Story Review: "The Rememberer" (link at end of review -- pls feel free to read and come back) is a very short story that seeks to open up the world, to provoke thoughts, ideas, wonder. Bender makes little effort to direct our understanding of the story, encourages free ranging thoughts about it. Ben says, "We're all getting too smart ... there's too much thought and not enough heart ... we think far too much." It's true, humans were never meant to be this smart, no animal was meant to have so much effect on the world. We have created weapons that can make the world uninhabitable, we pollute the entire planet, we destroy ourselves even as we wipe out other species. The narrator goes to a college to consult an "old biology teacher," but science is not the answer, science has no answers, providing just an inaccurate mess. We are not the crown of creation, but have "become death, the destroyer of worlds." Perhaps one answer to the sorrow this future causes, is to go a different direction, become less human, to defect from the breed of destruction. But this devolution is also suicide (is this all a parable about sadness and suicide -- perhaps, but probably not). As Ben becomes progressively less human, he is less Ben, less the being that the narrator has a connection to, until she has to just let him go (hmmm, back to the suicide parable ... ?). Although we are a horribly destructive race, with no end of massive crimes against humanity and the planet, it is also, unredeemable as we are, who we are and all we've got. [5★]
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?v=QSk6MfEtywU&event=video_description&redir_token=2DCWs6p1xU6Lvo4Z1EUvEINF_DV8MTUyNDQyOTMxOUAxNTI0MzQyOTE5&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.missourireview.com%2Farticle%2Fthe-rememberer%2F
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