The slides for today offer an overview of climate and environmental SF, and the changed consciousness of the central characters in “The People of Sand and Slag.” In the Calorie Man,” US agribusiness companies have reshaped the world from India to the Mississippi valley, largely by engineering and releasing crop diseases that only their genetically modified products can survive. How has this changed world altered the consciousness of Lalji or another character in the story? At what particular point do you see a character comprehending the environment and their place in a striking way?
6 thoughts on “Bacigalupi and Environmental Consciousness–Group 4”
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Though not an explicit acknowledgement of the environment inhabited by Calorie Man’s characters, the scene where Lalji and Shiriram play chess certainly has some veiled commentary. “The chess game was a tradition of many years, a ritual when Lalji was in town and Shriram had time away from his small kinetic company where he rewound people’s home and boat springs…. Neither of them played chess well, and so their games often devolved into a series of trades made in dizzying succession; a cascade of destruction that left a board previously well-arrayed in a tantrum wreck, with both opponents blinking surprise, trying to calculate if the mangle had been worth the combat.” (pp. 4-5) This approach to chess carries some parallels to the ravaging of earth–its apocalyptic results being the environment of Bacigalupi’s story. The chess board represents nature–a space inhabited and played on for ages–“a tradition of many years.” The earth was abused and exploited in a “series of trades made in dizzying succession; a cascade of destruction that left a board previously well-arrayed in a tantrum wreck.” Trade can be seen as a description of a chess move–one player moves their piece, the rival moves theirs and perhaps even takes the other’s. A trade. In the metaphorical sense, the “trades” could be taken as business deals–financial negotiations that led to the violation of nature’s chess board. Bacigalupi later narrates one of these trades, writing: “He was surprised to discover that he still had his queen. He used it to take a pawn…. He frowned as he realized that his queen was now vulnerable to Shriram’s remaining knight.” (p. 5) Lalji advances his trade with confidence; he realizes what few resources he still possesses (the Queen) and immediately attempts to reap its benefits. Shortly thereafter, he discovers the enormous peril he’s put his remaining asset in. At the end of the day–after all of the conniving business trades–and the natural resources are depleted by a rapid series of thoughtless “chess” moves, the corporations are left to blink in surprise and “calculate if the mangle had been worth the combat.”
The nature of the two worlds presented in “The People of Sand and Slag” and “The Calorie Man” differ quite greatly to me. In the former, there is no activism, no real or persistent desire for change, and as the slides mention, the ravished Earth presents no problems for the main characters. However, in “The Calorie Man,” the consciousness of characters like Lalji has not totally been reformed by the new agribusiness world for the sake of these monocultures. As my classmates have already mentioned, Lalji is constantly reminded of the time before all of the blights, but he is unable, and somewhat unmotivated, to change the mind of Creo, a character who has only known SoyPRO.
One moment that struck me was Lalji’s flashback to selling an old Conoco sign to an AgriGen executive. She lusts after the idea of a global company and relishes in the failure of another powerful company’s failure. After she expresses this (with just a word), “Lalji had been smitten by her vision: a company that pulled energy from the remotest parts of the planet and sold it far away within weeks of extraction” (13). Instead of being disgusted by the imperialist vision of this corporate leech, Lalji actually sees the appeal, not for himself or other normal people, but for the businesswoman. I thought that this moment best captured how even Lalji’s worldview, though resisting against his changed world, is not completely impervious to indoctrination.
The perhaps most striking passage to me in “The Calorie Man” is when Lalji and Creo follow Bowman into the garden and Lalji revels in the eating of the tomato. Not only is this a moment in which I think that Lalji begins to comprehend his station in relation to the world and environment outside of manufactured food and mega-corporations, but also one in which the reader begins to really grasp the nature of this environmental apocalypse. I’m struck purely by the description of Lalji’s meticulousness in eating the tomato:
Lalji studied its gleaming red skin. He bit into it and tasted sweetness and acid. Grinning, he offered it to Creo, who took a bite and made a face of disgust. “I’ll stick with SoyPRO.” He handed it back to Lalji, who finished it greedily (17).
The studiousness, the combination of sweetness and acidity, the noted grin, and the ravenous greed, all these components are not those that we as readers associate with a singular bite of the tomato. And yet, we see Creo’s rejection of the natural food in preference of the SoyPRO. We see the contrasting opinions of Creo and Lalji with the tomato, one that conforms to the corporate dominance of genetically modified food and one that aligns with memory, natural agriculture, a hopeful vision of a return to a pre-expansion world. We see this vision at the end of the story when Lalji holds the jar of corn kernels and envisions rows of fully grown corn and the jubilant celebration of his father. This is an optimistic possibility, and one that I think Lalji first immediately realizes in the garden and with the taste of the tomato.
The Calorie Man presents a “post-expansion” world in which food is totally scarce and multinational agribusinesses wage economic and biological warfare on each other, with all of humanity and the environment suffering the damage. The post expansion society has conformed Lalji’s conscious thinking into a set of pragmatic and calculated actions. This could be due to living in a society that is also governed by results and consequences, and in this case the extremes of each. We see this pragmatic view in Lalji’s flashback of regretting his lack in action to save his childhood friend Gita (15). His rationality and submissive acceptance of the new world order prevented him from performing an idealistic act or self-sacrifice that might have saved her. Instead, he does what he has to do in order to survive and to please himself, which results in leaving Gita behind to be closer to the calories (15). However, we do get a sense Lalji’s thought process begins to change at the end of the story. Witnessing Bowman’s ultimate sacrifice and so close to seeing his life work change the world forever (26), is the point that Lalji shifts to feeling like he is being given a second chance at making a difference, spreading the new seeds, a focus more on with what could or should be. In the beginning we see Lalji in a totally different light, but by the end of the story he is breaking out of the shell of self-interest the world had imposed on him.
I really enjoy and agree with Chase’s take on the changing consciousness of Laji throughout the story. He, like Bowman, understands what the world was like during the “expansion”, before the dominance of genetically modified crops. Throughout the story he flashes back a lot to his time in India as a child. He reflects on the good times he had and the people that he left behind namely, his friend Gita. His choice to leave India is the moment that for me is representative of his attitude toward the new world. He believed that at that point he needed to prioritize his wellbeing over his family and relationships by moving closer to the calories to survive in the changing world. Laji believed that he was simply a cog in the system and his individual actions could not help save others on a large scale. Bowman changes this perspective and brings him back to a time before conglomerates dominated agribusiness. He gives him the tools to start a revolution that will hopefully make life more similar to the happiness he experienced in childhood. Most importantly Bowman gives him hope.
I also think it is interesting to compare Laji’s change in perspective with that of Creo. All Creo understands is the New World. While he sounds intrigued by Bowman’s, ideas he often contradicts him because he is simply not able to picture a world where food, energy, and intellectual property are not controlled by a small group of companies. This lack of experience limits Creo’s dreams to the framework of this current world. He dreams of shooting cheshires for blue bills rather than dreaming of a world that once was. Before Laji meets Bowman he shares a similar perspective that one needs to do what they can to survive under their current circumstances but, finally realizes he needs to work to changes the circumstances.
One particular point that I saw a character comprehending the environment their environment was when Lalji asked Bowman whether or not the sunflower plants were engineered and Bowman responded that, “no, these are not owned by calorie companies.” Lalji has seen both parts of the world, the old and the new and is shocked to see this still being possible alongside SoyPRO and HiGro. Bowman responds to Lalji, “You’re old enough to remember, I think, what food used to be. You can take as much of this as you like, before we go. It will all die anyway.” This interaction was in sharp contradiction to Creo who has only grown up with SoyPRO and these conglomerates. He prefers “SoyPRO” products to the natural products and was absolutely “boggled” by the idea that Bowman could “break the calorie monopolies.” This is so striking because it shows how an alternate to mega conglomerates seems absurd and impossible if that is all that you have grown up with. Yet, at the end of the story with Creo and Bowman dead we see a glimpse of humanity and vulnerability connecting back to the roots and spreading seeds like Johnny Appleseeds. This story was very different from “The People of Sand and Slag” and I was left feeling much more optimistic. The Cli-Fi as a genre forces you to rethink what you know and how everyday interactions compete with conglomerates. The connection to humanity and vulnerability is something that I think is focused on in other dystopian novels/stories we have read, but it is the connection back to the earth and nature which Lalji reflects on in “The Calorie Man.” The scene at the end could be a stand of resistance against the climate and is interesting to think about in relation to the GMO debate that took place several years ago (I think 7 or 8 years ago?!)