While State of Wonder focuses largely on the personal journey of its protagonists, the novel is loaded with ethical questions that are up for discussion, most of which remain unanswered.
• Fertility, the process by which a woman is able to conceive a child, results in the creation of a new being that was not there before. Throughout history, the issue of fertility was one of physical nature and of prayer to a variety of fertility gods and goddesses. Medical intervention is a modern phenomenon.
• Patchett considers birth and rebirth as the outcome of transformations from one state to another: fetus to child, life to death and vice-versa, the change from one psychological position to another, and so she includes a number of rebirth/transformations in the novel.
• Marina Singh’s life is transformed with her journey to Brazil.
• Anders Eckman, believed dead, is rescued from the Hummocca tribe and returned to his family.
• Easter, whose Christian name symbolizes resurrection or rebirth, is saved as a young boy by Dr. Swenson and gets a new life in the Lakashi village. In the end, he is reunited with his birth parents.
• Patchett takes the idea of fertility and explores how it might be transformed into ever-lasting fertility with the development of a drug that allows women to give birth into old age, in place of the traditionally short reproductive window. With fairly recent advances in reproductive technology, more women than ever are pushing the boundary timelines of motherhood. Suddenly there is a new reality — a new vista to consider or wonder about.
How do you feel about the idea of perpetual fertility? Is it a good or bad thing? Could perpetual fertility (Lakashi-style) work in North American or European society?
Most of the ethical questions raised in the novel cannot be answered because we are in the middle of the story right now. What feels like science fiction is not. Like the borders of the jungle, the boundaries of science and medicine are being pushed at an astonishing speed beyond the frontiers of our imagination. Like Marina, we are thrown out of our comfort zone.
Here are some of the many issues that Patchett raises:
• Current scientific advances are allowing more women to bear children late in life. In building State of Wonder around a miracle fertility drug, Patchett escalates the ethical debate. She makes points about the sociological impact of older mothers who may not be around long enough to raise a child, she considers the health risks for both mother and child, and she wonders about the morality of the medical community and pharmaceutical companies getting rich by fuelling the dreams of late-life motherhood.
• Moral issues around medical testing are also raised. Without informed consent, the Lakashi people serve as guinea pigs in the drug research of Dr. Swenson and the other doctors in the native village. Alan Saturn admits to giving the Lakashi men Cokes as payment for infecting them with malaria. “If they get sick for a couple of days in the name of developing a drug that could protect the entire tribe, the entire world, then I say so be it.” (p.294)
Legitimate science is not allowed to test indiscriminately on humans, especially not without consent. But do we believe that this does not and will not go on? Do the ends ever justify the means? Are there any parallels here to the horrific medical experimentation under the Nazi regime?
• With the accidental discovery that women who chew the bark of the Populus trees are protected from malaria, Patchett pits the goal of extending the fertility of women against the possibility of eradicating the scourge of malaria. What was a secondary focus of Swenson’s scientific research, is now her primary focus. But success depends on time and money.
Will Vogel — or any other pharmaceutical company — give up the easy profits of a fertility drug for a not-so-lucrative investment into developing a drug for what is primarily a third-world disease?
• Patchett illustrates how science and medicine sit on the tip of another underworld — the space between the present and the future, or under the as-yet closed lid of Pandora’s Box. Without careful consideration, there is the danger of human existence being lost, or given away, forever.
What is the driving force behind scientific advancements — altruism? Curiosity? Human greed? Has this always been so or does it feel more dangerous now than at any other time in history?
Consider whether or not moral and ethical responsibility can co-exist comfortably with scientific, medical, and economic advancement.
As in real life, the characters make questionable moral choices.
• After Easter was brought to her as a very sick child, Dr. Swenson tells the tribesmen who later return for him that the boy died. She then parents Easter for the next eight years, and considers him her child.
• Dr. Swenson is also less than truthful with her employer, who believes she is working on the development of a fertility drug. She deliberately withholds information about her efforts relating to the malaria vaccine.
• Although she doesn’t know what happened to the missing Anders, Dr. Swenson reports his death and thwarts the efforts of Marina to find out what really happened to him. According to Swenson, “No one tells the truth to people they don’t actually know, and if they do it is a horrible trait. Everyone wants something smaller, something neater than the truth.” (p.345)
• Dr. Swenson was the long-time mistress of the married Dr. Rapp and, with his students, accompanied him on his research journeys.
• Marina and Jim Fox are guarded about their personal relationship, keeping it a secret. Marina knows that the relationship is likely to be over once Mr. Fox learns that she lied to him about the malaria vaccine and the non-existent fertility drug.
• Marina and Anders share an intimate night together before departing home to Minnesota — a night they promise to never speak of again.
• Marina faces her biggest moral dilemma when she makes a choice to sacrifice one person for another. She extricates Anders from the Hummocca by leaving Easter behind.
• The Bovenders also have traded a piece of their souls by telling no end of lies in the service of Dr. Swenson. Also, Barbara admits that while she and Jackie hate Brazil and long to return to Australia, “The thing is, we’ll never find a gig as easy as this one any place in the world.” (p.319)
Are there other lies and betrayals? Can they be justified? Is Annick correct when she surmises that no one wants to know the truth?
Can (and should) personal ethics align with scientific, environmental and economic ethics? If so, would business decisions be made easier or more difficult? Discuss the alternatives.
• Intervention in the natural order of events is a theme at the very heart of State of Wonder. Again, the isolated jungle setting is perfect for outlining the effects of both negative and positive intervention. In addition, intervention lies at the base of world progress in every area: science, medicine, economics, sociology, and more.
Consider the idea of intervention as Patchett outlines it. Does her view differ from or complement your personal perception of the topic?
• Dr. Swenson fears a global catastrophe waiting to happen to the Lakashi on the day her malaria drug is developed and publicized. In addition, Anders warns Maria not to give the Martins to the Hummocca because they too would destroy the Lakashi. Devastation is not something that only comes from the outside.
• Patchett makes the point that much has changed in the jungle already. Annick talks nostalgically about her days with Dr. Rapp when the Lakashi had more traditional skills and when land was not burned for clear-cutting purposes.
“Things were very different then. You didn’t turn a corner and find a square mile of forest burned into a field. You didn’t see the constant smoke the way you do now. And the Lakashi, even they’re different. They lose their skills as fast as the basin loses forest. They used to make their own ropes, they wove cloth. Now even they manage to buy things.” (p.168)
• Following the approach of Dr. Rapp, Swenson tells Marina that one should respect indigenous people by accepting the natural order of things and not interfering in their lives. Her greatest mistake, she says, was sewing up the wound of a young girl hit with a machete, resulting in a stream of sick and wounded seeking her care. But amongst them was Easter, whose life Swenson changed in many ways.
• Dr. Swenson tries to keep her location secret from Vogel, saying that she wants to protect the Lakashi and their environment from outside interlopers, but the question remains as to whether it is the Lakashi people or her work she wishes to protect. There is some irony in the fact that if the scientists are successful in developing a successful vaccine for malaria, it would likely mark the end of the Lakashi and their way of life.
• Dr. Swenson fails to shoulder any of the blame for her and Dr. Rapp’s intrusion into the Lakashi habitat. Swenson calls on Marina to perform an emergency cesarean on a Lakashi woman under very crude conditions, although perhaps this has as much to do with preparing Marina to deliver the child that she herself is carrying.
• State of Wonder makes the point that Western society can be guilty of seeing everything from within their own frame of reference. Worried about Easter’s injuries after being squeezed by the snake, Marina wishes they were home so she could take the boy for a CT scan. Dr. Swenson points out that if Easter was in the States, he could more likely be hit by an SUV and that his chances are better in the jungle because “This is where he understands things, he knows how to get along.” (p.245)
• Swenson also points out that Dr. Eckman had thoughts of taking Easter home to get him fitted with a cochlear implant. But Dr. Swenson wisely notes, “you can’t change people like that. You can’t make a hearing boy out of a deaf boy, and you can’t turn everyone you meet into an American. Easter isn’t a souvenir anyway, a little something you pocket on your way out to remind you of your time in South America.” (p.245)
Are the various thoughts listed above contradictory? If so, are the contradictions related to perspective? Do North Americans and Europeans have a different perception of intervention than anyone else, or is it simply a human trait to believe in the rightness of one’s personal viewpoint?
Relationships based on love abound throughout the novel. There are love pairings (Marina/Mr. Fox, Annick/Martin Rapp), husbands and wives (The Eckmans, The Bovenders), and parents and children. Love is usually paired with feelings of loyalty, while the loss of love can be connected to misplacement and/or betrayal. Sadly, there are many examples in this novel.
• While in residency at Johns Hopkins, Marina got married, thinking “love would prevail and when it didn’t, she had lost not only her marriage but her ingenuous self.” (p.54) Now, when she has hopes for a romantic proposal from Mr. Fox, he sends her instead on assignment to the Amazon. Their tentative and unfulfilled relationship slowly unravels as her journey progresses. Perhaps when Jim Fox learns of her betrayal to Vogel, their relationship will end, once and for all.
• Anders is lost in death, but with her strong love for her husband, Karen Eckman refuses to believe that he is no longer alive and counts on Marina to bring him home to his family. Karen may never know how Marina and Anders inadvertently betray her trust with their very brief expression of a different kind of love.
• After nursing a feverish, young Hummocca boy back to health, Dr. Swenson comes to love him desperately. She is devastated when Easter, lost in the effort to gain Anders’ freedom, is returned to his birth parents. Both Marina and Anders have harbored thoughts of taking Easter home with them to Minnesota, but he is now irretrievable.
• Marina’s love for and loss of her father, who moved back to India following her parents’ divorce, still haunts her. In her malarial dreams, she is constantly losing grip on her father’s hand. Barbara Bovender believes she sees her dead father on a jungle shore, whereas she really sees Anders. Love lost can create emotional distortions of all kinds. Allencompassing love can still be squandered or misplaced.
• In quoting Dr. Rapp, Annick cautions: “Never be so focused on the thing you are looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.” (p.246) Although Dr. Rapp was likely referring to research, the idea pertains just as easily to relationships, especially in love. Love can be idealized to an unwise extent, whether it is for another person or all humankind, culture, and tradition, or the physical world and its environment. Love is filled with good intentions that can turn easily into betrayal. (see L’Orfeo and Amazon Teatro, p.12)
• Trust is at the heart of the Orfeo ed Euridice opera, a story about the power of love and its ability to bridge the gap between life and death. Orfeo loves and loses Euridice twice. In order to take Euridice out of the underworld, Orfeo has to overcome a number of obstacles. He is tangibly close to the real world when Euridice started to doubt his love. She thinks his refusal to look at her represents the loss of his love. In fact, that was his last challenge — to bring her to the surface without glancing back over his shoulder. She will simply have to trust him, but he can’t tell her that. When Orfeo weakens and turns to Euridice, she dies once more. But, impressed by the strength of his devotion, the goddess Amore restores Euridice to Orfeo. The message is that the act of pure love is hopefully stronger than the bonds of death.
• Paralleling the story of Orfeo and Euridice is that of Marina and Anders, with Anders being lost to the underworld of the jungle and Marina setting out to rescue him. But she can save him only through sacrifice. In order to be successful, she must not look back at Easter, and so she closes her eyes and lets him go.
• There are other parallels of trust in the novel, many of them concepts of blind trust that easily turn into betrayal:
o Jim Fox and Vogel must trust Dr. Swenson.
o Annick and Alan Saturn trusted Martin Rapp enough to follow him into the jungle.
o Karen never doubts that Anders is alive and trusts Marina to bring him home.
o Marina has to trust Barbara Bovender’s gift of shaman medicine.
o The Bovenders trust each other (despite their obvious differences).
o Marina has to trust the Lakashi and they, in turn, trust her.
o Easter trusts everyone.
o Marina and Anders trust each other with their promise to never speak of their night together.
o Marina learns to trust herself again. Unfortunately, in the journey from there to here, she loses her trust in Mr. Fox.
Has Patchett put more emphasis on loss and betrayal than on love and trust? If so, why? What is the connection of these ideas to her themes of research and progress?