Emotion is in the Eye of the Beholder

In my middle school years, I read many Young Adult/ Dystopian/ Sci-Fi novels. They all follow the same general codes of their genre. The government is bad; the young people will save the world; don’t stick to the status quo; and love will conquer all. Since I am very familiar with this genre, it made looking for embedded codes interesting. I was looking for things that were typical in YA dystopian literature and things that were out of the ordinary. Finding these similarities and differences made it easier to distinguish the five codes (semic, proairetic and hermeneutic codes, symbolic, cultural) discussed in chapter six of Kaja Silverman’s book The Subject of Semiotics.

I knew I would need to look for semes, words of phrases that are repeated, grouped together or used to represent something bigger than itself. I circled or underlined words I saw repeated. To my surprise, within the first several pages, a pattern emerged. The word scream is mentioned 14 times in the first chapter alone.

On page nine, Wren thinks, “I hated the screaming. Their screaming was my screaming” while she tries to arrest a distraught civilian (Tintera). The recurrence of the word “scream” put me on the lookout throughout the rest of the book. When Wren is forced to train Callum to fight, she warns him not to scream because it bothers her and Reboots shouldn’t show pain. It made me wonder: why does screaming bother her and why shouldn’t Reboots show pain? The answer comes when Wren thinks about her first clear memory after coming back to life as a Rebooting, “I screamed as they branded my wrist with my bar code…I screamed when they locked me in a cell… I screamed until I arrived.. And they told me screaming meant death” (Tintera 9). And again Wren is telling Callum about the moments before her death, “‘…I heard gunshots and I screamed and my mom put her hand around my mouth and –’ ‘Are you trying to kill us?’” (Tintera 276). Wren’s memories of her death and Reboot are linked to chastisements from her mother and HARC about screaming and the threat of death. It is not surprising that after two traumatic memories where Wren was explicitly told screams lead to death that she makes a rule for herself never to scream, “A Reboot didn’t acknowledge pain” (Tintera 21). This idea of screaming leading to death brought me to my next thought. What is the opposite of screaming? Silence. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that screaming is a last resort to resist death. However screaming rarely has an effect on whether you live or die. 

“Acting like I was still a human child meant death. Disobeying orders meant death. And then I was silent” (Tintera 9).

This line immediately made me think of a line from Night by Elie Wiesel,

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere” (Wiesel 118).

The symbolic code is a set of antithesis that reinforce a cultural code. “Speaking-up vs. staying silent” shows up in both Reboot and Night which reinforces the idea that it is a common cultural code. Is it safer to stay silent or to speak up? These opposing ideas can create a possible network of controlling values.

Purpose: Silence and acceptance of one’s circumstances brings safety. 

Context: Disobeying the government’s regulations leads to sickness and death.

Purpose: Speaking-up brings freedom from oppression.

Context: Submitting to government’s demands leads to loss of freedom and oppression.

There is no perfect answer to the question: Is it safer to stay silent or to speak up?

While searching for other cultural codes and intertextuality, I couldn’t help but compare and contrast Reboot to some literature I have been reading recently in the horror genre. Two stories I have read this past month were Frankenstein by Mary Shelly and “Herbert West- Reanimator” by H.P. Lovecraft. In both stories humans try to conquer death with science and it did not turn out how they expected. Those that came back to life were never the same as before death.

In Reboot, the Kill Devil Hill (KDH) virus is a respiratory virus and once it is in someone’s system, they risk being Rebooted after death. Wren describes the virus by stating, “When humans first began rising from the dead they called it a ‘miracle.’ Reboots were a cure for a virus that had wiped out most of the population. They were stronger and almost invincible” (Tintera 19). Wren goes on to explain that the government agency, HARC, soon realized the Reboots were “… also emotionless. An evil copy of what we used to be, the humans said. Most would rather die completely than be one of the “lucky” ones who Rebooted” (Tintera 14). At first I assumed that in every story, the “reanimated,” “reborn,” “rebooted” rebelled against the scientist that brought them back to life. Frankenstein’s monster made Victor’s life a living hell by killing those he loved most. Herbert West mysteriously disappears at the end of his story, most likely carried away by those he injected with his “reagent”. However, the KDH virus in Reboot is not explicitly man-made. That would make this “zombie” story slightly divergent from the common reanimation plot. The assumption I made was based on common codes from the genre of YA/ Dystopian/ Sci-Fi that expects readers to distrust the government. The initial virus may not have been revealed to be man-made, but the scientists in Reboot did inject lower performing Reboots with a trial serum to enhance their performance. At the end of the story, Wren and her friends break into the HARC facility to steal an antidote from the evil scientists in their laboratory. So, in a way, the creations did rebel against their creators. 

The proairetic code is a narrative sequence of actions and progression of events. This sequence is often familiar and predictable to the reader, where one thing leads to another in a predictable progression. Silverman also says that while using the proairetic the reader, “amasses certain data under some generic titles for actions (stroll, murder, rendezvous), and this title embodies the sequence; the sequence exists when and because it can be given a name, it unfolds as this process” (262). In Reboot, one action could be titled falling in love; it is a familiar sequence of events for YA readers. Wren feels isolated, lonely, but submissive to her surroundings, then Callum comes along to shake things up. Wren follows orders, she is quiet, and she cares only for her survival. While Callum is warm, full of laughter, he refuses to follow orders if they conflict with his morals and he does not view Wren as a monster. Their romance follows the common cultural code for two young heterosexual charactures. The audience gets to watch Wren and Callum fall in love through a series of semes. Since the book is written in first person simple past tense, Wren is narrating this from a point of view after all the progression of events has commenced. This means that the words and semes being left throughout the book are written with the knowledge of what is going to happen. However, as our professor often likes to point out, our memories are just perceptions of what happened and are often faulty. Wren is stoic, she has been told by HARC that she is just a shell and an emotionless monster. One semic code that seemed linked to Callum and Wren’s relationship was laughter. One of the first things Wren notices about Callum is that he is always laughing. “His laugh was big, genuine, echoing across the now-silent cafeteria. It didn’t belong here, that laugh. He didn’t belong here, with those full lips curving up with actual happiness” (Tintera 18). Wren was hesitant to laugh towards the beginning of the book: “A surprise laugh escaped my mouth and I quickly cleared my throat to hide it. But it was too late; he’d heard it, and utter delight danced across his face” (Tintera 119). She tries to hide and suppress herself because she didn’t think that Reboots should have those kinds of emotions.The more time she spends with Calum the more she laughs and doesn’t feel the need to hide it anymore. By the end of the book, she practically beams everytime she looks in his direction. Callum and Wren are culturally coded as a cisgender and heterosexual couple. One deviation from the norm has to do with their roles in the relationship. Wren has one of the highest Reboot numbers, while Callum has one of the lowest numbers in the book. The longer someone is dead before they Reboot, the stronger they are. Since Wren is stronger, she takes on a protective and in some cases dominant role over Callum. She is the one who trains Callum to fight, but she is also the one who protects him from outside harm. Their relationship defies cultural codes and dominates gender roles. Wren is both the protector and the provider, while Callum is the moral compass of the relationship. It is a reversal of weak vs.strong/ masculine vs. femine symbolic codes. 

Another major seme that I noticed was the use of eyes and eye contact. One of my group members pointed out that “eyes are the windows to the soul”, a seme from the troubadour poets of the 12th century. Eyes are used throughout the book to establish a contact between characters and to read each other’s emotions. The eyes of Reboots look different than humans, they have a shining property, “The rows of bright eyes shining out against pale skin looked like a string of lights down every table” (Tintera 12). When Wren meets Callum she immediately notices his eyes,  “His close-cropped black hair matched his eyes, so dark I couldn’t find his pupils…Brown eyes usually took on a golden sort of glow after death, but I like his blackness” (Tintera 15).  Throughout the book, people often avoid eye contact with Wren, either because they are scared of her or think she is superior…except for Callum, “His dark eyes held mine. Not many people look me in the eye. Humans didn’t want to look at me at all and reboots were either scared or felt i was some sort of superior” (Tintera 35). Wren looks away when she is trying to conceal her emotions. Callum is good at reading Wren’s emotions from her face, “It was embarrassing for someone to be able to read the emotions on my face. I don’t think anyone had ever been able to do that, even when I was a human” (Tintera 241). Wren thinks she is emotionless but Callum knows Wren has deeper emotions than she thinks, ‘I saw your face when they took thode kids away. You feel everything, just like the rest of us’” (234). Wren also reads Callums emotions through his eyes, seeing hope, understanding, rage, rebellion, but ultimately “… afraid of seeing disgust in his eyes” (Tintera 203).  Wren also uses eyes to determine whether Ever or Callum are suffering from an episode of mania brought on by the experimental shots given by HARC or if they are back to themselves. “My eyes flew to Callum’s. Glazed eyes…He wasn’t Callum” (Tintera 261). The eyes are how we see the progression in their relationship. Callum was unafraid to look Wren in the eyes and their relationship grows as they read each other’s emotions. Callum is the more outwardly emotional character. The few times he cries in the book, Wren is envious of his ability to shed tears. This goes against the cultural code that “boys don’t cry” or “women are more sensitive”. Wren doesn’t find Callum’s tears to be embarrassing. It is also a cultural code that humans should keep their emotions on the inside. It often makes others uncomfortable to  see outwards displays of emotions. Seeing emotions play out in someone’s eyes is a way to perceive emotions even while they are trying to be masked. Emotions expressed through eyes are harder to hide and thus are more truthful than other facial expressions.