Galapagos

“It was expected by them that, because of his inbred parentage, he would become a moral monster.”

Wait’s heritage explores the theme of Nature Versus Nurture. Wait is the product of an inbred parentage, something that Wait’s world culturally abhors. He’s treated like the product of inbreeding and told that on a genetic level this makes him more prone to criminality and immorality. Wait may have had the capacity to be a good person, but his entire life has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which he has become a criminal because everyone has treated him like a criminal from his earliest years.

“This financial crisis, which could never happen today, was simply the latest in a series of murderous twentieth century catastrophes which had originated entirely in human brains.”

The financial crisis that brings about the collapse of global society is the product of humans’ big brain. To Leon, these big brains are a curse. Humans have the capacity to think up something as intricately complex as the global financial system but, in doing so, are inventing the tools of their own demise. Intelligence is a curse in this respect, providing humans with only a greater capacity to bring about misery.

“It’s the part of you that knows when your brain isn’t working right.”

Roy Hepburn regards the difference between humanity and animals to be the self-awareness that derives from the big brain. Roy’s big brain is aware that he’s not thinking right. He’s clever and self-aware enough to recognize his declining health but not intelligent enough to fix or resolve the issue. Humanity, at the time of its demise, is intelligent enough to be aware of its own limitations but not intelligent enough to fix them.

“He was unmarried and had never reproduced, and so was insignificant from an evolutionary point of view.”

To Leon, a human life seems fleetingly irrelevant. He has been a ghost for more than a million years, so he can view the last remnants of humanity only as products of their genetic heritage. Someone who didn’t reproduce becomes irrelevant to him because on a million-year timeline that person is a mere blip. Leon’s is an evolutionary point of view because he’s an objective, outside surveyor of evolution.

“The underling who taught Mandarax ikebana had simply taken a tape recover to Hisako’s famous ikebana class, and then boiled things down.”

Mandarax isn’t actually intelligent. The device can regurgitate streams of information (often incorrectly), but it can also trick humans into mistaking this regurgitation for intelligence. The machine repeats Hisako’s lesson back to her in a reduced, simplified version, indicating that it has nothing to teach her that she doesn’t already know.

“And the people would eat up all the food, gobble, gobble, yum, yum, and it would become nothing but excrement and memories.”

The story of Galapagos involves a global financial collapse. With the benefit of a million years of hindsight, Leon recognizes the absurdity of abstract, brittle financial systems. When the system collapses, people can’t eat money. What they can eat becomes nothing more than “excrement and memories.” The impermanence of any real form of wealth in a time of crisis illustrates the hollow nature of the financial system, demonstrating how it’s a social construct that has power only because humans invest it with power.

“If Selena was Nature’s experiment with blindness, then her father was Nature’s experiment with heartlessness.”

The Nature Versus Nurture theme that appears throughout the novel is a way of absolving humanity’s guilt. If Andrew’s nothing more than “Nature’s experiment with heartlessness,” he can’t be held responsible for his immoral actions. If this is true, then he has evolved over millions of years to do exactly as nature intended. In this framing of the argument, nature is a self-aware force that guides evolution along paths of experimentation, thereby relieving humanity of guilt and responsibility.

“The Law of Natural Selection has made human beings absolutely honest in that regard.”

The Law of Natural Selection, as Leon describes it, links to abstract human ideas such as honesty. To the humans of a million years later, honesty is irrelevant. They won’t have the mental capacity to lie, let alone to revere honesty as a concept. They’re honest by default because they can’t be anything else. Leon sees this as an advantage, in which humans evolve beyond the need for honesty.

“My guess is that there aren’t any real Kanka-bonos anywhere.”

The Ecuadorian elite dismisses the Kanka-bonos as a myth, a poetic device to revere and discuss when selling vacation packages to tourists. The irony of the ambassador’s statement is that the Kanka-bono eventually become the dominant culture on the planet. The idea of a “real” Kanka-bono becomes irrelevant when nothing other than Kanka-bono genetics, language, and culture exists following the extinction of most of humanity.

“Everything will turn out for the best somehow.”

Adolf’s approach to the collapse of civilization is to completely surrender any responsibility or agency. As he watches his boat get stripped of food and parts, he assumes that everything will “turn out for the best somehow.” Leon presents this as a problem of the big-brained humans, who are smart enough to recognize their problems and smart enough to create problems but not smart enough to solve them.

“Anyone who has liquid wealth, whether he deserved it or not, could have anything he wanted.”

Humans’ liquid wealth has no real meaning to people who can’t eat. The common people of Ecuador recognize this absurdity, as they have nothing while the passengers on the cruise have everything. As society collapses, abstract social constructs like liquid wealth begin to seem meaningless to desperate people.

“Nobody today is nearly smart enough to make the sorts of weapons even the poorest nations had a million years ago.”

The future humans lack the capacity to invent or develop complex weapons. However, Leon presents this lack of technology as an inherently advantageous development. Because the evolved humans lack weapons, they can’t kill each other in massive numbers. They may seem less intelligent, but to Leon, these humans lack the capacity for evil and misery that so obsessed the humans of a million years earlier.

“Everybody alive today should thank God that this soldier was insane.”

Geraldo Delgado is, according to Leon, “insane.” Given the complexity of the social collapse in which he’s operating, however, the nature of sanity is questionable. The entire planet is losing its collective mind as everything that humans have built has fallen apart. Delgado may seem mentally ill in the moment, but he merely encapsulates society’s mood at the time.

“Dare I add this: “In the nick of time?”“

The collapse of humanity comes, in Leon’s opinion, just in time. Beyond this point, humanity may not have evolved into exactly what it becomes in a million years. Leon has seen everything, and he documents the development. To him, the evolution of humans into semi-intelligent, semiaquatic mammals is progress. This progress might not have been possible without the collapse, so he views the collapse as a timely necessity.

“Now, just because they hadn’t wanted to be boiled alive anymore, they had to support symphony orchestras, and on and on.”

Leon speculates what might happen if lobsters became the dominant species on the planet. In his vision of this future, he imagines the lobsters implementing the same culture as humanity. Leon’s vision posits human culture—such as symphony orchestras—as an inevitability. Any suitably intelligent culture, he suggests, will develop along the same pathways and reach the same conclusions. Nothing about humanity is unique in this respect.

“I’m not in control of my own actions anymore.”

Siegfried tells his brother that the genetic disease they both feared has taken over his body. He’s no longer in control of his actions. In Leon’s narration, however, a person’s genetic history predisposes them to certain attitudes and actions. Really, all humans are prisoners of their genetics and merely acting out the course that their genetics have already determined.

“He was little more than a fibrillating heart.”

After his heart attack, Wait is reduced to “little more than a fibrillating heart.” He becomes his medical condition, abandoning the planning and immorality that defined his life to this point. However, although he’s nothing more than a feebly beating heart, he ironically mistakes this deadly medical condition for love, just as his victims mistook his criminal intentions for affection.

“Wait believed her last name to be Kaplan, too, no matter how often she corrected him.”

As the ship sails away from the Ecuadorian mainland, Mary and Wait are still mistaken about one another’s identity. She thinks that he’s Mr. Flemming, and he thinks that she’s Mary Kaplan. This mistake hints at the hollowness of their relationship: They’ll be married, but they never truly knew one another. Marriage, like everything else, will soon become an anachronistic relic of the past. The last human marriage, between two people who don’t even know each other’s names, hints at the speed with which marriage will become irrelevant.

“She had been neutered, after all.”

What determines Kazakh’s worth, in the context of Leon’s story, is only the extent to which she can influence future generations. Leon observes everything on a million-year timeline, so the brief appearance of the seeing eye dog is nearly irrelevant. Since Kazakh has been neutered, she can’t pass on her genes. At this point, she’s little more than a valuable food source for those who can pass on their genes.

“You believe that human beings are good animals, who will eventually solve all their problems and make earth into a Garden of Eden again.”

Kilgore Trout mocks his son, Leon, as someone who believes that humanity has the capacity for good. Despite Kilgore’s mocking, however, evolution proves Leon right, in a way. Humans evolve into creatures that are no longer capable of the alienation and evil they created during Kilgore’s lifetime. Humanity solves its problems—but only by abandoning its big brain.

“That was so nice to see. It almost made me love people just as they were back then, big brains and all.”

Leon much prefers the small-brained, semiaquatic version of humanity that isn’t capable of lying or waging war. As he observes the past, however, he notices moments of genuine kindness and affection, which show him that—despite their big brains—humans had the capacity for good. This is “almost” enough to make him love this version of humanity—but still not quite enough.

“Mary was accorded no special status by the Kanka-bono women.”

Mary emerges as a kind of mother of the human race. Her artificial insemination experiments ensure that humans reproduce. Nevertheless, her experiments don’t cause the Kanka-bono women to praise or even like her. They treat her with wary suspicion. Her actions are neither good nor evil, suggesting that humanity is moving into a new era of morality that will leave such simple moral dichotomies in the past.

“It was a flawless part in the clockwork of the universe. There was no defect in it which might yet be modified. One thing it surely did not need was a bigger brain.”

Unlike humans, sharks didn’t need to evolve much during Leon’s observation period. They’re much the same over the course of many millions of years because they’re “flawless.” Sharks eat Adolf and Mary because they’re perfectly evolved to do so. They’re not acting out of evil intent. Rather, they’re fulfilling their function in the ecosystem. Humans will leave judgmental morality behind to embrace this naturalistic morality as soon as they evolve past their need for big brains.