Remarkably Bright Creatures

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-12

Chapters 13-27

Chapters 28-39

Chapters 40-57

Chapters 58-66

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Background

Authorial Context: Listening to the Internal Octopus

Shelby Van Pelt based the character Tova on her late Swedish grandmother, a woman who tried to avoid grief by constantly staying busy. From this grew a story of various characters “swimming” in circles due to their circumstances, and the journeys they take to break free from those constraints.

Despite the very human themes, however, Remarkably Bright Creatures was born from an exploration of an octopus narrator as a writing exercise. Van Pelt drew this inspiration from a viral video that depicted an octopus trying to escape from a tank, which led her to explore more about these animals and what they were capable of. In her article “Lessons Learned from a Year Listening to the Fictional Octopus in My Head,” which appeared on Literary Hub in May 2022, Van Pelt relates how exploring the character of Marcellus gave her another lens through which to view human strengths and weaknesses.

Listening to her internal Marcellus helped Van Pelt take a hard look at her day-to-day life and the human propensity for justifying damaging behavior: “The longer I spent with my octopus-narrator, the more I caught myself viewing humans through his lens. And the more I found myself exasperated by human behavior, including my own.” Through this period of self-discovery, Van Pelt learned that an external, anthropomorphic perspective allows people to see the habits they take for granted as if for the first time. In the novel, Marcellus sees things in simplistic, literal terms, eschewing the human tendency to overcomplicate things. While the book opens with his perspective, the central thread is not his journey; it’s the way he can encourage people to look at their own behavior in a new way.

Cultural Context: Ethics of Rehabilitation and Animal Captivity

Terry raises an important ethical conundrum when he says, “‘Don’t get me wrong, we try our best … But look at Marcellus. We saved his life when we took him in, but he’s never been happy to be trapped in a tank’”(314). Although Sowell Bay is a fictional town, aquariums are a staple in similar Pacific Northwest cities like Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. The ethics, transparency, and sustainability of these establishments have been hotly debated.

While many governments have laws in place to protect wild animals, America’s Animal Welfare Act has been criticized for its oversight of marine mammals. Laws regarding animal welfare in aquarium environments can vary by state and country and tend to be less regulated than laws concerning other animals. Aquariums have faced hard criticism for their insufficient space, their prioritizing of profit over animal welfare, and the treatment of what Marcellus calls the “prisoners.” In extreme cases, this can even lead to extremely dangerous situations: One famous example is the orca whale Tilikum, who began his captivity in Victoria, British Columbia and was later moved to an aquarium in Florida. Tilikum killed three people, including two employed trainers; this behavior has been suggested to be at least partly attributable to the unbearable psychological stress of Tilikum’s captivity .

It’s been argued that aquariums offer necessary education to the public about marine life as well as rehabilitation opportunities for damaged sea creatures like Marcellus. In the case of Remarkably Bright Creatures, Marcellus might have died as a result of his injuries if he hadn’t been rescued by Terry. However, Marcellus was never re-released into the wild after he was healed, raising ethical questions about the rescue practice and the disruption of the ocean’s natural order.