Galapagos

Leon Trout is the narrator of Galapagos. As a detached but increasingly invested observer, he describes how humanity evolves into a semiaquatic species of fur-covered mammals a million years in the future. Leon’s detachment is a product of his situation. He’s a ghost, a dead man who’s tied to the Bahia de Darwin by fate and circumstance. He spends a million years watching humanity before deciding to tell the story of how the species arrived at this point. On a timeline of more than a million years, individual actions and lives lose some meaning. Leon has watched thousands of people be born, grow old, and die, to the point that the minor changes and mutations of evolutions blur into a continuous narrative. Despite this perspective, however, Leon recognizes the importance of the people stranded on the island of Santa Rosalia. In this respect, his detachment feels profound. A man who has seen the totality of life and the near-extermination of the species considers these individuals’ lives important enough to document. Through his narration, Leon adds weight to the stories of the survivors on Santa Rosalia.

Another reason for Leon’s alienation is his experience in the military. Leon left home as soon as he could and joined the Marines. He was sent to Vietnam, where he took part in a brutal war in which he saw his friends killed. Not only was he traumatized by his friends dying, but he killed an elderly woman whom he blamed for his friend’s death. Unable to resolve his feelings of guilt and shame for his actions in the war, he abandoned the military and sought political asylum in Sweden. He deliberately alienated himself physically sense after feeling alienated from his home country emotionally. His experiences in Vietnam left Leon with a great deal of Regret. He regretted his own actions and was ashamed of the brutality that, at the time, seemed a core aspect of humanity as a species. Leon is fascinated with the people on the Bahia de Darwin because he recognizes their regrets. He sees the way they share a similar burden after being traumatized by violence in their past. He follows them for so long because, through them, he hopes to find some redemption for himself and humanity. Leon needs to feel cause for optimism and, after a million years, finds it. Only after humanity evolves beyond its big brains and its capacity for premeditated violence, he believes, can humanity find redemption.

Leon’s relationship with his father illustrates his drive for redemption. Kilgore Trout was a terrible father who drove his wife and his son away from home. Leon believed that Kilgore was a completely irredeemable figure, but then he met a doctor who praised Kilgore’s science fiction stories. The experience taught Leon that even his terrible father was redeemable, giving him hope that he (and his species) might also find redemption. Leon avoids going with his father into the afterlife because he pursues this redemption. He dedicates a million years to learning that humanity—like Kilgore—can give him cause for optimism. At the end of the novel, Leon is finally prepared to join his father in the afterlife. By this time, he has come to believe that redemption is possible. After a million years, Leon is ready to go to his father, even if he may not quite be ready to forgive him.

James Wait is an essential character in Galapagos even if he isn’t a particularly sympathetic one. He embodies the theme Nature Versus Nurture, meaning that his character enables Leon to chart the ways in which his own character was predetermined by genetics or shaped by his environment. Wait isn’t a good person. A criminal and con artist, he preys on desperate, lonely women by tricking them into falling in love with him and then stealing their money. The narrative introduces him amid of his latest plan, in which he has set his predatory sights on Mary, a recently widowed former schoolteacher who is so depressed and vulnerable that she’s contemplating death by suicide. Wait is an emotional manipulator and a predator; in this respect, he resembles the shark that eventually eats Mary. He has found a niche in his society and—without any regard for morality—occupies it, with devastating effects.

Wait’s life story adds substance to his character. Leon can look back into people’s lives, and when he looks into Wait’s past, he’s struck by the sheer volume of tragedy and abuse. Wait is the product of inbreeding; his parents were related in a way that American society forbids. In this sense, society deems him genetically marked. This aspect of Wait’s past speaks to the nature argument: Wait’s genetics are inherently broken, and he was always set to become a criminal because something inside him is fundamentally wrong. However, Wait grew up in an abusive household. Even after he ran away, he was manipulated and abused by other people who drove him into a criminal lifestyle. This tragic aspect of Wait’s past speaks to the nurture argument: Wait’s criminality comes from his violent, traumatic past. His actions in the present result from what he has endured throughout his life. Leon goes into depth in telling Wait’s life story because he sees no easy resolution to the Nature Versus Nurture debate. Through Leon’s exploration, he explains Wait’s broken moral code and—to some degree—he becomes a more sympathetic character.

Ironically, Wait is killed by a heart attack after years spent breaking the hearts of a string of female victims. In the moments before his death, however, Wait’s dying mind realizes that he actually loves Mary. This seems like Wait’s only moment of sincerity in the novel. His only real, sincere emotion isn’t entirely sincere, however, as his dying mind merely mistakes a heart attack for love. Mary agrees to marry him, though she doesn’t really plan to do so anytime soon. Much to her shock, Adolf marries them immediately. The marriage switches the roles of Wait and the women he tricked: The man who pretended to love women marries a woman who pretends to love him.

Adolf von Kleist is the drunken, disgraced captain of the Bahia de Darwin. Before the economic collapse, he became something of a celebrity, appearing on American talk shows and charming audiences to promote the Nature Cruise of the Century. During these talk shows, he carefully avoided any insinuation that he might be descended from German fascists by absurdly claiming that his name was traditionally Ecuadorian. His interviews and rise to fame belied his actual incompetency. As society collapsed, as his ship was ransacked, all he could do was get drunk. The actual running of the ship fell to his underlings, while Adolf was only interested in entertaining the guests. A promotional tool rather than a captain, Adolph is a hollow shell of a man who projects commanding authority while being capable of extremely little. When he’s called upon to save the survivors of the attack on the El Dorado hotel, he proceeds to embarrass himself. He sails the ship into the ocean and immediately becomes lost, finding the island of Santa Rosalia only by accident and then misidentifying it. Adolf recognizes his failure but is terrified of judgment. He doesn’t know that society has collapsed but fears returning to society, as he believes that his reputation is ruined. This self-loathing eats away at him for the rest of his life.

Despite Adolf’s obvious incompetency, he becomes one of the most important figures in the history of humans as a species. In his failure to find another port, he unwittingly steers the survivors to one of the few places on the planet where they can escape the extinction of humanity. They’re insulated from the effects of the economic collapse and protected from the plague of infertility that strikes elsewhere. Similarly, Adolph accidently becomes the genetic progenitor of the entire human race when Mary uses his sperm to impregnate the Kanka-bono women. In each of these instances, Adolf is a passive force. He’s vastly important, and his actions steer the future of human society—but not in any intended way. He illustrates the chaos of existence, the way the future seems to be inevitable but is actually the product of innumerable mistakes. Adolf’s life is a series of embarrassments and failures that incidentally result in the circumstances that humanity needs to survive. In this sense, his life reflects evolution itself. Just as evolution results from innumerable errors, mutations, and accidents, Adolf’s story shows how seemingly unintentional events prove utterly vital to human history.