Vigil
49 pages • 1-hour read
George SaundersVigil
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
The Role of Human Nature in Moral Conversion
Saunders’s novel explores the metaphysics of the human experience, examining what separates humanity from spiritual or divine beings. Within the worldbuilding of his novel, Saunders defines this distinction by introducing the dichotomy of human beings and elevated beings. The latter, though once human, have become radically detached from their former selves, granting them a clear understanding of the universe in harmony with the God that Saunders imagines as the creator of the novel’s world. The novel’s protagonist realizes that she was once Jill “Doll” Blaine, but she resists the revelation for fear of losing her elevated nature. On the other hand, Jill can do little to affect Boone’s repentance while elevated because, in the world Sauders presents, compassion is a virtue of the elevated, while moral judgment and reckoning are a human province. It is only when Jill restores part of her human nature that she succeeds in redirecting Boone’s soul to repentance and changing his destiny.
Saunders portrays Jill’s hybrid nature as something that eludes convention and allows her to perform the functions of each state. When she tries to restore her elevated nature at the goat pen, Jill is surprised to see that the goats are repulsed by her, “propelled [away] by [her] strangeness” (126). Their reaction underscores the dichotomy between humanity and elevation, which, Saunders suggests, contradict each other and cannot coexist. Jill becomes more human when she passes judgment on someone. In her hybrid state, she recognizes her new capacity to apply her elevated powers towards human motivations. When faced with the spirit of Joe, who wishes to abuse his wife, Jill uses her powers to hurt him—something an elevated being cannot do. She does the same thing with the Mels in the novel’s climax to free Boone’s spirit from their custody. Yet later, Jill wonders if she hadn’t been too harsh on the Mels, applying her elevated philosophy of “inevitable occurrences” towards them and feeling compassion.
Jill realizes that human nature, coupled with her elevated status, enables her to think outside of a conventional philosophical framework. As a hybrid spirit, she can still access the understanding that the Mels’ predisposition limited their actions, but had she been fully elevated, she would have felt no inclination to interfere with that inevitability. In this way, Saunders suggests that an elevated understanding of the universe requires one to eschew one's capacity for judgment. However, judgment and other human aspects, he implies, can be useful.
Though Boone continuously resists Jill’s attempts to elevate his soul and detach from his identity as a human being, it is the fear of spending his afterlife with the Mels that finally convinces him to repent. Boone wants to hold on to the glory of his humanity but realizes that he can’t do so without some acknowledgment of the impact his actions have had on others. Either he spends his afterlife with the Mels in a perpetual state of misguided nostalgia, or he chooses to make up for the mistakes he knows he has committed. By choosing the latter, he makes a judgment about himself and acts upon that judgment. Rather than becoming elevated like Jill, Boone finds peace, as the Frenchman does, through atoning for his wrongs.
The Environmental Cost of Industrial Development
The novel argues that systems of power that disproportionately reward industrial development—increasing the wealth and prosperity of the few at the expense of the many—hinder progress rather than advancing it. As characters, Boone and the Frenchman support Saunders’ social critique on the limits of technological and social progress, emphasizing that as the world becomes increasingly reliant on technology to function, it demands an untenable environmental cost. Progress, Saunders argues, must always benefit the common good. Throughout the novel, Boone refuses to admit his complicity in the deaths the oil industry has caused. He claims that his work is necessary for the world to function, considering how much people in the modern world rely on oil—an argument that leverages short-term benefit without acknowledging the negative long-term effects of the extractive industry on the environment, threatening the survival of the human race. For example, Boone argues that without oil, it would be harder for people to access essential social services, like hospitals, schools, or banks. He willfully ignores the emphasis this framing places on the individual in the context of the common good, highlighting his worldview that life depends on transactions. He paid his time and effort in exchange for the respect and power he held as a titan of industry.
The Mels represent the extreme version of Boone’s perspective, exonerating themselves from accountability for their roles in producing the atomic bomb through a cost-benefit framework: bringing an end to the Second World War in exchange for hundreds of thousands of human lives lost when the bomb was detonated. In the afterlife, Jill understands that this worldview is flawed. She believes everyone deserves comfort, regardless of what they have done, arguing that actions are determined by predispositions, underscoring Saunders’ view of the common good in the context of society. A functional society works for the common good at no cost to the individual, while a dysfunctional society makes living transactional: individuals must give something up in order to live.
The Frenchman acts as a counterpoint to Boone. Like Boone, he’s spent his life on technological innovation that increased his individual wealth and influence at the expense of the common good, but unlike Boone, he’s taken accountability for his actions. In his afterlife, the Frenchman recognizes that, despite his contribution to industry, he’s created a “beast.” The Frenchman cannot find peace unless he visits the people who have capitalized on his work to benefit themselves. To convince Boone of the error of his ways, he evokes the beings and entities who pay the cost for Boone’s vision of development, from Mr. Bhuti to the endangered bird species. The Frenchman’s efforts are ultimately successful. At the end of the novel, Boone aligns himself with the Frenchman’s goals and leads the Frenchman to an industry rival whom Boone believes he can convert, reinforcing the novel’s moral argument.
The Tension Between Compassion and Justice
One of the novel’s most prominent motifs is that of the “inevitable occurrence,” a philosophical framework that suggests that all people are born with predispositions that limit their choices. In the world of the novel, free will is not absolute. Everyone is born with the capacity for choice but cannot access the complete range of choices because of the natural limitations of human nature. These limitations distinguish people from one another, so that every person is uniquely suited to make a specific set of choices. As Jill puts it when she inhabits the mind of Paul Bowman and understands his motivations: “Who else could he have been but exactly who he was?” (76). Recognizing that Bowman was predisposed to do what he did allows Jill to empathize with and feel compassion for her own murderer—a posture that conflicts with a demand for justice.
In her elevated state, Jill views Bowman’s idiosyncrasies as evidence of his predisposed nature, making his actions inevitable. Though Bowman is responsible for Jill’s death, Jill also understands how Bowman has been affected by his circumstances. Saunders uses the metaphor of incarceration in this part of the novel to underscore the limitations placed on Bowman’s life path: “… what looked to him like choices had been so severely delimited in advance by the mind, body, and disposition thrust upon him that the whole game amounted to a sort of lavish jailing” (77). Jill's human desire for justice for her death dissipates when she considers the absence of Bowman’s absolute free will. With access to his mind, she sees Bowman’s intentions and understands that he wants to be better but can’t because of the limits his nature imposes on him. She feels more compassion than anger for him, which elevates her spirit and drives her mission to bring comfort to others.
Jill’s mission exposes the wider philosophy that Saunders’s book espouses: True justice is born out of compassion, rather than vindication or revenge. Even after she completes her mission of ushering Boone to death and facilitating his moral conversion, she looks back on her treatment of the Mels and realizes that they, too, were deserving of compassion. Saunders resolves this philosophical tension by attributing Jill’s harsh treatment of the Mels to her human nature. Extending compassion, Saunders suggests, is a divine action, one that requires a person to radically detach themselves from their human inclinations and personal motivations. Jill feels the need to forget her human self before proceeding to her next charge, since Jill must always approach her charges with compassion, regardless of what they have done. It’s only when they are reluctant to admit any faults or regret that she must turn to her human side, which allows her to pass judgment over them and encourage them to moral conversion.
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