Spiderhead

From Apathy to Empathy:

The Unexpected Existence of Humanity in a Less Than Human World

Charles T. Reeder

            In George Saunders’s sci-fi short story, “Escape from Spiderhead,” the strength of one man’s limits are put to the test. These limits are emotional, moral, as well as physical.  The story forces the reader to ask themselves two questions. These are “at what point does an innate sense of empathy override the commanding influence of the body’s chemical composition” and “at what point is a man driven to go so far as to kill himself to protect the well-being of another innocent human.” The underlying theme is the search for humanity. What makes us human? In particular, at what point does fulfilling our nature as a sentient being override the desire to satisfy our superiors and the scientific progress they intend to create. “Escape from Spiderhead” argues that we as humans are innately empathetic and are against inflicting pain and discomfort on another innocent human. So, in the end the reader feels sad, for the narrator, but at the same time relieved that that kind of blind empathy and sympathy is present and thriving.

The story is a first-person narrative told by a man named Jeff, a convict in an alternative prison system where scientific experiments are conducted in attempts to confirm the effects of various serums with mind altering capabilities. The author’s depiction of this dystopian environment leads to questions regarding the ethical mindfulness of this society, or more like the lack thereof. The reader is given no specific details as to when or where the story takes place, but it is implied that it occurs in the future due to the impressive neurological powers of the drugs and the technology required to have derived them. Another indication of time is the unique punitive system set in place which allows for certain convicts to volunteer themselves as guinea pigs in experiments for these new-age drugs.  In fact, the characters in the story are portrayed in exactly that way; as guinea pigs; animals in a laboratory. The story compels us to think about chemicals and how much of what we consider “us” or our “self” to be dependent on the chemicals that circulate through our bodies. Jeff and the other subjects are connected intravenously to these chemicals via “MobiPacks ™” which remotely dispense a variety of the aforementioned drugs on command of the test administrator, named Abnesti. He puts Jeff and the others through a series of tests attempting to determine the reliability and accuracy of a specific drug that controls the sensation we know as love. But behind his friendly façade, Abnesti is toying with their emotions. To them it feels as real and intense as anything else they’ve ever felt before but the truth is that their bodies and minds have been scammed. None of it is real and that is quite depressing to the test subjects as well as the reader. At first Jeff thinks of this as merely interesting, but later comes to realize how uncomfortable that fact is. Abnesti is taking away those certain human emotions and traits that we believe define ourselves as human and we are left wondering whether there is anything more to humanity than a blob of chemicals and cells with no metaphysical capacities. Jeff’s sacrificial, and perhaps redeeming actions at the end of the story prove that such a metaphysical capacity exists and that our true emotions and motives are determined by something more than chemicals alone.

Artwork accompanying "Escape From Spiderhead", in the December, 2010 New Yorker

More importantly, this story is a collision between two parties: the good and the bad. This fact, however, does not become apparent until the nature of the tests is revealed and the means of verifying the results of those tests are forced upon the subjects. Unfortunately, the line between “good” and “bad” is at best gray. Deborah Treisman, the New Yorker’s fiction editor, conducted an interview with George Saunders in which he revealed that this clash between parties was indeed intentional.

“More and more these days what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation of evil and then having those two run at each other full-speed, like a couple of PeeWee football players, to see what happens. Who stays standing? Whose helmet goes flying off?”…  … “so, to the so-called evil characters (like Abnesti in this story), the bad things they do seem almost reasonable—as, I suspect, evil does, to the people doing it, in those large, catastrophic, genocidal moments that periodically mar life here on earth—and even in the small, nasty acts that mar life here on earth every day.”

By creating this clash between the good and bad, Saunders is able to show who the winner is. In this case it is arguably the “good” who prevail. But, it is important to recognize here who or what “good” exactly is. Jeff is a convicted killer. Abnesti is a progressive scientist on the edge of a miraculous breakthrough. Basic character definitions like these do not suffice when searching for the “good” because the “good” lies not in the appearance of these men, but rather in those qualities and actions that relate to their humanity. Jeff’s character draws sympathy from the reader, while Abnesti’s is in some sense portrayed as a pawn in the army of that invisible force that is challenging Jeff’s humanity. Jeff, despite his past and his current position, is the “good.”  He sees, in those last few lines, that his identity as a killer, like every other kind of identity, is transient. In the climax of the story, Jeff chooses to dose himself with Darkenfloxx, the drug which has already driven one test subject to destroy herself, in order to avoid being a party to the death of yet another. Jeff narrates, “Then came the horror: worse than I’d ever imagined…. Then I was staggering around the Spiderhead, looking for something, anything. In the end, here’s how bad it got: I used a corner of the desk.”

To be human means more than simply having a large, capable brain and opposable thumbs. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, essence is “the attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident: a property that the object or substance has metaphysical contingency, without which the substance can still retain its identity.” In “Escape from Spiderhead”, George Saunders makes this so called essence of humanity the driving plot force. Jeff is literally put through trials during the course of the story in which his essence as a human being is put to the test. He is stripped down to the core so that all that is left of him is his humanity; his empathy. Jeff is the “good.” Jeff is saved. And most importantly Jeff is human.