There are many aspects of life people wonder about but are oftentimes about our future — our successes and downfalls. The idea of death, though certainly part of our future, has always seemed inevitable and thus, fleeting to even entertain the possibilities of what could happen. However, David Eagleman, author of “Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives,” takes a chance to hypothesize and share 40 possible fates we could have in death.
Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College in Texas, considers himself a “Possibilian.” This type of person is defined by his rejection of just one theory of the afterlife. It’s someone who instead believes that there are many possibilities.
The book in itself is unique. There are multiple categories in which this novel could be appropriated — science fiction, fantasy, philosophy and magic realism — but it is ultimately best described as a collection of cautionary vignettes. Eagleman does not provide a lesson for every fate, in so much that he provides another possibility of the afterlife. However, there is an overarching theme that one can interpret from the book and that is to live your life because the afterlife is questionable.
During the whole book Eagleman does not preach about God but rather shares the ideas that he has hypothesized. While his writing is highly proficient, Eagleman creates further layers by referencing history — Greek mythology, ancient Rome and invaluable literature.
“Mary,” the chapter focusing on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” is one of the best. Eagleman proposes that Shelley is given a throne in heaven because she understood how God felt by creating the character Victor Frankenstein. Because it’s his favorite book, God attaches himself to Shelley because she shows the relationship between a creator and his or her creation. How the creation ultimately becomes a monster that the creator has no control over is likened to God in this vignette. Eagleman crafts a beautiful sentence at the end of the chapter: “Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrought.”
It makes sense then to find that Eagleman, along with his highly prolific science background, majored in British and American literature as an undergraduate.
Every vignette is beautifully written, and even as each ends you continue to think about these same possibilities. “Metamorphosis” is one of those vignettes in particular. Eagleman discusses how in our death there is a downfall to the memory of who we are; mainly because each of us is a memory within a person “we lose control of our lives and become who they want us to be.”
Our afterlife, as Eagleman suggests, could be the same as our current life. The only difference is that the order of those events are jumbled — the pain, the pleasure, the good and the bad are all categorized, and you experience each at one time. Sleeping for decades, months spent at the toilet and pain for countless hours. Eagleman asks the questions about death people may be afraid to admit — that we may relive our lives over again for what could be an eternity. But, of course, this is only one theory of the afterlife.
Rating: W W W W
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