Personification and Dehumanization

  In the novel, Ministry of the Future, author Kim Stanley Robinson provides a comprehensive commentary on how human psychology plays a vital role in the battle against climate change. Through the character of Mary, Robinson sets out to humanize the different solutions that economists and AI experts provide her. And even though this is a critical exploration, it is more important to focus on how Robinson simultaneously personifies ideas and concepts and depicts the dehumanization of people by the same things.

Throughout the novel, Robinson dedicates chapters to prescribing human attributes to ideas and concepts. Robinson immediately sets out these chapters at the very beginning of the novel. In the second chapter, he personifies the sun in multiple ways, it is able to “touch” people and “breathe [its] big slow breaths” (13). By giving the sun human-like qualities, Robinson is able to add to the narrative that nature is a living entity that includes the sun. In chapter 46, he describes the market as having bodily functions: “I digested things and turned them to blood” (191) and it “grew so large that I ate the world” (192). A lot of the economic concepts in the book are hard to grasp, so relating the function of the market to the function of the human body allows the reader to understand the concepts by relating them to something people are familiar with.

A running parallel to the personification of things such as the sun and the market are the depictions of dehumanization of people. The extended touch of the sun leaves people for dead and “floating like logs” (12) in Uttar Pradesh, India. Robinson describes Frank as being “poached” and “slow-boiled”, and limbs like “cooked spaghetti” (12). The similes help show the dehumanizing impact of climate change because it reduces people to the fate of dead trees or meals. Furthermore, the refugees in the novel have many dehumanizing experiences. For example, the refugee riot ends with the feeling that they are like “sheep for slaughter” (145). The image created by the word “slaughter” illustrates the horrible conditions that refugees often face in the world. Here, Robinson directly writes about the dehumanization of refugees: “When you lose all hope and all fear, then you become something not quite human” (145). The experience of a refugee often strips away their human qualities because of how poorly they are treated.