City of the Beasts

“He felt as if he were trapped in a sci-fi nightmare, in a terrifying megalopolis of cement, steel, glass, pollution, and loneliness.”

Alex’s experience of New York City as frightening and impersonal sets the stage for his coming travel to the even more foreign setting of the Amazon. While New York is cold and manufactured, the Amazon is hot and bursting with nature, but each holds hidden dangers.

“What the book didn’t say was that this vast area, the last paradise on the planet, was being systematically destroyed by the greed of entrepreneurs and adventurers.”

From the outset, Alex is aware that outsiders come to the Amazon with an array of motives, some less pure than others. This knowledge provides important context for the behavior of the characters he meets on the expedition.

“‘Compassion is a modern invention. Our society protects the weak, the poor, the sick. From the point of view of genetics, that is a terrible error.’”

Ludovic Leblanc argues that because the natives fight brutally for dominance and do not have pity for those that don’t survive, their society is wiser than modern society. Indirectly, his statement also supports the troubling notion that because adventurers and entrepreneurs are able to dominate the natives using superior technology, they are within their rights to do so. 

“The jungle seemed to come alive and respond to the sound of the instrument; even the noisy crew and the passengers would fall silent and listen.”

This passage highlights the importance of Alex's flute, one of the book’s most prominent symbols. Notably, it is not just humans who the flute calms and attracts, but also the jungle itself, underscoring music’s power to bind different spheres of being.

“He explained that the indigenous peoples were very spiritual. They believed that everything had a soul—trees, animals, rivers, clouds. For them, spirit and matter were one and the same.”

This emphasis on the spiritual unity of the native peoples foreshadows the transformation that Alex and Nadia undergo when they join the People of the Mist later in the book. They will come to learn the ability to bring their own true spirits into alignment with their material selves, even though Alex does not yet believe in the mysticism that César Santos describes here.

“As a grandmother, she left a lot to be desired; she didn’t even make an effort to answer his questions, because it was her opinion that the only way you learned was to find out for yourself. She maintained that experience was what you learned just after you needed it.”

Although Kate cares about Alex, she expresses her affection almost exclusively through the tough-love approach exemplified here. Eventually, Alex will reflect that in fact this approach to forcing him into new experiences made it possible for him to grow as a person.

“Finding your animal is less important for a woman, because we get our strength from the earth. We are nature.”

Nadia highlights an essential difference between men and women, which Alex will see more starkly when he meets the People of the Mist later on. Building his own identity as a man and examining his own preconceived notions of women are key components of Alex’s maturation. 

“‘Doesn’t it scare you?’ ‘There are various ways to overcome fear, Alexander. None works,’ she replied.”

This exchange between Alex and Kate hints at the novel’s core theme that acceptance of the present moment is the only effective way to overcome difficult emotions or experiences. Fear, like other strong emotions, is acknowledged but essentially rendered meaningless.

“Senses are subjective, Alexander. Something that you find revolting may be attractive to someone else. Maybe the Beast emits that smell as a love song to call his mate.”

The Beast, one of the book’s key symbols, is invoked here as an example of the unknowable, something that can exist in either a positive or a negative light, depending on one’s perspective. The Beast plays this role many times throughout the narrative and is one of the most persistent examples of outward appearance failing to match internal reality.

“He thought how useful the trick of invisibility could be in his life, and determined to learn it. During the next few days he would realize that it was not a question of magic but a talent achieved with great practice and concentration, like playing the flute.”

This passage marks the beginning of a narrative turn in which Alex’s skill in mindfulness turns into a concrete necessity for survival. His ability to concentrate, he will learn, has many practical applications beyond the calming and entertainment purposes he has used it for previously.

“To his amazement, Alex realized that he could pretty much understand as long as he didn’t try, but rather ‘listened with his heart.’ According to Nadia, who had an astounding gift for languages, words are not that important when you recognize intentions.”

As he spends more time with the People of the Mist, Alex’s devotion to rational thinking begins to fall away. Starting with his perception of language, he begins to rely more on his intuition and to trust his innate understanding of new information and experiences. 

“Parents usually promised their girls in marriage at birth, but none was forced to marry or stay with a man against her will. Abuse of women and children was taboo, and anyone who violated that rule lost his family and was condemned to sleep alone.”

Gender and family dynamics as described here are just one way in which the social organization of the People of the Mist seems idyllic and could even be described as more “civilized” than the culture from which Alex and the rest of the expedition come.

“In a movie or a novel, this would be the moment that the helicopters arrived to rescue him and he looked toward the sky, but without hope; in real life, helicopters never came in time.”

Alex’s childish expectations of salvation and justice are increasingly challenged as his journey continues. Here, he comes to terms with his and Nadia’s newfound need to rely on themselves and their own skills rather than the interventions of others.

“The nahab are so crazed that they try to take with them the stones of the earth, the sand of the rivers, and the trees of the forest. Some want the earth itself.”

Walimai’s account of the madness of the nahab underscores that just as some might interpret the natives’ behavior as primitive, so too might those same individuals’ behavior seem nonsensical to the natives. These conflicting perspectives again illuminate the impossibility of passing judgment based on superficial appearance.

“And then the searing pain went through him like a sword, emerged from his back, and, miraculously, he was able to bear it. Alex would never be able to explain the sense of power he felt during that torture.”

The initiation with the fire ants provides an advanced test of Alex’s new abilities to calm his mind and care for himself. Only by accepting pain is he able to conquer it, just as Kate indicated previously when she brought him into new adventures without preparation.

“‘He asks the fish’s permission and explains that he has to kill it out of necessity. Afterward he thanks it for offering its life so we can live,’ she clarified.”

Here, Nadia tells Alex why Walimai is able to catch fish quickly where Alex wasn’t. Her explanation puts forth an alternate vision of problem-solving that contrasts with the forceful methods of those like Mauro Carías. Accordingly,to Nadia and Walimai, clear communication can be as powerful as a strong weapon.

“Destiny was a fact, and there were times you had to jump into an adventure and get out whatever way you could, the way he had when he was four and his grandmother had pushed him into the pool and he had had to swim or else.”

Despite his doubts throughout the journey, Alex is finally compelled to leave his reliance on rationality behind. Where he once resented Kate and the entire expedition for interrupting his life, he is now able to see these events as a meaningful continuation of the life he is meant to live. Alex now views lack of preparation as an asset rather than a liability, which will serve him well in the unpredictable events to come.

“But the giant sloths had not as yet reached the stage of evolution in which they contemplated death, and so had no need of gods. Their infinitely long lives were lived on a purely material plane.”

When Alex and Nadia finally learn the true nature of the Beasts, the mysterious creatures turn out to have the longest memories, and so the broadest perspectives, of any creature known to man. With so much memory to inform them, the Beasts are able to perceive the tribe as magical without feeling the need to worship them. Here, Allende implies that with enough perspective, all gods may become irrelevant.

“This was the absolute space of the divine and of death, the space where even spirit is dissolved. She was the void, empty of desire, of memory. There was nothing to fear. She was outside time.”

Nadia’s experience of complete dissolution during her quest for the crystal eggs is one of the novel’s only mentions of a state of being in which spirit and matter not only combine but cease to exist altogether. Nadia’s feelings here hint that as much as she and Alex learn about the spiritual realm during their journey, there is yet a whole additional realm to be explored still. The fact that Nadia has this experience while Alex does not also suggests that her childhood among nature, possibly combined with her female identity, has given her unique mystical powers.

“This was such an extraordinary experience that he could not trust in reason or logic alone; the moment had come to call on the same resources that had helped him when climbing and playing music, intuition. He tried to imagine how the animal was feeling and concluded that it must be as terrified as he was.”

During his encounter with the giant white bat in the cave of the water of health, Alex goes a step beyond his previous commitment to intuition. He not only attempts to find his own center as he has by this point done several times before, but he also uses that knowledge to reach out and empathize with another creature. In doing so, he not only escapes a dangerous situation but also shows how self-knowledge is a crucial component of genuine compassion.

“In a flash of insight, they realized the terrible trap they had all fallen into: the Rahakanariwa was the epidemic! The death that threatened the tribe was not a mythological bird but something much more concrete and immediate.”

The Rahakanariwa serves as the ultimate example of the tension between myth and reality that permeates the novel. The Rahakanariwa is a symbol of danger, but when Alex and Nadia locate it within Dr. Torres’s vials of vaccinations, they transform the immaterial symbol into a genuine and very present danger. The viruses themselves are dangerous, but the reactions of the tribe and expedition member to the knowledge of the viruses is even more dangerous, resulting in the deaths of Carías and Karakawe, among others.

“What had Carías promised her that would cause her to commit a crime of such magnitude? Was it simply out of love for him, and not for money? Whatever her reason, whether love or greed, the result was the same: hundreds of men, women, and children were murdered.”

The passage highlights the ultimate importance of outcomes over motivations. Just as Alex often wondered why he had to participate in certain aspects of his journey through the Amazon before eventually understanding the path laid out for him, now he and the rest of the expedition are left to wonder why an outwardly lovely person like Dr. Torres would carry out such heinous acts. They don’t have an answer, but they also know that the answer is of little importance compared to the consequences of those motivations. The severity of Dr. Torres’s crime—especially in contrast to her kind demeanor—also sheds light on the immense consequences of the outsiders’ actions in the Amazon, a theme that builds throughout the novel.

“The nahab welcomed her; no doubt they were impressed with her regal bearing and her many wrinkles, proof of how long she lived and of the knowledge she had acquired.”

This passage comes from a short section that reveals the thoughts of Iyomi, the People of the Mist’s chief, during her interactions with the expedition. Her perception of herself as intimidating contrasts sharply with information in previous chapters, in which it is revealed that Carías and Ariosto find her laughable rather than respectable. This contrast illustrates the differing values that the two culturesplace on age and experience, particularly as they relate to the female body and women’s authority.