Our Infinite Fates

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child death, and suicidal ideation.

Evelyn’s experiences of humans in lifetime after lifetime convince her that humans are a blight—a damaging force on the world and each other. When Evelyn describes Nauru, for example, she faults humans for the toll they’ve taken on the natural landscape. She says, “It was beautiful, in an apocalyptic sort of way. Almost a third of it had been strip-mined […] leaving behind a jagged plateau […] It was even more dystopian from the land [than the water], abandoned tram tracks and rusted kerosene tins littering the once-lush landscape” (48). People ravaged the land while mining for resources and then left the detritus of their exploitation behind, failing even to take their garbage with them once they finished exhausting the natural world. The land itself is so beautiful that it cannot help but remain so, though now in an “apocalyptic” way—an adjective that hints at the end of the world, brought about by humans. 

This destructiveness extends to other humans. During World War I, Evelyn reflects on the horrors of trench warfare, saying, “How simple and beautiful life could have been. How far from that humanity had strayed” (82).