52 pages • 1 hour read
Michael CrichtonState of Fear
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Lightning
While State of Fear is firmly interested in the social aspects of environmentalism—the media’s involvement, the role of universities and research, nonprofit groups, and so on—it also draws on natural imagery. Lightning is a prime example of how State of Fear shifts the significance of motifs of natural imagery throughout the novel. In several instances, lightning is a lethal force. It kills Nat early in the novel, almost strikes Sarah dead, is used in ELF’s attempted assassination of Kenner and Sarah at the group’s test site in Arizona, and is part of the storm the eco-terrorists use to unleash a flash flood in McKinley State Park.
All of these appearances of lightning in the novel have one thing in common: They are artificial creations or alterations of a natural phenomenon, developed at ELF’s test site in Arizona. For example, the strike that kills Nat dead stems from attracting lightning to a manipulated cell phone. This same technique is later used in ELF’s attempts to strike Evans and Sarah in the McKinley State Park. Moreover, the storm created in the park is amplified with a rocket array that causes “a change in the electric potentials of the infra-cumulus strata,” or put more simply, seeds artificial lightning (313).
These attacks are events that ELF hopes will promote their agenda of encouraging belief in the catastrophic power of global warming. Thus, it is no coincidence that they take the form of a natural force (lightning) that is made artificial, altered by humans. Unfolding the plot in this way emphasizes the events as the nefarious work of corrupt humans, effectively attempting to taint the sanctimoniousness of ideas about global warming and of environmentalist groups. ELF’s acts contrast sharply with what the novel proposes is commonly accepted fact but in actuality false: Human actions will indirectly cause an increase in natural catastrophes (like storms) that will have detrimental effects on humanity—but not caused by any one person or small group of people in particular. Given ELF’s repeated failures, lightning is a reminder that the forces of nature are larger than any human’s: “[T]hey run from the storms,” as Kenner puts it (563).
Water
Motifs related to water in State of Fear are similar to those connected to lightning, in that they involve natural imagery that at varying points demonstrate the power of nature, the evils of humanity, or the ineptitude of eco-terrorists. In a subtle move, State of Fear stresses the importance of water as a motif by opening with a brief glimpse of Jonathan—the researcher in Paris studying the physics of waves—and then echoing this by closing in the aftermath of ELF’s failed attempt to create a destructive tsunami.
The eco-terrorist groups’ other attacks are also all connected to water in some form. These include the flash flood they initiate at McKinley State Park, and their attempt to “modify” a hurricane, which fails because weather conditions change (562). Even ELF’s favored method of murder, blue-ringed octopus attacks, is tangentially connected to water. Crichton stresses the wetness of this dangerous ocean dweller “sloshing” in a baggie of water as characters are attacked (13).
Their first plot, to create an enormous iceberg by breaking off a huge chunk of the Antarctic ice shelf with explosives, deals with water in its frozen form, and the widely-reported melting of Antarctic ice is said to contribute to rising sea levels. This is mentioned repeatedly as one of the most pressing consequences of global warming. Indeed, the central focus of the pro-environmentalist characters, the Vanutu lawsuit, is directly connected to the problem of rising sea levels.
Water is a key symbol for transformation throughout the novel, both because it treats water in the full cycle of its states—solid, liquid, and gas—and because liquid water represents motion. These qualities form a symbolic backdrop for the transformations that characters like Morton and Evans undergo, changing their beliefs in the theory of global warming. They also symbolize one of the novel’s underlying environmentalist points: that nature is constantly in motion, “is always out of balance” (452), and can never be preserved.
Scorpions
Scorpions do not have an immediate connection to the concept of global warming, which State of Fear is concerned with. Moreover, the symbol is also unrelated to themes connected to character development, such as Evans’ increasing confidence. Precisely for these reasons, scorpions are a notable symbol throughout the novel. Instead of being connected to the topic of global warming, they represent generalized ideas of danger and entrapment.
Scorpions are consistently connected to ELF or the group’s activities. For instance, the submarine that Nat recommends to the ELF operatives is called the “RS Scorpion” (36), and the ship the group uses when preparing for their tsunami plot is the “AV Scorpio” (465). When Evans discovers the list of location coordinates that Morton hid inside his remote, they include both “TERROR” (referencing Mt. Terror, in Antarctica) as well as “SCORPION,” which later turns out to reference Scorpion Bay on the island of Gareda, the site of ELF’s final plot (175). Cementing the link between ELF and NERF, the screen name that Ted uses when chatting online with Drake is “Scorpio_L” (439). Finally, in one of the novel’s thrillingly paced episodes, Sarah and Evans stumble on an abandoned shack crawling with scorpions during the ELF plot in McKinley State Park.
Other, more direct examples or symbols of ELF’s danger are evident in the novel, ranging from the group’s shootouts, to their unusual method of octopus attacks, to the cannibalistic rebels, to the killer crocodiles. Yet scorpions symbolize ELF’s lurking threat and repeated ability to entrap victims: Kenner and his entourage are taken hostage in Scorpion Bay on Gareda, for instance. As an animal, scorpions represent a major, even deadly threat in a small form that is often hard to discover before it is too late. Thus, they make a fitting symbol for the dangers of ELF—an organization that is difficult to track, uses devious methods of operation, and has deadly consequences.
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By Michael Crichton
