Managing Constraint, Not Eliminating It

In Clay’s Ark, Butler once again grapples with the ways that motivation, circumstances, personality, and purpose can change how certain actions get viewed. By any logical standard, kidnapping people and infecting them with an alien virus is ethically dubious, and yet the novel encourages us to empathize with Eli and his clan as people trying to do right—to resist the biological imperative to become like the “car families” or bike gangs and fully give in to a hedonistic lifestyle.

The virus impels humans toward full hedonism, pushing them to abandon thought and ethics entirely and become fully animal. And the truth is that we are animals, with animal impulses. Our ability to manage and negotiate with them is an important part of what makes us “evolved” lifeforms. The novel calls this into question, though, since it’s an “alien” virus—potentially a higher form of life, given its ability to strengthen human bodies—that drives people even further into those animal impulses.

Eli has a messianic quality to him. The virus functions as a kind of belief system that is biologically imposed, and much of the plot revolves around a process of indoctrination through exposure. Religion seems important here—the “god fearing” aspect of people living in an antiquated time of supposed higher morals is part of the framing device, suggesting religious forces can act as a restraint on humanity’s worst impulses. But Butler may also be alive in the contradiction: after all, most of the god-fearing men are killed by the virus, leaving Eli alone with what amounts to a harem.

I’ve barely started Patternmaster, but I’m curious how this dynamic of the more animal and individualist world of infected people (remembering that the virus actually adapts to each host) and their quasi-alien offspring will be shown against the communitarian world of the Patternists. What will be at the heart of that conflict?

The Failure of Sheltered Control

The brutal closing section of the novel feels like an important reminder of the context of the world it takes place in. It’s very explicit and provides horrifying details of the realities that people are exposed to in the “sewers” of the contemporary world. This provides an interesting contrast to the comparably “wholesome” world of Eli and the family ranch/farm—though the “Past” narrative inevitably reveals the brutality of their project as well, with a scene in which one of the people they kidnap kills themselves.

I imagine that, in part, this section is meant to expose us to the sheltered, privileged thinking of all the characters—the kind that leads to extreme arrogance in believing they can have control, that the chaos and entropy of the world will not inevitably break through that sense of control.

Keira, who suffers from a form of leukemia that contemporary cures prove ineffectual against, understands from the outset the casual cruelty of life and how it will reach for anyone, regardless of status. The virus effectively saves her life, meaning for her it’s an opportunity rather than a curse or a limitation. Keira also finds the mutated children beautiful and immediately gets along with them—something that ultimately saves her from the car family. The lesson here seems to be that those who face marginalization or oppression, including those facing disabilities, are more open and accepting of difference, less quick to judge those experiencing challenges.

It’s also relevant that Keira is the only “outsider” in the novel to survive to the end. There might be a suggestion here that acceptance of change, the ability to see people clearly who live outside societal norms, and to empathize with a morally grey world may be something that comes more naturally to people outside the bubble of high degrees of privilege—and that this allows them to survive better during apocalyptic scenarios.