Second Nature

Second Nature is narrated by Bodie, a boy of almost fourteen who has spent his entire life inside an isolated forest community called the Veil. At first, Bodie does not understand his society as oppressive. To him it is the whole universe: strange, beautiful, ecologically elaborate and saturated with religion. The community believes humanity almost destroyed itself and the planet during the “Second Fall,” after which Christ transformed from male to female in order to correct the primordial error of male dominion. The inhabitants call women “Edens.” God is female—Christ, “our Mother”—and is believed to inhabit the body of one particular woman, the Great Eden, currently Eden Ensia. The Veil itself is supposedly protected by divine love. To leave voluntarily would be to abandon God’s protection and effectively die.

The society has abolished many forms of individuality in the name of preventing domination. Children have rotating mothers rather than permanent parents. Preference is considered dangerous because loving one person or thing more than another can become possession. Physical affection is rationed according to psychological assessments. Personal belongings are forbidden. Jobs and education are strictly divided according to sex. Girls—the Edens—have considerably more freedom and eventually become adult members of the community. Boys move through four phases of life and are expected first to undergo mysterious sexual “fulfillments” and later a mysterious “release,” usually at around sixteen. Nobody speaks openly about what either process entails.

Bodie is unusual even within this unusual society. He is dreamy, intensely curious and considered slightly foolish by others. He loves identifying colours, especially the Veil’s catalogue of eighty-six named shades of green, and has previously taught a low-status class called Greens. To his astonishment he is appointed to teach Origins, one of the community’s important ideological subjects. The elder Edens claim this is because he transformed Greens into something meaningful and because younger boys trust him. Yet Bodie worries that Origins has actually been given to him because it is intellectually empty: all he is doing is repeating beliefs everybody has memorised since childhood.