Samantha Ehle Week 2: A Sea of Grey Apathy
“2042. It’s a year that every schoolchild knows. It was the year where computational power became infinite—or so it was so close to infinite that it could no longer be measured. It was the year we knew… everything.” - Scythe H.S. Curie, Scythe.
In a world where “in the grand scheme of things, everyone was equally useless,” as narrated by protagonist Citra Terranova, what would the point of living be?
Neil Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe has society progressed to no more innovation. Technology and knowledge have reached its penultimate state. If people aren’t killed by the government organization called Scythes, they get revived through advanced technology.
Most people live average lives, growing up to have a boring job and marry an average person. Citra herself, before being inducted into the Scythedom via a chance encounter, assumed she would live such a life.
The issue from this world is that emotions cannot reach the same lows and highs that existed previously, part due to the lack of risk and pain of the erased death and disease; however everyone has healing nanites preventing sickness and intense emotions like depression.
In a museum visit, co-protagonist Rowan Damisch notes that post-mortal paintings lack a vibrancy and life that mortal-age paintings did. The disparity becomes “in some ways unsettling, but compelling as well.” Scythe admits that the lack of excitement in life erases the fundamental depths of emotions prized amongst humanity; removing intense lows in emotion removes intense highs.
Such nonexistence comes at more of a price than first thought. Maybe they still feel some things. Still, no matter how hated, deep emotional responses are integral to people’s identity. Would I be the same person if my deep frustrations about myself and my work just disappear? Would I be the same if I lost my random influxes of dopamine?
Some characters seek a pseudo-emotional high through high-adrenaline circumstances from unnecessary fear responses. Side character Tyger Salazar partakes in the morbid hobby of splatting, in which he hurls off the top of buildings; in his introductory chapter, he seeks to achieve “A new record!” and immediately asks Rowan, “Did I crack [the ground I landed on]? Did they have to replace the marble?”
Even these terror-filled descents fail to compensate for deadened emotions: Tyger’s chance to actually impact the world by potentially becoming a Scythe is something from a “gift horse” and creates “both heady and chilling” of knowing “the nature of his destiny!”
Without our palettes of emotion, we lack the materials to enjoy our world that shape who we are. If we experience an artificially dampened world, who is to say the person going through life is really us, rather than a mind-controlled facsimile going through the motions?
Perhaps we lose the sanctity of who we are, but nonetheless we can find something to live for from what we have. Emotions are fundamentally important, but they are not the sole factor determining our identity and meaning of life.
Hello Samantha! I loved your review of the book and your take on the importance of emotion and passion in our lives. Your questions sprinkled throughout the blog were spread out perfectly, constantly keeping me pondering on the deeper connection between emotion and identity you explored. Although, I disagree that you can still find something to live for without emotion. Without emotions guiding what you find happiness in, how can you find it in anything you do? Humans are emotional creatures, many of, if not all of our opinions are formed around objectivity entangled with our feelings. These are the same opinions that form our self-identity and who we are as people. I agree that we lose the ability to reap the rewards of the world around us, and that we end up becoming a walking husk, one shaped by some entity above us. Honestly, we may already be living in this dystopian world, as control over those random influxes of dopamine that shape you and many of us is already lost to big corporations in our capitalistic society.
ReplyDeleteHi Samantha! Arc of a Scythe sounds like such an awesome book, and I really enjoyed reading your takes on it!
ReplyDeleteIt’s wild to think about how a world with zero disease and no death sounds like absolute paradise on paper, but actually turns out to be the complete opposite. People, or human beings, are quite literally created for high stakes, so removing all the risks makes it reasonable for those characters to literally throw themselves off buildings just to feel a hit of adrenaline or, perhaps even a sense of truly feeling alive. I agree with the fact that removing the worst lows of emotion also robs one of the highs. I think without the possibility of failure you cannot truly appreciate what it feels like to win.
Samantha, I truly appreciate your point here that while emotions should not be a dominant part of our world, they should certainly be an important one. Pathos is included as an equal rhetorical appeal for a reason, and I sincerely believe that it is a large part of what we should be living for. Also, your point that trials are necessary for growth and satisfaction is also very real. Thank you for being willing to break the mold with your point, and I hope that you can remember that even if most people are contented to live average lives, some of us are trying to be different.
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