SPOILERS – Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam – Pilar?

Pilar’s role in the Flood – the “real” mastermind?

So Pilar was a top-ranking scientist who eventually joined up with Adam and the Gardeners in their infancy over shared beliefs, or rather values: she seemed to view all life as equal and valuable, from bees to humans to fungus to – emphasized with the Feast days – harmful microbes. She rejected the excess that was sickening human civilization as a whole to the point of not just being terminal to them, but to all other beings. She is the biggest connection between the Gardeners and the Corps underbelly, she cultivated a relationship with Glenn/Crake from his childhood, she stole samples of the Flood bug’s predecessor, and she was directly responsible for giving the samples of the superbug to Glenn before she died. When her own body was wracked by sickness, and facing a slow and painful but inevitable death, she calmly chose the mercy (in her mind) of suicide after passing on her knowledge as best she could, then submitted her body to be used as fuel for present and future organisms to grow from. To me this has so many direct connections to the overall circumstances humanity found itself in, far more than any other character despite learning very little about her from herself.

She wasn’t the only one who played a role, and she couldn’t have done it alone – maybe couldn’t have actually done it *herself*. But while it is understated, it seems she’s one of the only people Glenn had genuine respect for and even admired, and was one of the core hubs between the paths of those who survived, that of the Crakers, and that of the mass of corporatized humanity that got washed away. Even the strong emphasis on how writing and storytelling represents just one perspective from one individual – Pilar’s direct perspective is conspicuously missing more than most. We hear about so many people’s childhoods, how their parents failed them yet had a strong influence on how their lives turned out, through obedience or rebellion, admiration or disgust. Pilar’s parental presence in the life of Glenn and Toby make her just about the only good human “parent” in the book. The way Glenn is described acting around her is completely different from the Crake everyone else seems to get, except perhaps Oryx, and even she seemed like more of an idea than a person to him. Would Glenn have gone to Jimmy’s funeral, even?

I see lots of people focus on Zeb, and Adam, and Glenn, but I’m starting to think Pilar is the strongest piller (ha) holding up the entire story from beginning to end in regards the sealed fate of human civilization as it was.

After some hints and coincidences earlier in the series, I think this passage in the Edencliff chapter of MaddAddam, a conversation between Zeb and Toby, really drove home that Pilar might be far more important than I’d realized:

>”You always played Black,” she says. “What happened to that bishop when Pilar died?”

>“She willed her set to Glenn, along with a sealed letter. She’d taught him to play chess, back at HelthWyzer West, when he was little. But by the time she died, his mother had married the guy she’d been fooling around with – so-called Uncle Pete and they’d been upgraded to HelthWyzer Central. Pilar kept in touch with Glenn through the cryptics, and Glenn was the one who arranged the cancer tests for her, found out she was terminal.”

>”What was in the letter?”

>“It was sealed. How to open the bishop, is my guess. I would have filched it, but Adam had firm control of it.”

>“So Adam just handed that stuff over, the chess set with the pills inside? To Glenn – to Crake? He was only a teenager.”

>“Pilar said he was mature for his age, and Adam felt Pilar’s deathbed wishes should be respected.”

>”What about you? It was before I became an Eve, but you were on the council then. They discussed important decisions like that. You must have had an opinion. You were an Adam – Adam Seven.”

>“The others agreed with Adam One. I thought it was a bad idea. What if the kid tried those things out on someone without knowing exactly what they’d do, the way I had?”

>”He must have, later,” says Toby. “With some additions of his own. That must’ve been the core of the BlyssPluss pills: what you got after you’d experienced the bliss.”

>”Yeah,” says Zeb. “I think you’re right.”

>”Do you think Pilar knew what use he’d make of those microbes or viruses or whatever they were?” she asks. “Eventually?” She remembers Pilar’s wrinkled little face, her kindness, her serenity, her strength. But underneath, there had always been a hard resolve. You wouldn’t call it meanness or evil. Fatalism, perhaps.

>”Let’s put it this way,” says Zeb. “All the real Gardeners believed the human race was overdue for a population crash. It would happen anyway, and maybe sooner was better.”

This is a messy stream of consciousness but I haven’t found any essays spoonfeeding answers to me, and honestly searching for specific discussion online isn’t what it used to be thanks to our own real life Corps nonsense. There is so much more to be said about these books and this is just a teeny piece of the puzzle, but one that wraps up so much for me both textually AND thematically. If anyone knows where I can find some discussion on the factors that created the Flood that de-center the role of “evil genius Crake”, please link me up!

>”God wouldn’t have made poisonous mushrooms unless He intended for us to use them sometimes.” – Pilar

by Jackal_Kid