Roadside picnic and not being able to think

The Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic (Orion House, 2012) is very good. This is an early example of a sci-fi novel in the postapocalyptic mood. The scientists helplessly try to understand an alien technology, but it remains a riddle. A mood of resignation sets in. The zone around the mysterious object is shunned and quaranteened. Left as a landscape of poisonous ruins, dangers, death. Stalkers gather the stuff illegally. 

Reading the final scene I had the sensation of reading something quite new, something rarely expressed in literature. What was it? It's not about the religious language, which is commonplace. It has to do with the protagonist, Red, and the sudden inability to think which he experiences. To start with, I think its clear that he embodies an experience and a longing that is easy to recognize for anyone who's been to elementary school, in particular in a class where many have a working class background. I am reminded of the "lads" in Paul Willis' Learning to Labour, whose very rebelliousness gets them stuck in low-wage jobs or unemployment. Red is similar: stuck in unfavorable structural conditions and constantly chased by moralizers and the police. He is tough, violent and courageous but at the same time a humiliated underdog – just listen to this passage

But how do I stop being a stalker when I have a family to feed? Get a ob? And I don’t want to work for you, your work makes me want to puke, you understand? If a man has a job, then he’s always working for someone else, he’s a slave, nothing more… (p. 192).

One of his primary experiences is that of constant humiliation. He is forced to pretend, bend and bow, try to say pleasing things to people in authority, humiliated by life, by bad luck, by being "born as riffraff." His forays into the zone has thrown his family life into disarray: his daughter Monkey is a mutant and his undead father has risen from the grave to live in his apartment. He spends time in prison, drinks heavily and often uses violence (but only against other men). But he is not broken: he has his toughness, his hatred and his will to get even, and above all he has moments of generosity, compassion and courage - even though he berates himself for those moments. Despite knowing how dangerous it is to be kind in a hard, unfair and ungrateful world, he instinctively helps people around him, like Kirill and even the undeserving Gutalin. He's "good," as his friend Noonan says. 

Near the end, when he and Arthur, after hellish hardships, aching and death-weary, arrive at their goal — the golden sphere in the zone that is said to to fulfill one's innermost desires — he is confronted for the first time with the need to think, and discovers that he cannot. He cannot think in the sense of really finding the right words for what needs to be done and that need to be said. I recognized myself in it. That was well described. Before his eyes, the young Arthur has just died, after foolishly running towards the sphere while jubilantly shouting: "Happiness for everyone! Free!"

Well, that’s done, he thought unwillingly. The road is open. He could even go right now, but it’d be better, of course, to wait a little longer…. In any case, I need to think. I’m not used to thinking – that’s the thing. What does it mean – “to think”? “To think” means to outwit, dupe, pull a con, but non of these are any use here…

All right. The Monkey, Father… Let them pay for everything, may those bastards suffer, let them eat shit like I did… No, that’s all wrong, Red. That is, it’s right, of course, but what does it actually mean? What do I need? These are curses, not thoughts. He was chilled by some terrible premonition and, instantly skipping the many arguments still lying ahead, ordered himself ferociously: Look here, you redheaded asshole, you aren’t going to leave this place until you figure it out, you’ll keel over next to this ball, you’ll burn, you’ll rot, bastard, but you aren’t going anywhere.

My Lord, where are my words, where are my thoughts? He hit himself hard in the face with a half-open fist. My whole life I haven’t had a single thought! (p191)

Yet, ever the tough guy, he drags himself towards the sphere, dizzy and sweaty, as his thoughts go into overdrive.

And he was no longer trying to think. He just kept repeating to himself in despair, like a prayer, “I’m an animal, you can see that I’m an animal. I have no words, they haven’t taught me the words; I don’t know how to think, those bastards didn’t let me learn how to think. But if you really are – all powerful, all knowing, all understanding – figure it out! Look into my soul, I know – everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I’ve never sold my soul to anyone! It’s mine, it’s human! Figure out yourself what I want – because I know it can’t be bad! The hell with it all, I just can’t think of a thing other thant those words of his – HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE, AND LET NO ONE BE FORGOTTEN!” (p. 193)

And what exactly is thinking if not this?

So what - whose - predicament is being addressed here? The working classes? Not only them. The book is science fiction, but not of the "hard" kind. There is no trust in progress here, no naive belief in humanity's mission to conquer the stars. Humanity as such is humiliated. Hence the title, the "roadside picnic". Whatever arrived didn't even bother to try to make contact, didn't perhaps even notice human civlization. It left its refuse behind, just like picnicers leave their dirty garbage behind on the roadside, for insects and other lifeforms to explore. So in a sense, a more general audience is intended here. The mass of humlliated people? And today, in view of the dead end of our industrial civilization, maybe that is us.