Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

The Bigfoots are the novel’s antagonists. Their leader is a female Bigfoot whom Kate names Alpha. Alpha consequently becomes Kate’s rival, and Alpha’s death signals the end of the narrative conflict between Greenloop and the Bigfoot clan.

Brooks uses sociobiological realism to keep the Bigfoots’ intentions ambiguous. The novel depicts them as having hominid intelligence and, consequently, frequently refers to the behavior of hominid species like apes and chimpanzees to provide points of comparison to understand the Bigfoots’ actions. However, the novel distances itself from establishing a definitive interpretation for their actions. Schell frequently offers her own theories for what the Bigfoots’ wood-knocking and rock-throwing activities mean, which range from intimidation to scattering groups of prey. Frank and Morgan likewise reference the evolutionary history of the Bigfoots to suggest their larger objectives. These theories underscore the inscrutability of the Bigfoots, indicating the possibility that the Bigfoots have no awareness of the thoughts or feelings they inspire among the Greenloop residents.

In Chapter 17, the entire Bigfoot clan appears in full for the first time. Kate distinguishes the clan members by assigning names to them based on their physical appearance and perceived roles within the clan, such as Alpha, Consort, Gray, Dowager, Princess, and the Twins. While these distinctions help clarify the plane of action whenever multiple Bigfoots interact with the Greenloop community, they also reinforce the idea that the Bigfoots live according to a social hierarchy. The Twins defer to Alpha when she breaks up their brawl over food in Chapter 12. Scout reports back to Alpha when the Greenloop residents hear Vincent’s screams in Chapter 16. After the Bigfoots kill Yvette in Chapter 22, the clan waits for Alpha to distribute her meat before entering a frenzy.

The relationship between Kate and her husband, Dan, is strained by their shared passivity. Chapter 2 reveals that Frank suggested the Hollands’ move to Greenloop in the hope of expediting the end of their marriage. However, the state of the Hollands’ marriage at the start of the novel suggests the potential for renewal. In this sense, Dan functions as a romantic interest for Kate, giving her emotional motivation to grow and fight for their survival in Greenloop.

Initially, Dan is characterized by his listlessness. In Chapter 3, Mostar deduces that this is an outcome of his privileged upbringing, as his parents never allowed him to experience failure and become resilient. The direct cause of Dan’s listlessness is his failure to maintain a tech business, which would have been the first step in a larger plan to develop an analogue to San Francisco’s Silicon Valley in Los Angeles. Mostar helps resolve this issue by giving Dan things to do after the Rainier eruption, which include laying the foundations for Kate’s garden and learning how the smart home system works. Unlike Kate, Mostar’s proactive personality enables her to challenge Dan. By Chapter 7, Dan begins to absorb Mostar’s initiative by setting out to clean his home’s solar panels.

Dan’s ascent to village handyman signals a reorganization of priorities, which Kate observes when she points out that he prided himself on the idea of being an entrepreneur rather than a manual laborer. The maintenance tasks make Dan feel needed in an environment where his past failures no longer matter. In fact, his technical skills enable him to occupy a greater role in the community hierarchy than Tony Durant, the eco-entrepreneur who founded Greenloop. By the novel’s end, Dan’s skills are essential to Greenloop’s defense strategy: He triggers the house systems to self-destruct, trapping the Bigfoots as they advance.

Kate and Dan’s mutual growth results in the renewal of their relationship in Chapter 8. When Kate starts an accidental fire and experiences a mental health crisis, Dan consoles her, which leads to sex. By Chapter 10, Kate observes that they’re engaging in genuine communication, sustaining the progress of their renewed bond. Consequently, Kate reacts to Dan’s death at the end of the novel with grief, marking the emotional toll of the narrative conflict on her life.

As both a mentor and a maternal figure to Kate and Dan, Mostar inspires them to grow out of their passive behaviors and adopt more resilient personalities. Mostar is introduced as Greenloop’s artist-in-residence. It’s implied that Greenloop’s corporate backer, Cygnus, sponsors her residence because she’s working to incorporate their 3-D glass printing technology into her practice. This indicates why she doesn’t fit into Greenloop’s social environment. Most of her neighbors have come to seek the urban escapism that Greenloop promises, ignoring the realities that a forest lifestyle would demand from them if Greenloop’s convenience-driven systems were to fail. Mostar, conversely, favors practicality, acknowledging the harsh realities of the environment surrounding them.

Mostar’s survivalist personality is shaped by her experiences in the Bosnian War. Chapter 24 includes the transcript of a radio interview in which Mostar explains how she took her artist name from her home city, the site of a recurring siege that extended from 1992 to 1994. Her maternal relationship to the Hollands is evident in the ways she challenges them to adopt a more proactive lifestyle in Greenloop. She pushes Dan to help her and Kate carry her groceries, and she teaches Kate survivalist skills like how to harvest rabbit meat for food and how to craft defensive spears from bamboo. When the Bigfoots launch their first bombardment on Greenloop, Mostar rushes to the Holland residence, calling them “kids” and referring to them maternally as “Katie” and “Danny.” Consequently, Mostar functions as a surrogate for the mother with whom Kate had a negative relationship, allowing Kate to overcome the passivity and internalized misogyny she developed during her upbringing. After Mostar dies, Kate often thinks about what her mentor would think of her actions, allowing her to embody Mostar’s survivalist legacy.