The Girl with All the Gifts

The debate between reason and emotion is timeless. Humans are capable of both, but the debate implies that one is more vital and perhaps more human than the other. Carey dives headfirst into this argument through the characters of Caldwell and Justineau. Caldwell is objective in the extreme, refusing to acknowledge any truth other than what she can place under a microscope. Even after Melanie risks her own life to save the others, Caldwell can only see her behavior in terms of clinical theories that need testing. She even views her own impending death with detachment, racing to complete her research before the sepsis kills her. Caldwell is both an antagonist and a literary device, serving the author’s thematic purpose as well as giving readers someone to root against.

On the other side of the spectrum is Justineau, ruled by emotion and guilt. While her protectiveness of Melanie may have its roots in the sins of her past, her empathy for all the children is genuine. She sees firsthand the children’s engaged responses to her classroom lessons and cannot disqualify their behavior as merely biological. Whatever else these children may be, they are more than infected brains to be studied. While Justineau’s empathy is admirable and easy to identify with, it is sometimes foolish. When she visits Melanie in her cell without e-blocker, Melanie screams for her to leave, but for a moment Justineau cannot move past her own tender impulses. She cannot see Melanie’s hungry side even while she thrashes about in the throes of ravenous hunger. Similar feelings later prevent Gallagher from killing hungry children even in self-defense, suggesting that empathy can both save and doom us.

Carey gives weight to both sides of the debate, prompting difficult moral questions—e.g. whether a cure is worth the inhumane treatment of innocent children, or whether empathy is sometimes a deadly choice regardless of how good it feels. In the end, Justineau wins the debate, at least insofar as the debate is winnable in this context. Her love for Melanie pays enormous dividends despite its risks. Melanie repays the debt many times over by rescuing the survivors with her courage and cleverness. Also, without Justineau’s nurturing, it’s doubtful that Melanie would have evolved into the wise leader she seems destined to become. In the character of Helen Justineau, Carey pays homage to every caring, supportive teacher who has ever inspired a student to become greater than they imagined they could be. 

The idea that children are innocent and pure, and that whatever sins they commit must be a result of trauma or abusive parenting, is a truism. Carey, however, explores the stark disconnect between adult expectations of how childhood should be and how they fear it could be. The ease with which this fear can spread suggests a predisposition to it. Children are unfathomable at times—they don’t think or act in the ways adults do—and their inner mysteries sometimes lead people to assume the worst. The idea that a child could be “evil” perhaps also reflects anxiety regarding human nature more broadly; if those who haven’t fully internalized societal rules and norms behave savagely, it implies an innate tendency towards violence and cruelty. Lastly, monstrous children flout the human preference for the predictable, since any threat they pose is at odds with their relative physical weakness.

Carey plumbs these fears throughout the novel. The moment when Melanie’s hunger response first activates in the presence of Miss Justineau flings the contrasting views of childhood—sweet and malevolent—directly in the reader’s face. Confronted by a terrifying yet integral part of Melanie’s makeup, the reader must ask whether both extremes are possible in the same child. The image of Melanie defending Justineau like an attack dog against a junker also emphasizes the contrast. Her goal is noble, but Carey’s description paints her as a bloodthirsty animal: “The man—boy, rather—gives a scream that tails off into a liquid gurgle as her jaws close on his throat” (112). When Melanie discovers the gang of feral children outside of London, she is so disturbed—and entranced—by their behavior that she weeps. These feral children, some as young as five, take down Private Gallagher with the discipline of a crack military platoon, gorging themselves on his flesh and leaving only the skeletal remains.

One of the most controversial scenes in George Romero’s 1968 seminal zombie film, Night of the Living Dead, is of a young girl, recently reanimated as an undead zombie, devouring her father. The scene is subversive on several levels, not least of which is the grisly visual of a child, face smeared in blood, eating human flesh. Hollywood has taken this evil child trope and run with it in films like Village of the Damned (1960), The Bad Seed (1956), The Omen (1976), and The Exorcist (1973). While Melanie is more three-dimensional than The Omen’s Damien, experiencing the extremes of her dual nature is unsettling on both a conscious and unconscious level.