25 pages • 50 minutes read
Aimee BenderA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Given the unrealistic elements of the story, “The Rememberer” lends itself to a highly symbolic or even allegorical reading. Specifically, the story can be read as an allegory for the notion of human progress. Ben’s primary anxiety that people are “getting too smart” and thinking too much resonates with American cultural anxieties at the turn of the millennium as information and digital technology were quickly ingrained in everyday life.
However, Ben’s worry has a legacy in many philosophers, cultural critics, and authors who throughout time have given voice to a fear that something of humanity gets lost as humans pursue mastery over more and more things. After Ben has transformed into an ape, Annie notes that someone calls to tell him that a book on civilization that he ordered is ready to be picked up. The fact that the book is “out-of-print” indicates that the ideas Ben is interested in exploring as they relate to civilization are the ones that are no longer accepted. He wants to engage with ideas that have been lost (“out-of-print”) through replacement by newer, better ideas about humanity. Ben’s anxieties embody an age-old conflict of Thought Versus Feeling. The fact that Ben’s character is minimally developed—as with most characters in fabulist texts—reflects the universal foundation of his worry.
As much as Ben’s character might be understood to privilege feeling over thought, given his “regression” from a thought-driven human to a feeling-driven animal, Annie’s character gives deeper insights into the relationship between thought and feeling. Although Annie says that she shares Ben’s melancholy and that she values the times that they would “sit together and be sad” (Paragraph 6), she spends much of the story thinking. To try to understand the rate at which Ben’s reverse evolution into simpler life forms will occur, she consults a biology professor at the local community college. She then uses his evolutionary timeline to determine that “we have less than a month left” (Paragraph 4) before Ben eventually disappears. Annie uses her thinking to support her feelings by determining how much longer she has with Ben.
Yet Annie also demonstrates the obstacles that thought can pose for feelings. She recalls that the first time she and Ben had sex, she “concentrated really hard on letting go” (Paragraph 9), and “in the middle of taking off [her] clothes [they] sat down on the floor and had an hour-long conversation about poetry” (Paragraph 9). Later, when Ben takes Annie outside in the middle of the night to look at the stars, she explains that she “tried to dream up to the stars, but [she] didn’t know how to do that” (Paragraph 10). In moments that should inspire Annie to be present to her feelings, she inevitably tries to analyze her feelings and understand them, disrupting her experience of feeling.
The conflict between thought and feeling also arises in the theme of Love and Obligation as Annie shifts from lover to caretaker. Symbolically, Ben’s increasing dependence on Annie as he transforms into smaller animals reflects the very real experience of many families who find themselves caring for a dependent loved one. Ben’s increasing dependence and inability to communicate with Annie parallels the difficulties of those who experience forms of dementia. In this way, the couple’s relationship explores the bonds and rifts of love.
Initially, Annie is quite content to manage Ben in his new form. She explains, “I didn’t miss the human Ben right away, I wanted to meet the ape too” (Paragraph 14). Her connection and their love enable the relationship to change with Ben’s change of identity. Yet, just as many caretakers experience with dependent family members, the sense of obligation begins to test the bonds of love and the permanence of a changed relationship wears people down. Annie notes how she still comes home expecting the human Ben and must remind herself repeatedly that he’s gone. When she puts Sea Turtle Ben into his new home inside of the pan, she cries hard enough to watch her tears drip and mingle with the salt water she had poured into the bottom of his baking dish.
Eventually, Annie’s sense of obligation to care for Ben reaches a breaking point, but her love for Ben seems reinvigorated once she lets him go to the ocean. Throughout the story, but especially with Ben’s ocean send off, The Sublime Quality of Loss is explored. Annie grieves Ben throughout the story as his identity changes and their relationship is subsequently altered. Yet she experiences some pleasure in the transformation that turns her lover into “a son, a pet” (Paragraph 14), so her loss is not so completely devastating. And when she finally decides that she’s reached her limit on watching Ben devolve—not wanting to wait for him to become microscopic—she releases him to the ocean and there is a great relief in this action. In some ways her experience of loss while Ben remains with her, but in the shape of an animal, is more total than when she loses him to the ocean. She is able to fully grieve Ben’s loss and enjoy her memories of him more than before she sends him to the ocean.
“The Rememberer” is rich with thematic meaning, despite its short length. Through symbolism and fabulist narration, Bender explores the ineffable quality of grief, particularly within a world that prides itself on its ability to think through and explain anything.