Shape is a thread that runs through this book, the shape of this power, how it spreads, how it sprawls, how it breeds. The idea that it grows, bigger and wider, makes it both a living character in the book, but also roots it to the natural world with all the impulses of the natural world to survive. And the shape is often, perhaps always, described in natural ways, such as a tree with branches or a body of water with tributaries.
Early in the book, Margot recalls the winged ants near the lake that would wait all of their lives underground until the environment was right for them to spring forward from their solitude to find one another, and, most likely, mate. This impulse to survive, to be what one is, to both create and destroy - this is nature. The nature we, as humans, like to pretend we can disassociate from as we cling to our constructs as though they are laws, constructs like the overestimated belief that every action we take is rooted in free will and rational choice.
The concept of choice is the problem, the voice tries to explain to Allie. Categorizing binaries such as evil and holy, good and bad, powerful and powerless – this is the problem. The problem is that the empathy and compassion that powerlessness blooms may not be born without oppression. The problem is that love finds its shape when surrounded by indifference. The problem is that creation requires destruction. The problem is that we think we can fight one thing without fighting all things or embrace some violence without it taking over. The problem is we think we are more powerful than we really are. We think we are anything more than the winged ants, waiting for their day when, for reasons they cannot possibly understand, they change everything and fly up from the ground using a power they didn’t know they possessed.
A depressing, distressing book that is probably right, but I’ll likely stay here, underground, hugging my creations, hoping for a love that exists without indifference, believing in a power that exists without violence, and pretending to live a life somehow untethered to death.
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