Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark: A Novel

New York: William Morrow, 2022.

Analysis by Danny Crowley, Lucca Franz, Sarah Hanlon, and Ella Wilshire

Brief Summary

How High We Go In The Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu, is a collection of stories exploring themes of human resilience and adaptation in the face of widespread death due to a climate-induced plague. Each chapter follows a unique storyline, incorporating sporadic intersecting characters or symbols. The first chapter in the book entitled “30,000 Years Beneath a Eulogy” sets the stage for the emergence of a 30,000-year-old Arctic plague, which is released from melting ice sheets in Siberia due to rising climatic temperatures. Each chapter illustrates how the disease disrupts humanity and forever changes the world’s social, economic, and political conditions. The virus disproportionately affects children and causes many health risks, such as body mutations, transparent skin, and organs evolving into other organs. This affects the function of the body, and once too many organs have evolved into something else, a person can no longer survive. Mutations and adaptations of the plague cause a never-ending cycle of grief, which constitutes death as an engrained event occurring in everyday life. This heartbreaking story provides glimpses of hope through genuine moments of human connection, scientific advancements, and innovative technologies. 

Settings: When/Where

How High We Go in The Dark follows multiple storylines, spanning from various locations and timeframes. The story begins in 2030, when the plague was first released, with the subsequent chapters expanding into the future. The U.S.S. Yamato was launched on December 30, 2037, after orbiting in space for 50 years they received letters that the cure to the plague had been found. The group traveled in space for 6,000 years before finding a new inhabitable planet entitled “Cygnus”. The chapter “The Used to be Party” set on April 10, 2039, outlines a letter that outlines life and human interaction after the plague is cured. Even after the plague humans are still suffering from climate change and environmental degradation. In 2080, the tip of Florida became completely submerged by rising waters.  

Timeline (Specific Climate-Related Events)

Characters

*The book switches through many different stories and perspectives to show how different people and communities are impacted from the the disaster of a widespread plague. Each chapter of the book acts as a short story with a detailed and engaging plot line that produces an expansive complex list of characters. For this reason there are many characters involved but we wanted to specifically mention the characters that we see the most throughout the book*

• Clara
  • Clara is a scientist who died in Siberia while conducting research on an Arctic plague being released from the permafrost melt. She had a complicated relationship with her mother, Miki, and father, Cliff, as they didn’t fully support her decision to leave her children to do this research. Clara looked at her decision as a sacrifice for her children because she believed that if no one spent time finding solutions to the climate crisis, her children wouldn’t be able to survive in the future.
• Miki
  • Miki is Clara’s mom, she painted photos that captured the emotional connection between people within the walls of  the U.S.S. Yumato.
• Yumi
  • Yumi is Clara’s Daughter. Because Yumi rarely saw Clara, she became really attached to her grandparents, Miki and Cliff. She became very emotional when Cliff decided to travel to Siberia, as this felt like another moment where she was losing a parent. At the end of the book, Yumi is in the U.S.S. Yumato, the starship that takes people on a 6,000-year journey to find a new planet. 
• Cliff
  • Cliff is Clara’s father, and a father figure to Clara’s daughter Yumi. After Clara died, he traveled to Siberia to continue her research. Before going there, Cliff was angry that Clara had left her whole family to do her research, but once he arrived in Siberia, he realized how much she cared about her family. This allowed him to forgive her because he understood how complicated her work-family relationship was.
• Skip
  • Skip is an employee at the City of Laughter, working as a clown, whose job is to keep children cheerful and happy throughout their time at the amusement park. He gets assigned to work with a woman named Dorrie, whose son, Fitch is dying of the plague. After spending large amounts of time with both of them while Fitch was participating in a drug trial, Skip falls in love with Dorrie. He also appears in the chapter “Through a Garden of Memory”. 
• Dorrie
  • Dorrie is Fitch’s mother. She has enrolled Fitch in a drug trial that she hopes will help him survive the plague and is staying at the City of Laughter. She spends a lot of time with Skip while at the amusement park and is clearly struggling emotionally to keep up with everything going on. At the end of the story, she goes on the U.S.S. Yamato in hopes of living on a better planet. 
• David
  • David is Fitch’s father and Dorries ex-husband. He is a researcher in charge of the lab who developed Notorious PIG. The lab worked to provide organ transplants for plague patients using pigs. 
• Patrice
  • Patrice is another researcher who helped develop the Notorious PIG. She formed an emotional connection with the pig and found it hard to let him go at the end of his life when the lab realized they couldn’t keep him alive anymore. 
• Dr. Bryan Yamato
  • Dr. Bryan Yamato is a physicist who committed his life to searching for a cure of the plague by inserting a singularity in his head.

THEMES:

Reoccurring themes include unprecedented child mortality, the grieving process, the search for closure, ethics relating to the loss of life, a commodification of death, and technological or scientific advancements addressing the catastrophic world condition.

There was also a presence of creating settings for families to say goodbye to their dying children or family members affected by the pandemic such as City of Laughter and Elegy Hotel.

A lot of the themes present also offer human action and solutions to combat these complex issues.

The Commodification of Death

Throughout the book, death is portrayed in a strange way, as people around the world quickly turn death into an opportunity to make money. This was seen in multiple different ways, including amusement parks that allowed children to spend their last day on different roller coaster rides, elegy hotels that allowed families to stay with their loved ones for more time before they died, and robotic dogs that a person could buy and record their loved ones voice to be played in the dog once they have passed, and many other examples. Although these seemed to help families grieve, it is an unusual relationship as it appears unethical to make money from such a difficult and upsetting situation.

Technology

Technology (New)

Robot dogs: a way for people to record the voices of their loved ones so once they have passed, they can talk to the dog and remember their previous connection.

Roller Coaster (Osiris) in the city of laughter which first knocks out then ends the life of children who are sick with the virus.

The U.S.S. Yamato is a spaceship which can travel at the speed of light and hold crews for thousands of years. On this ship there are pods which can keep people alive and nourished for thousands of years as well.

Technology (Old)

Throughout the pandemic, it seems that medical services stay at a similar technology level. People start using medical services less as the commodification of death starts to take over. Services such as Elegy Hotels, and The City of Laughter start to take over for hospitals and morgues.

Science

Raising a pig in a lab that has human organs. Originally, the goal was that they could use these organs for the humans that were victims of the Arctic Plague and need transplants due to the organ mutations that they experienced.

Clara and other scientists conducted research on a girl’s body that they found from years before. There was constant scientific research taking place in Siberia with a goal to learn more about how the virus affected humans. After Clara had passed away, her father Cliff traveled to Siberia to continue this work.

Exploring and Creating Planet #2

People strived to escape the horrors of the plague and climate induced tragedies by fleeing to an entirely different planet. The mission of the space team was to discover an environment where humans could thrive and lead a healthy life. New technology was utilized to travel into space:

“We are at the dawn of a new age, ” NASA officials said to the applause. This is the first step for humanity to become a part of whatever is beyond our solar system”

(Nagamatsu 189)

Eventually the  U.S.S. Yamato team located a new inhabitable planet and started the process of colonization.

Heroes and Villains and Elaborating on Human Actions and “Solutions”

The portrayal of heroes and villains is extremely complex throughout the entire story. Often, characters who are perceived as heroes, have moments of realization where they start to understand that their actions may also have negative consequences or be unethical.

This is seen in Chapter 2, “City of Laughter,” where a man named Skip works at an amusement park and is responsible for keeping dying children and their families happy before they board a ride that ultimately kills the child. Skip is, in one way, a hero because he creates a happy and fun last day in the park. He can also be portrayed as a villain, though, because his entire job is to distract children before their families put them on a ride that kills them. It asks the question of whether this is an ethical way to deal with such a difficult experience, or if they are contributing to the problem. 

This is also seen in the chapter “Speak, Fetch, Say I Love You.” Although we never learn his name since the chapter was written in the first person, this chapter tells the story of a man whose job was to repair broken robo-dogs for people who were worried about losing their loved one’s voices. He had his own dog named Hollywood, representing his wife Ayano, who had passed away from the plague. While he can create short-term fixes, he knows he cannot fix them enough for their memories to be saved forever. He even takes a moment where he questions his actions when a young girl comes in with a dog. He knew he didn’t create a permanent solution, so he was trying to decide if what he did was worth it all or if it was completely wrong of him to give her false hope. There are other instances like this throughout the story where a person has both positive and negative impacts on the environment or people around them, showing that it is rare for a person to be just a hero or a villain; usually, they have characteristics of both identities.

Reflections, Echoes, and Challenges to American Environmental Thought

There are reoccurring themes of wildfires in California, permafrost melting leading to rising sea temperatures, and other climate disasters. This book also reflects on the impact of interconnected ecosystems and how a disturbance in one area and have far-reaching impacts on other parts of the world.

“Rising sea levels, California burned to a crisp every year, plague filled with patients…yeah, it’s a party down here”

Nagamatsu 176

“I wanted my surviving child to live well into adulthood, a long healthy life away from the plague and floods and record breaking hurricanes”

Nagamatsu 178

“We received a decades old message from earth, informing us that a cure for the plague has been discovered–the comatose woke up and people began to rebuild their lives. Funerary corporations expanded to focus on climate projects, building sea walls around coastal cities, and sponsoring the solar shade project until the end of the century”

Nagamatsu 196

An aspect of the book that is echoed from American Environmental thought is the idea that a pandemic is an environmental consequence. The COVID-19 pandemic will be discussed more in the next section but it echos how environmental health is linked directly to human health.

One challenge includes being too optimistic about technology and its potential. The duality of technology is prevalent because although it is very powerful and can have a large positive impact, there are also limitations and unintended consequences that come with advanced technology.

Imagined Future, and Reflecting + Commenting on the Present

The storyline of How High We Go in The Dark reflects many current events, but one that is particularly prevalent is the similarities between this virus and the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this story shows a much more extreme technological and economic-driven response, it shares similar stories of grief and loss. This story highlights how challenging this was for so many people during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially during the early stages when people didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye in ways they would have expected to. The heartbreak associated with loss and grief in real life is echoed throughout the book, and Nagamatsu did a good job of reflecting on this. In present day, as the climate continues to warm, diseases and outbreaks are likely to become more frequent with drastic effects on many different communities. So by reflecting on this book, a few particular themes are likely not as unrealistic as some may believe.

At the beginning of the story, characters like Clara imagine the future as a place where humans are unable to survive. This perception is what drove her research and passion for finding answers. Common feelings of climate anxiety surrounding the future of the earth are prevalent in characters throughout the book, reflecting our current generation’s concern and unease about the worsening effects of climate change. 

Ultimately, How High We Go In The Dark, serves as a cautionary sign to humanity and a call to action. This call of action urges for more of an integrated approach to solving environmental climate issues.

Citation

Nagamatsu, Sequoia. How High We Go In The Dark. William Morrow, 2022.