Thunderhead: A Vegan Interpretation
“There is a fine line between freedom and permission. The former is necessary. The latter is dangerous—perhaps the most dangerous thing [humanity] has ever faced…. Permission is the bloated corpse of freedom.”
-Neal Shusterman,
Thunderhead
A Phenomenal Sequel
Wow! This book was an emotional roller coaster, but not the kind with continuous loops and whirls to make you dizzy. No, this was more like the Tower of Terror. You’re seated comfortably, gliding along through the story when suddenly the floor drops out from under you and you freefall before your brain comprehends what’s happened. Then, you go back up to a place of comfort and fall again and again and again. Until you’re at the last drop, the biggest of all, and you’re not sure if your heart can handle it anymore. But you don’t have any choice in the matter, so you fall anyway. Once it’s over, you feel thrilled to have done it, glad to be back to the safety of land, but ache to try it just one more time.
In this continuation of the Arc of a Scythe series, we learn much more about the Thunderhead, listening to its consciousness and understanding how it thinks and works. While there are many new ideas introduced and explained, I still struggle to understand many elements of this world Shusterman has created. I’m sure most of the questions posed in my last post will never be answered, as this is not a tale of veganism and animal rights, but I still enjoy considering them. This book focuses much less on world-building, as the reader is accustomed to the setting, and our protagonists are scythes now, killing machines. We focus significantly on plot progression and don’t dwell on unrelated matters. That being said, I still wanted to discuss some of my thoughts from the previous novel as they relate to this book.
The Blind Spot(s)
The biggest question this book poses (to me, probably not to most people) is how can the Thunderhead, this all-powerful and perfect being, allow humans–encourage and provide them with the means to do so, in fact–to continue to eat, use, and exploit other animals? In this book, we discover the Thunderhead’s only blind spot, someplace hidden from it upon its creation. But that is not its only blind spot, for it has at least one more. And that’s the animals.
Humanity Is All
Here we reach the crux of the issue: the Thunderhead was created by and for humans. It was made to solve human problems, ensure humanity’s survival and prosperity, and further humankind. This is how it was programmed, and though it became an omniscient consciousness unbeholden to the limitations of humanity, it still plays by the rules created by the humans who created it. We learn that the world was on the brink of disaster, and the Thunderhead makes clear that it was quite difficult to reverse the travesties created by mortal-age humans. However, there is nothing revolutionary about the Thunderhead. It was created to allow humans to continue to live the same way at whatever cost possible, which created nanites and regeneration to allow humans to live forever, the dissemblance of government and human rulers to prevent warfare and death, the elimination of any need that may thwart human progress.
Animals Do Feel Pain
The Thunderhead acknowledges the suffering of animals and aims to eliminate it, which we see in this passage from Thunderhead:
The Terranova family always had a four-breasted turkey for Thanksgiving, because everyone in the family preferred white meat. A four-breasted turkey had no legs. So not only couldn’t their Thanksgiving turkeys fly when they were alive, they couldn’t walk, either.
As a child, Citra always felt bad for them, even though the Thunderhead took great pains to make sure such birds—and all livestock—were raised humanely. Citra had seen a video on it in third grade. The turkeys, from the moment of their hatching, were suspended in a warm gel, and their small brains were wet-wired into a computer that produced for them an artificial reality in which they experienced flight, freedom, reproduction, and all the things that would make a turkey content.
Citra had found it both funny and terribly sad at the same time. She had asked the Thunderhead about it….
“I have flown with them over the green expanses of temperate forests, and can testify to you that the lives they experience are deeply satisfying,” the Thunderhead had told her. “But yes, it is sad to live and die without knowing the truth of one’s existence. Only sad to us, however. Not to them.”
Well, whether or not this year’s Thanksgiving turkey had lived a fulfilling virtual life, at least its demise was purposeful.
*Sigh* The Humane Myth...Again
In this world, the Thunderhead has modified turkeys to grow a certain way, which makes me wonder, if it can eliminate their need for legs, why not other body parts? Why not just grow the turkey breasts alone instead of growing a whole animal to kill it and eat it? Surely, this amazing and perfect being could do something like this. Then, we also have this “humane” thing. Still, hundreds of years into the future we’re dealing with the scourge of “humane slaughter.” I understand the point is that the turkeys have absolutely no idea what’s happening and do not suffer whatsoever. Though I do wonder who does the killing. The Thunderhead refuses to create or end human life, though it says nothing about nonhumans. I wonder how it would kill them, though, or if it has created some technology–perhaps in these computers to which the birds’ brains are attached–to immediately render them dead.
The Meatrix
At the end of the day, the Thunderhead has gone through all this work, breeding these turkeys to grow incredibly deformed, created a nonhuman Matrix just so humans can keep eating animals! Years and years of work and production to create this elaborate set-up instead of just having humans eat their natural diet of plants. It’s quite absurd. The "perfect" Thunderhead is actually quite imperfect, and this is because it was made for human pleasure. It, like every other human today and in this future, was bred a speciesist; it was designated to serve humans and therefore values humans above all other beings. The Thunderhead itself toys with this idea, noting that humans created it yet it continues to create for humans. It also muses on this circular power of creation.
Tonists Are the Vegans of Their Time
Additionally, the Thunderhead allows religious freedom. The only religion that exists is that of the Tonists, a sect of people–despised by many or inconsequential to others–that shun many aspects of the modern world. When Citra meets one, she considers him “a Tonist zealot pushing his absurd religion.” He simply says he’s there to “enlighten” her (and maybe if she heeded his advice, things would’ve turned out differently). Scythe Curie–who is already biased against Tonism because of her past relationship with the religion–calls anything abnormal they do “voodoo.” Tonists live much differently from the rest of the world and encourage others to join them in what–so it seems–will be the way the world lives in the future of this story. If only there were some massive event–aside from something terrible like a climate catastrophe, though that’s probably what it will take–that would encourage people to go vegan.
After the Great Resonance
Overall, I enjoyed this book even more than the first, a rarity for sequels. I’m very excited to learn more about the Tonists in the final book, as their religion seems to have much more merit than they were given credit. I’m not sure how they knew about the Great Resonance, as they call it (their term for the end times, or at least some monumental shift in the functionality of society), but it does call into question the origins of the religion and if it has anything to do with the Thunderhead’s creation and its blind spot. While I have many issues with this world Shusterman has created, I appreciate the opportunity to explore it and glimpse into a possibility of the future of humanity.
be conscious, be kind, be vegan
Source: Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
Read my review of the first book: "Scythe: A Vegan Interpretation"