88 pages • 2 hours read
Geoff RodkeyWe're Not from Here
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Dangers of Misinformation
Throughout We’re Not From Here, characters receive misinformation that causes confusion—the opposite of what information should do. This misinformation leads to misunderstandings and tensions on both a personal and societal level, as Lan’s family struggles to make sense of Zhuri propaganda regarding emotions and violence.
Following the Nug massacre, the Zhuri traditionalist government decided that suppressing emotions would prevent any future violent outbursts. On paper, Zhuri are never supposed to create smell or encourage others to do so. In practice, however, Zhuri have emotions and produce smell frequently. Likewise, in Chapter 7, Lan observes that “for a planet that everybody claimed was peaceful, there seemed to be an awful lot of violence” (68). To the extent that the Zhuri recognize their own violence and emotionality, they scapegoat humans for them; many Zhuri have thoroughly absorbed the government’s propaganda, so they need to find a way to reconcile the obvious with this misinformation.
The Zhuri media supports this widespread acceptance of the government’s claims. The Zhuri news station reports on human violence at several points in the book. Initially, these reports consist of violent images cherry-picked from Earth’s past to portray humans at their most violent. Once Lan’s family lands on the planet, the news transitions to manipulating footage of Lan’s family—e.g., the attack at Lan’s father’s place of work. Those at the scene reported that a Zhuri, not Lan’s father, was the violent one, but this message doesn’t suit the Zhuri’s purpose; by only showing key moments, the media makes it appear as if the human caused the violence. Similarly, Lan and Ila are portrayed as violent criminals in later chapters simply for trying to protect their family and the humans waiting to land on Choom. In reality, the Zhuri are the ones being violent, and since the news has no actual footage of Lan and Ila behaving aggressively, it blames the humans for causing emotion, even though the Zhuri are responsible for their own states of mind.
Similar dynamics play out on a small scale among Lan’s friends. In Chapter 9, Hooree refers to Marf and Ezger as criminals and warns Lan to stay away from them. In the following chapters, however, Marf and Ezger prove to be better friends to Lan’s family than the Zhuri have been. While Marf technically is a criminal because she sells illegal material, she is not dangerous or terrible as Hooree implies. It takes several chapters for Lan to realize Marf and Ezger are not the enemy.
Misinformation leads to confusion, impaired decision-making, and even violence—the very thing the Zhuri government is seeking to suppress—by stirring up fear and anger towards humans. By contrast, the final chapter of the book shows Lan and Naya’s multispecies talk show, which offers perspectives from all of Choom’s races, giving viewers more complete information and facilitating harmony between the different peoples.
We Can Be Both Brave and Scared
In Chapter 12, Lan’s mom says, “[C]ourage doesn’t mean we ignore our fear” (117). Rather than ignoring or eliminating fear, true bravery means acting despite being afraid. Within the novel’s dystopian society, bravery often means standing up to injustice despite the threat of violent retaliation, but it can also mean sticking to one’s beliefs even when implementing them might disadvantage one personally.
From the moment they awaken after their journey to Choom, Lan’s family faces scary situation after scary situation and must choose to be brave rather than allow the Zhuri to frighten them into leaving. The attack when Lan’s family first lands and the steady stream of protests afterwards frighten them, but even though they’re scared, they continue to go to work and school, trying to fit in despite knowing a large portion of society doesn’t want them there. Ila shows particular courage during the swarm in the book’s final chapters. She is the most fearful character throughout the book, and she claims she can’t sing without a guitar to back her up. After her guitar is destroyed, she overcomes both her fear of the Zhuri and of singing unaccompanied to use her voice to calm the swarm, save her family, and win acceptance for the humans on Choom.
After the Nug massacre, the Zhuri government passed laws against showing or promoting emotions. While the majority of the population agrees or pretends to agree with these laws, many Zhuri—such as Leeni, Lan’s teacher, and the school’s principal—do not believe the laws are best for Zhuri society. Though the risk of arrested frightens them, they overcome this fear to stand up for their belief that there is good in emotions. Similarly, the majority of Zhuri believe humans are violent. Challenging this government-enforced belief gets the principal in trouble and makes Leeni wary of defying the government, but they both do so because their conviction that humans are good outweighs their fear of disagreeing with those in charge.
Even before Marf meets Lan, she has been defying the government by selling content meant to elicit emotions. She doesn’t agree with the Zhuri laws regarding emotions, and while she might be afraid of what will happen should her actions be discovered, she is sure that distributing emotional content is the right thing to do. Her conviction in her belief gives her the courage to face the possibility of arrest. However, where other characters mostly show bravery by resisting injustice despite the risks of doing so, Marf also shows bravery by accepting necessary change even at personal cost. At the end of the book, she is afraid of the government changing hands because it might mean the destruction of her illegal business, but she’s brave enough to understand that her individual well-being isn’t more important than the welfare of the entire planet.
Bravery comes in many forms. Ila shows bravery by doing things that scare her despite her fear, and Leeni displays courage by quietly defying the government. Marf’s courage is of a more intellectual type—having the courage to look past her own needs to the best outcome for all. We’re Not From Here shows all these types of bravery and makes it clear no one type is better than any other.
Being Truthful With Ourselves Lets Us Grow
The main conflicts of We’re Not From Here stem from groups not acknowledging truths about themselves. By doing so, they harm not only themselves but all those around them.
An early example of the consequences of self-deception occurs when Jens and his family decide to return to Earth. Their choice is not based on a frank assessment of reality; those with scientific expertise warn that the planet is uninhabitable. However, the family fears settling on Choom, and they therefore convince themselves that the scientific assessment might be wrong. Beyond ignoring external evidence, they are ignoring their own emotions and the fact that those emotions are driving their decision-making. This has disastrous consequences, as the novel implies that the people who return to Earth do not survive.
Most of the self-deception in the novel involves the capacity for violence. In Chapter 14, Marf’s parents explain to Lan’s family that the Zhuri blame humans for inciting emotions because they refuse to admit their own emotionality. After the Nug massacre, the Zhuri did not want to believe they were capable of such violence, and to ease their guilt, they blamed the Nug’s art and music for eliciting emotions. The humans also have an artistic and musical culture, which frightens the Zhuri because they fear a repeat of what happened with the Nug. Rather than admit to themselves that their anger got the better of them, the Zhuri blame the humans, citing humans’ violent past as a reason for disliking them. However, the humans also lie to themselves. From the moment they arrive at Choom, the humans insist they are peaceful and will not bring violence to the planet.
While this may be true of these particular humans, they don’t acknowledge the violence that led them to leave Earth in the first place. Like the Zhuri, the humans deny their past, choosing instead to focus solely on the image of themselves they want others to see. If Lan’s family had been honest about humanity’s violent tendencies from the beginning, the Zhuri might have not been so distrusting; denying the obvious only lends credence to the idea that one will lie or ignore other things.
The Ororo represent the possibility of evolving past violence, but not because they have lost the capacity for anger or fear; rather, they are extremely intelligent, and their vast understanding of themselves and others allows them to recognize but set aside their violent tendencies, which they know will only cause strife. Animals (humans and other intelligent species included) will always have a primal urge to defend themselves and what is theirs. The Ororo have accepted this, and their honesty with themselves allows them to live peacefully in the understanding that it’s all right to have violent thoughts so long as they don’t act on them.
The novel suggests that while people can lie to others, they cannot successfully lie to themselves; trying to deny one’s own nature only leads to internal dissonance. The Zhuri and humans are uncomfortable with themselves because they tell themselves one thing while sending a different message to those around them. By contrast, the Ororo are honest both to themselves and others, which in and of itself reduces the likelihood that they will react violently, as they do not experience the constant stress of self-deception.
