51 pages • 1-hour read
Where'd You Go, Bernadette
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Themes
Escapism and Social Withdrawal
The main characters in Where’d You Go, Bernadette all have their own ways of evading unpleasant realities. Bernadette has become socially withdrawn, relying on her internet assistant, Manjula, to carry out even the simple tasks. Bernadette is so afraid of traveling that she is willing to undergo the “emergency” removal of her wisdom teeth to avoid the trip to Antarctica. She also uses prescription drugs to manage her anxiety and depression. Bernadette’s husband, Elgin, sees all these things as symptoms of mental illness, but he is guilty of his own form of escapism—immersing himself in his work at Microsoft and losing touch with his family. Bee romanticizes her family life, comparing the blackberry vines growing up through their floors to the rose briars that protected Sleeping Beauty. Dr. Kurtz, observing the same thing, sees it as indicating “poor reality testing” on the part of the Branch family.
Elgin Branch’s pet project, Samantha 2, offers something not unlike what Manjula offers Bernadette. Samantha 2 consists of a wearable computer chip controlled by the users’ thoughts, allowing the users to operate every other device in their house simply by thinking about it. Dr. Janelle Kurtz describes Samantha 2 as “an extreme version of what [she] find[s] an alarming trend towards reality avoidance” (205). Bee later draws the same parallel, telling her father that he’s spent “ten years of his life and billions of dollars inventing something so people don’t have to live their own lives” (297). Bernadette’s desire to evade the risks and realities of daily life are, the book suggests, simply a more extreme and eccentric form of a widespread urge towards escapism in contemporary society, one that is often cloaked in the idealistic language of technological Utopianism.
Bernadette also engages in another form of escape, walking away from her architectural career, escaping from the house during the intervention, and vanishing from the cruise ship during her Antarctica. The first of these, like her later social withdrawal, is largely an act of evasion, but the latter two create opportunities for reinvention, though at the cost of turning her family’s life upside down.
Vocation and Self-Identity
The idea of vocation, of a strong calling towards a particular form of work, especially creative work, plays a central role in the story of Bernadette Fox. Bernadette has a calling to be an architect, and when she denies it by walking away from her career, she is left anxious and embittered, wasting her energy on her feud with Audrey Griffin and her endless rants about the provincialism of Seattle. The novel describes Bernadette’s journey (a literal journey, all the way to the South Pole) back to her vocation. Paul Jellinek articulates the idea of vocation most strongly, dismissing the reasons Bernadette gives for her abandonment of architecture as “nonsense” and telling Bernadette that she if does not create, she “will become a menace to society” (147). Another minor example in the novel of a powerful sense of vocation is real-life Seattle-based glass artist Dale Chihuly, who has continued to work despite the loss of an eye and a debilitating shoulder injury. Looking up at a Chihuly sculpture hanging in the compound pharmacy she visits, Bernadette thinks about how the artist is probably in his studio at that moment, “with his eye patch and his dead arm, doing the best, trippiest work of his life” (67). Bernadette reconciles her fractured identity—one wrought with anxiety, depression, and fear—when she reclaims her purpose via her new work at the Palmer Station.
The Power of the Mother-Child Bond
Another powerful force in the lives of the characters is the love between parents and children. Bernadette is overwhelmed by the force of her feelings when Bee is born only to be diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart defect. She is willing to offer up her career and creativity to God in exchange for Bee’s life. Bernadette’s choice of a name for her daughter, Balakrishna, represents her view of Bee as a “divine child,” a creator and a destroyer, as well as Bernadette’s determination that Bee will live. She is a devoted mother to Bee even as the rest of her life slides into disrepair. She compares herself to the mother rabbit in The Runaway Bunny, who will run after her child no matter far he goes.
Bee, is fiercely attached to her mother. Initially, she takes her mother’s presence in her life for granted, but after Bernadette’s disappearance, it is Bee who will run after Bernadette. Bee hates it when her mother cries over her accomplishments in public, but after her emotional experience at the Rockettes Christmas concert (in which she sees herself as baby Jesus), she finds herself crying over the first graders’ performance of the baby elephant dance she has choreographed for them. At the same time, she spots her mother watching from the doorway, her last sight of her mother until she goes to find her at the bottom of the world
Religion and Belief Systems
The characters in Where’d You Go, Bernadette are also drawn to systems of belief as a way of making sense of their lives. Religion is a powerful but ambivalent presence in the lives of several of them. Bernadette is an avowed atheist and hostile to those she describes as “Jesus freaks” (165), but she once made a deal with God when the infant Bee was near death. Bernadette also drew on religious inspiration when she names Bee after the infant Balakrishna, and Elgin compares Bee to St. Bernadette, the visionary peasant girl from Lourdes. Bee finds a sense of belonging, however superficial, in her church youth group, and undergoes a powerful emotional experience at a Christmas concert which gives her insight into the appeal of religion as a form of trust in something greater. Audrey Griffin initially embodies a narrow-minded and hypocritical form of Christianity, but later she is able to use her religion as a source of courage and insight.
Other characters draw on other belief systems. Microsoft functions as something like a religion for its employees, embodying an idea of a higher good and bringing order and meaning to their lives. Soo-Lin finds something comparable in VAV (Victims Against Victimization), the self-help group she attends.
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