in the book; prophets, mostly fraudulent or failed, abound. Enoch, also known as Ralph Zimmerman, claims to be a prophet who predicts the end of the modern, technology-dependent world. His ideas still fuel Martha’s beliefs, though she has rejected his authoritarian style. There is also Zhen’s fascination with, and study of, the Temple of Orpheus in London. Orpheus is himself “an augur—someone who taught humanity the arts of medicine, writing, and agriculture—trying to rescue just one person” (77). As the story reveals, alas, he fails to save his beloved Eurydice. This echoes Martha’s self-appointed mission throughout the novel, as she constantly asks the question of how many good people must exist in order to justify the saving of the world. The Temple itself is a monument of beauty and a testament to the power of culture, as Zhen sees it: “She’d loved the grandeur of it, the romance, of course, something saved from the deep past” (80). Without the past, there is no promise of a future.
The Fox and the Rabbit
Enoch preaches about the difference between the fox and the rabbit, a sermon that is reproduced on the Name The Day survivalist forum almost verbatim, and a motif that runs throughout the novel. Fox relishes the unknown and sustains his existence via hunting and gathering, wandering the wilderness in search of resources. Rabbit, on the other hand, needs certainty and lives in fear: “He feared the unknowable future” (261). Rather than accepting the unknown, Rabbit constructs a world of artifice and symbols, of cities and stores of goods, where he creates new gods who reflect his own qualities—believing that he is now protected. The two opposing characters have been known by many names throughout history: Odysseus the wanderer versus Hector the defender of his city; Enkidu and Gilgamesh; Abraham and Lot. Rabbit’s desire for certainty ultimately leads to corruption and the worship of the wrong idols. The implication in the sermon is that the modern world is built on the illusion of a knowable future; its destructive tendencies, and adoration of technology, will bring its inevitable fall. This is partly why Martha can sell the apocalypse so convincingly to Lenk and his fellow CEOs: They believe in the inherent corruption of their companies, and thus the world, and therefore the unavoidable apocalypse.
The story resonates in other ways, as well. For example, Martha first impresses Lenk with her skills at butchering rabbits—a highly symbolic act, given that her father is Enoch. Though Martha leaves the Enochites behind and begins a new life that is awash in all the accouterment against which Enoch preaches, she has never quite left the ideologies behind. As she stands in the well-appointed kitchen of another wealthy technology mogul, butchering rabbits, she thinks “[t]hat she had never left Enoch at all and all her life since then had been a dream” (137). This remnant of her past, the belief that rabbits are easy prey and that foxes better survive informs her decisions to disrupt the empires of Lenk and the others. She believes that she knows a better way.
It is also notable that the cover art for the first hardcover edition of the book depicts a golden fox superimposed over a silver rabbit. This can be read as a visual symbol of the fox’s triumph over the rabbit; however, given the book’s ambivalence about the notion of victory—there is none—it is more appropriately seen as the signifier of the endless struggle between the two visions of how to live best.
The Story of Lot
Another motif that courses through the novel is the story of Lot and his tribulations. Martha, posting as OneCorn, deliberates on the story in great detail, questioning whether Lot was actually a good man. He is saved from the wicked city of Sodom, but only after he has offered up his daughters to the invading mob. Later, he engages in intercourse with both of his daughters; they have gotten him drunk first, but OneCorn suggests that Lot was aware of his actions. She also argues that Lot’s wife is lost to him because she has lost faith in him. As they flee the city, she looks back, because she can no longer trust her husband. After all, he has offered the bodies of her children to rapacious men.
This complicates the underlying concern over whether the world deserves saving, and if there are any humans worthy of saving. Lot is juxtaposed against Abraham, a wanderer like Fox, who argues against God’s plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah wholesale, eliminating the good people alongside the bad. As OneCorn puts it, “Abraham was arguing against collective punishment” (24). This, in turn, serves as her justification for removing what she sees as the bad elements of society—the greedy and unethical CEOs—rather than wiping out civilization altogether.
There are resonances of this story with regard to punishment throughout the book. When Zhen neutralizes her Enochite assailant at Seasons Time Mall, she turns her into a pillar of (paramagnetic) salt, implicitly suggesting the corruption of the Enochites. Martha suggests that the mysterious women painted on the ceiling at the Temple of Orpheus may be Lot’s daughters, in a syncretistic melding of ancient mythology with the Christian religion; as Orpheus failed by looking back, so too did Lot and his wife fail his daughters at Sodom. Martha, too, identifies with this failing, and stoutly resists it: “She didn’t look back” (158), she notes of her break with Enoch and his followers. She will not make the mistake that haunts the myth of Orpheus or the tale of Lot. Zhen later acknowledges that Lot’s story is ultimately sad—“but it’s better than what happened to the people in Sodom” (254). Thus, Zhen decides to get in the car and be transported to the deserted island, rather than staying behind in “Sodom.” She will play her part in bringing about a better future, with Martha.
