The Rememberer — by Aimee Bender
Charles Darwin’s seminal work of evolutionary theory On the Origin of Species (1859) marked the introduction of an important thread of thought for both biologists and writers. In it and subsequent works, Darwin lays out the idea that species have changed over time through natural selection—that the members of each species who are best suited to their environments live on to reproduce, passing on their desirable traits to their descendents. Eventually, a species becomes ideally suited to its environment—until its environment changes.
It is easy to lay a moral veil Darwin never intended over this process, especially when it applies to humans. Many in the late 19th century came to view the human species as not only capable of becoming perfect (a loaded adjective if there ever was one) but as actually approaching perfection. But dark doubles lurked just below this rosy narrative of human progress. If species evolve over time, becoming (generally speaking) more biologically complex, why can’t the opposite happen? If humans represent the apex of civilized progress, who is to say that they cannot slip from this summit—devolve or degenerate? Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) explores this idea. Dr. Jekyll, an upright citizen of taste and learning, has Mr. Hyde lurking within him—a crouching, hairy-handed, morally bankrupt man with insatiable appetites for drink, debauchery, and violence. Eventually, Hyde wins out, and the civilized parts of Dr. Jekyll are subsumed by Hyde’s animal appetites.
The late-19th-century literary movement of Naturalism also questioned just how civilized civilization was. Novels like Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900) transferred the concept of natural selection from competition for survival among animals in nature to humans in society. Carrie, the title character, succeeds because she is young and resourceful. Hurstwood, a rich bar manager who falls in love with Carrie, fails because of his soft spot for her. The strong and unsentimental survive, while the old and infirm wither away. Civilization, naturalism insists, has not succeeded in filing away the sharp edges of life. The fight for survival still pricks and stings.
A century later, Aimee Bender’s “The Rememberer” probes the concept of devolution in a fresh and vital way. A piece of speculative fiction, the story steps away from realism to explore what happens when devolution is literalized. Annie, the protagonist, recounts the plight of her lover Ben, who is rapidly devolving from human to baboon to salamander. Ben laments the way humans are changing. He says, “Annie, don’t you see? We’re all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there’s too much thought and not enough heart.” His devolution is, perhaps, an involuntary reaction to this idea, a way to recapture the “heart” in life. But for when exactly is he nostalgic? Was there ever a time at which humans lived by their hearts, or when other species did? What waits in our evolutionary past but pure instinct and drive for survival?
