43 pages • 1 hour read
Blake CrouchRecursion
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Corruption through Power
From the first time the chair sends Reed back in time, Helena is deeply concerned about how humanity will use its power. Slade repeatedly asks her if she wants to change the world with him, but it isn’t until Helena understands the chair’s true capabilities that she realizes it will fundamentally change the world. Once she realizes this, Helena deeply disagrees with using the chair for any purpose other than seeking to erase alternate timelines and prevent the chair from ever existing. Slade’s backstory seems to confirm that the chair’s power attracts dangerous and corrupt individuals.
John Shaw has a radically different interest in the chair. He wants to use time travel to erase atrocities and make the world a less violent place. Like Slade, however, he fails to grasp how dangerous the chair is until it’s too late. Since John works for a governmental body, higher-ups quickly control his work for political gain, and other countries and terrorist eventually recreate it. Even before this happens, however, Helena notices that some of the people they save from violent attacks suffer mental disturbances after gaining the alternate memories. John’s refusal to accept that the chair is creating harm shows that even in the most well-meaning hands, power corrupts.
Intellectual Property and Control
Although Helena is the chair’s inventor, she spends a good portion of the novel fighting for control over it. By going back in time and hiring Helena to create the chair, without letting her know that she already created it once, Slade essentially steals the chair from her. At first, Slade needs Helena to make the chair, lacking the knowledge to do it himself. After watching her and her team make the chair once, however, Slade pieces together enough information from memories to make the chair himself. Even though Helena conceived, designed, and built the chair, Slade manages to steal her design and thinking so effectively that she has no control over who can recreate the project.
After creating the chair for Slade, the only time Helena controls it again is when she remakes it secretly for personal use. When she is employed by DARPA and John Shaw, Helena is kept as a prisoner in a New York one-bedroom apartment. John wants her to believe she is an equal member of the team, but she still has no power to control or destroy her own invention.
Acceptance of the Past
In Recursion, time travel is compelling to many of the characters because they have aspects of their lives they want to change. Many characters want to use the chair for personal reasons: to be more successful at work, to end a relationship that went on for too long, or to earn more money. Slade capitalizes on this desire by founding Hotel Memory, marketing the services of the chair to people who want a second chance at life. Even John Shaw, who doesn’t want to use the chair for personal gain, wants to use it to alter events that he can’t accept. Helena comes to believe that the chair needs to be destroyed, and that everyone who wishes to use it needs to learn to accept events as they happened.
Acceptance is also a major theme in Barry’s character arc. Like many of the characters, Barry regrets certain aspects of his life. At the beginning of the novel, Barry wishes he could save Meghan’s life and work harder in his relationship with Julia. When Slade captures Barry in Hotel Memory and forces him back in time by killing him in the present, Barry feels enormous gratitude for the chance to live his life again. When Meghan eventually regains memories of her own death and commits suicide, however, Barry painfully realizes that altering the past is never as simple as it seems. By the end of his arc, Barry accepts his life and the reality of Meghan’s death, and is able to appreciate the love he has experienced without wishing to change it.
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By Blake Crouch
