Scientific Knowledge

The novel presents scientific knowledge as being inferior to the ambiguous mysteries of the universe and the great unknown. The narrator begins her university career as a scientist at the zoological department where she studies under the much acclaimed professor, who is universally praised as being brilliant and unrivaled in his knowledge of beasts. The narrator leaves the university because she cannot look upon beasts with the clinical objectivity required of scientists in her field: “their faces are the same as ours.’ This was my Achilles heel, the reason I hadn’t been able to complete my training as a zoologist, the reason I had ended up with the laughable, shameful profession of a novelist instead” (51). While the professor has no qualms about dissecting beasts or euthanizing them if they become problematic, the narrator is incapable of doing this because she cannot put her scientific...