The Humans

“I was repulsed, terrified. I had never seen anything like this man. The face seemed so alien, full of unfathomable openings and protrusions.”

Here Matt Haig plays with the concept of the “alien.” To Haig’s reader, an alien would be this narrator, a creature from another planet. For the narrator, however, it is the human beings who are the aliens. This is an important word to highlight at the beginning of the novel because Haig wants to point out that, though we humans judge a great deal based on looks, we could be the ones to be afraid of, instead of the other way around.

“This was, I would later realize, a planet of things wrapped inside things. Food inside clothing. Bodies inside wrappers. Contempt inside smiles. Everything was hidden away.”

This quote foreshadows the disappointment Andrew will experience when he discovers the self-conscious nature of human beings and the way in which we try to veil our true feelings and hide our truths. This will be one of Haig’s most prominent criticisms of the world of people Andrew will meet.

“My task was going to be easy, I decided in that room. The meat of it, I mean. And the reason it was going to be easy was that I had the same sense of indifference toward them as they had toward single-cell organisms. I could wipe a few of them out, no problem, and for a greater cause than hygiene. But what I didn’t realize was that when it came to that sneaking, camouflaged, untouchable giant known as the Future, I was as vulnerable as anyone.”

In this quote, Andrew seems angry that he is drugged and locked away. He is so disgusted by the humans that he comforts himself with the thought of getting rid of them. This quote is interesting because it reveals a side to the alien’s feelings that could be more connected with his true self than with his human self, though Haig makes sure that it’s not clear to the reader. Secondly, this quote is important because he admits an apathy to the humans, the same kind that the humans have to organisms they deem less significant. Here, Haig criticizes human beings’ sense of superiority by subverting the issue and asking his reader to consider how they would feel if they were the targets of this same feeling of superiority. Lastly, this quote is important because even though Andrew scoffs at the concept of free will, Haig foreshadows that Andrew will be challenged by his newfound lack of control and unpredictability of human life.

“The humans are an arrogant species, defined by violence and greed. They have taken their home planet, the only one they currently have access to, and placed it on the road to destruction. They have created a world of divisions and categories and have continually failed to see the similarities among themselves. They have developed technology at a rate too fast for human psychology to keep up with, and yet they still pursue advancement for advancement’s sake, and for the pursuit of the money and fame they all crave so much.”

Martin determines that humans are not intelligent enough to handle the information that human Martin discovered about extraterrestrial life. Though it is ironic that Martin comes to this conclusion in a mental institution, the point that Haig is trying to make about human limitations is captured in this quote. Humans have begun a rapid destruction of their own planet, so this idea that they can’t be trusted with technological advancements of other planets implies that other life forms in other universes don’t want to help or save human beings from themselves. Haig uses this warning as a critique of human behavior.

“Her eyes stared deep into things, as though she was continually searching for something that wasn’t there. Or as if it was there but just out sight. It was as though everything had a depth, an internal distance to it.”

Andrew starts to notice the subtle differences between Isobel and other humans. This quote captures a distinctly human trait: seeing everything with deep meaning. Though Haig maintains his narrator’s neutral tone, there is still a hint of admiration here. Because the extraterrestrial Andrew is so logical and analytical, it is poignant that he notices how metaphorically deep Isobel is. The reader is left to wonder if Andrew sees this because it’s a quality that the human Andrew admired about Isobel (and is therefore deep in his mind somewhere), or if it is the narrator who is starting to develop an appreciation for humankind.

‘“I don’t have a name. Names are a symptom of a species that values the individual self above the collective good.’”

This important quote reveals that the narrator known as Andrew does not have a name on his home planet. He comes from a society that values the collective good, implying that individualism is not compatible with that collective good. This point emphasizes the narrator’s disgust at the way in which human society is run. Where he is from, names are not necessary. Haig invites his reader to question if this extreme form of collectivism is truly good, or if there can be room for both individualism and collectivism.

“Where we are from we understand that if the humans’ rate of mathematical advancement exceeds their psychological maturity, then action needs to be taken. For instance, the death of Daniel Russell, and the knowledge he held, could end up saving many more lives. And so he is a logical and justifiable sacrifice.”

This quote demonstrates that the narrator is struggling with the death of Daniel Russell. Even though his rationality confirms that killing him was the right thing to do, he has never witnessed death before because no one on his planet dies. Daniel’s sacrifice emphasizes the narrator’s society’s commitment to the greater good, but on Earth Andrew is surprised to find how moved he is by Daniel’s death.

“I knew life was going to be easier during my short stay here if Newton was on my side. He might have information, have picked up on signals, heard things. And I knew there was one rule that held fast across the universe: if you wanted to get someone on your side, what you really had to do was relieve their pain. It seems ridiculous now, such logic. But the truth was even more ridiculous, and too dangerous to acknowledge to myself, that after the need to hurt I felt an urge to heal.”

This quote reveals four important developments in the narrator’s characterization. The first is that, though he wants to extend kindness, his primary motivation is to get the dog on his side; even when the narrator is doing something kind, he is operating from his rationality and not from his emotions. Secondly, the narrator states that in hindsight, his line of logic in healing the dog seems “ridiculous.” This statement implies that, after leaving Earth and in writing his report of his time on Earth, he has perhaps changed his mind about his experiences or is analyzing the influence that human society has had on his mind in an immediate way. Third, the narrator believes that the dog has perhaps picked up on knowledge or feelings that the narrator needs to be able to control. This point demonstrates that his species equalizes the value of animals and humans. To the narrator, the dog’s knowledge is as important as that of the humans. Lastly, it seems that the narrator is trying to explain away his desire to extend kindness. The urge to heal is an emotion that juxtaposes his desire to cause pain. This might signify a subconscious feeling of guilt for killing Daniel Russell, which further implies that on Earth, the narrator succumbs to human, potentially irrational emotions about the meaning of life and death.

“That was the remarkable thing about humans—their ability to shape the path of other species, to change their fundamental nature. Maybe it could happen to me; maybe I could be changed; maybe I already was being changed? Who knew? I hoped not. I hoped I was staying as pure as I had been told […].”

The narrator and, by implication, his home planet, had not foreseen the possibility that the narrator could be influenced by human behavior. He has been well-trained and raised to find humans deplorable, yet he notices how quickly emotions challenge his rational nature. Though he acknowledges the possibility that he is changing, the reader can see that he is most definitely starting to feel sympathy for the way humans feel for one another and about themselves. As smart as the narrator is, he misses the dramatic irony that Haig develops for his reader.

“There was no moon from this angle, but I could see a few stars. Suns lighting dead solar systems elsewhere in the galaxy. Everywhere you can see in their sky, or almost everywhere, is lifeless. That must affect them. That must give them ideas above their station. That must send them insane.”

Andrew contemplates the loneliness of humans on Earth. It occurs to him here that because humans can’t see other life in their night skies, it is understandable that they believe they’re the only ones in the universe. This quote and this compassion imply that Andrew is starting to see the universe from the point of view of humans, thus foreshadowing conflict with his mission, as well as more character development for Andrew and, potentially, his own species and planet. The empathy Andrew extends to the human condition could change the way his planet thinks of the worth of humans.

“I wasn’t Andrew. I knew I wasn’t Andrew. But equally, I was losing myself. I was a wasn’t, that was the problem.”

Andrew is steadily dipping into an identity crisis. The more time he spends with the humans, the more he can’t help feeling vulnerable to their emotions and the need for a support system. His rationality is still intact, but it is working together with emotions, which are throwing him off his mission, his identity, and his purpose. Here, Andrew acknowledges that he is now torn between two worlds, two species, two mindsets, and two disparate types of identity.

“Recover. The most human of words, the implication being that healthy, normal life is covering something—the violence that is there underneath, the violence I had seen in Gulliver the night before. To be healthy meant to be covered. Clothed. Literally and metaphorically.”

In this quote, Haig unveils a criticism of human society. Through his narrator, Haig explores humans’ desires to keep everything hidden—not to show their true and most vulnerable selves. Gulliver’s subconscious violence is indicative of a larger issue he is not addressing, a lesson Andrew extends to the shame humans carry around with them. The play on words “recover” (cover again) allows Haig to point out the hypocrisy of our faithful devotion to the idea of recovery.

“That’s what starts to happen, when you know it is possible for you to feel pain you have no control over. You become vulnerable. Because the possibility of pain is where love stems from. And that, for me, was very bad news indeed.”

Here, Haig uses Andrew’s pain to analyze the source of love. At the beginning of the novel, Andrew was very confused about love and its purpose. Now, only a few days after becoming human, Andrew discovers that love comes from vulnerability and the possibility of pain, lack of control, and the reality of the unknown. Now that Andrew understands the source of love, Haig implies that his feelings of care and affection for Isobel and Gulliver are not only real, but also dangerous. His home planet has already warned him with a physical attack, but without realizing it they have pushed him even more towards love. This quote is both a deep reflection on the power of love and a foreshadowing of major conflict as Andrew loses his sense of self.

“I looked at Isobel and I saw a miracle. It was ridiculous, I know. But a human, in its own small way, was a kind of miraculous achievement, in mathematical terms.”

This quote highlights Andrew’s immense character development. He was raised and taught to find humans pitiable and unworthy of help from the universe, but his life among the humans has shown him the very opposite: that humans are all the more amazing because of how pitiable their irrational world is. That humans can survive and even thrive in such a life should be impressive, not shameful. This is an important moment in Andrew’s character development because it is a turning point in his relationship with the entirety of his past life and upbringing. Haig is demonstrating that experience with the humans has changed Andrew so thoroughly that he can never go back to being the rational extraterrestrial he was before.

“The point was also to forget meaning. To stop looking and start living. The meaning was to hold the hand of someone you cared about and to live inside the present. Past and future were myths. The past was just the present that had died and the future would never exist anyway, because by the time we got to it, the future would have turned into the present. The present was all there was. The ever-moving, ever-changing present. And the present was fickle. It could only be taught by letting go.”

This realization about the meaning of love represents Haig’s overall message about the power of love. Life on Earth is difficult; humans face mortality, pain, and suffering that they cannot control or avoid. Love helps you to transcend the pains of life and live as if there is no past or future. Living in the moment is a pure feeling, a pleasure that only humans can enjoy because of the escape from their worries for the future. With this quote, Haig emphasizes the idea that love is integral to a human being’s survival because only with love can humans truly enjoy and uplift their difficult lives.

“Laughter, I realized, was the reverberating sound of a truth hitting a lie. Humans existed inside their own delusions, and laughing was a way out—the only possible bridge they had between each other. That, and love.”

As Andrew continues to adapt to human life, he learns more and more about the way humans cope with their existentiality. This observation about laughter as the sound that comes from the space where truth hits a lie is an interesting one; Andrew sees that laughter is hollow, even though it is a symbol of happiness and lightheartedness. Andrew can see the futility of laughter, yet he also parallels it to love.

“Humans were always doing things they didn’t like doing. In fact, to my best estimate, at any one time only point three percent of humans were actively doing something they liked doing, and even when they did so, they felt an intense guilt about it and were fervently promising themselves they’d be back doing something horrendously unpleasant very shortly.”

This quote reveals two important points. The first is Haig’s commentary on humans’ choice to waste their lives doing things they don’t like to do. Because Andrew is so smart, it is jarring for him to think that he is right about only .3% of people doing something they like to do. It’s a sad thought, one that directly confronts Haig’s human reader. Secondly, Andrew is still talking about humans as “they” instead of “us.” He is still learning about humans, but despite his commitment to Earth, he doesn’t yet consider himself to be one of them.

“What was reality? An objective truth? A collective illusion? A majority opinion? The product of historical understanding? A dream? [...] once humans really study things in depth—whether in the artificially divided fields of quantum physics or biology or neuroscience or mathematics or love—they come closer and closer to nonsense, irrationality, and anarchy. Everything they know is disproved, over and over again.”

When Andrew must confront the true horror of reality, he realizes the secret behind a human’s existential crisis. Once a human has adapted to their norms, their progress or their life throws a new change in their way. The constant flux of relearning and reimagining what we once thought of as certain plays a cruel trick on the human mind. It makes humans feel distant from reality, as if there is no reality at all. What Andrew ultimately understands here is that there can be more than one reality at the same time.

“That is how humans grow old. That is ultimately what creases their faces and curves their backs and shrinks their mouths and ambitions. The weight of that denial. The stress of it. This is not unique to humans. The single biggest act of bravery or madness anyone can do is the act of change.”

Hang comments here on the alienating stress of human life. Though humans are not unique, humans fight their doubts and their fears largely in their own versions of reality. One human simply cannot truly understand the reality of another, thereby making their own reality even more difficult to grapple with. Secondly, this quote represents a return to madness. Madness factors heavily into the first part of this novel, when Andrew is hospitalized for walking around naked in public. Now, Andrew knows that true madness is revolutionary for the human spirit because it embraces change as a necessary propellor for growth and ultimate contentment.

“Happiness is not out here. It is in there.”

This quote is from Andrew’s guide to being a human. This particular piece of advice highlights one of Haig’s messages. Human beings are always looking for their “ideal castle,” but Haig encourages his reader to look inside of their own selves for contentment instead of seeking pleasure from what’s around. Though community, vices, and experiences within the world can be enjoyable, true happiness comes from settling the world within yourself. Andrew knows this firsthand as he is plagued by an identity crisis. Gulliver especially understands this because on the outside there is no discernible reason for his depression, yet he cannot help but be deeply unhappy.

“A paradox: The things you don’t need to live—books, art, cinema, wine, and so on—are the thing you need to live.”

Though the list Andrew gives Gulliver for how to live well is extensive, the idea of a paradox is one that Andrew and Haig return to again and again. Haig proposes that much of human life is based on a paradox, but it is precisely this paradox that makes life interesting and worth living. In this quote, Andrew identifies the necessity of enjoying what humans create. He also seeks to emphasize the difference between being alive and truly living.

“I felt blue with sadness, red with rage, and green with envy. I felt the entire human rainbow.”

This quote is important for two reasons. The first is that Andrew is finally fully immersed in being a human. Humans experience a range of complex emotions throughout their lives, throughout their days, and even within brief moments. How can we live with superior rationality if our minds are constantly feeling many different emotions at once? Secondly, Andrew describes his feelings using similes. The association of color with feeling is a human trait. Because we cannot rationalize the way his home planet can, we use our words to make sense out of the sensations we cannot see. Andrew’s using metaphorical language to express himself means that he has truly become a human being.

“I felt the beautiful melancholy of being human, captured perfectly in the setting of the sun. Because, as with a sunset, to be human was to be in between things—a day, bursting with desperate color as it headed irreversibly toward night.”

This quote contains an important paradox as well as an important metaphor. The words “beautiful melancholy” should not go together, logically. One should cancel out the other. And yet, what Andrew has learned is that paradoxes inform the human experience. Melancholy can be beautiful. The sunset here functions as a metaphor of this paradox and the way in which humans must keep pushing onward through their dark periods. This quote is a profound reflection on the human spirit and its natural desire to persevere.