The Theme of Becoming Human in The Host

Stephenie Meyer is mostly known about her best-selling saga, The Twilight. She founded her fame with the publication of The Twilight in 2005, and the sequels came year by year. She is also the one who created the world of The Host that had been made into a movie just recently. (Bio) There are many similarities between her works, however, The Host is science-fiction and deals with more serious questions then a love triangle. This paper will focus on the theme of becoming human in the novel. The basic story of the book is that the body-snatcher aliens called souls took over the Earth. The reader get to know the story of Melanie Stryder, who was one of the rebels, but eventually her body was taken as well. However, she refuses to fade away, stays in the body. The alien called Wanderer/Wanda and Melanie gradually become friends and together find the base of the rebels. Most part of the rest of the story is about how the small community of rebels accepts Wanda, till she becomes one of them. The way Wanda loses his alien features and becomes more and more human can be followed through the novel. Wandas transformation is mainly showed in the novel through her actions. There are a number of these that makes the reader see her as human, and makes the people in the novel consider her as human. The first one of these is what basically starts the story, namely that she goes to find Melanies family. If she wanted she could have resisted Melanies will, but she did not. Wanda probably had an idea what would wait for her among the escaped people, but she was driven by the need to see Jamie and Jared. Even though she knew that they cannot possibly like her or accept her at all, she longed for their love, which is a very human feature. But it is not only the longing for love, but Wanda does love others, like Jared or Jamie. When Ian and Kyle tries to attack her in her cell, she is more concerned about Jared (who was her guard at that point) than herself (Meyer 131). It is also partly because of Melanie, but just

before the attack, Melanie and Wanda figured out that Wanda also likes Jared, although it turns out later, that it is only love towards a friend. Another kind of love unusual for souls the love mothers feel. Wanda explains that giving birth is different for her species, because new souls are born from the million cells of a mother soul. This way the mother does not exist anymore as a whole entity after giving birth. Wanda gets to feel this love, which is described by Melanie as irrational too many emotions involved. (Meyer 127) Wanda feels this way towards Jamie (Melanies brother), at one point she even puts this feeling in words: I wanted to be sure that he was really here, really safethat they were feeding him and caring for him the way Melanie never could again. The way I, mother to no one, wanted to care for him. (129) This feeling also seems to spread on the Earth. One day, when people go into the city to get some supplies, they see a couple (both of them souls) with a small human child, because they did not want to give the child up (447). Wanda gradually becomes part of the community, people start to talk to her, she tells stories about her previous lives and basically becomes friends with the members of the group. When Jamies leg is seriously infected, she goes for alien medicine. She risks her own live for one single person. As she turns out to be reliable, the group decides that she can go out more often in the future and help to get supplies. She basically becomes a full and precious member of the group. One thing that also proves that Wanda became human is that she falls in love with Ian. It was not the body, but herself. The Melanies body obviously loves Jared, and when Wanda is put into another body, she feels the same towards Ian. That is very unusual for a soul, because it is implied that they do not have their own feelings, but keep those that the body has. That is why people who were a couple as humans, stay a couple, even when they are taken by souls.

At some point, Ians brother Kyle wants to kill Wanda, and as they fight Kyle almost slips into the river, which means certain death. It is only the two of them, no one can see or hear them, so it would be the perfect opportunity for Wanda to get rid of one of her enemies (as Kyle is the strongest opponent of Wanda staying with them). However, she petties him and saves him. Even later, she comes up with the cover story that Kyle did not attack her, just accidentally slipped to save him from the anger of the others. Taking mercy is also a very human trait. The thing that probably makes Wanda the most human, when she requests that after removing her from Melanies body, they should bury her next to her friend, Wes. She said that she could not stand the idea that when she would arrive to another planet, everybody whom she loves is dead. However, she needs to leave Melanies body, because it is not a normal life either for Melanie or her. Wanda was willing to risk her live previously, but this time she wants to sacrifice herself for a friend. At the end of the novel, Wanda and her friends meet another group, who has a soul with them. They greet each other, and as they speak, none of them mention the presence of an alien for a while. When introducing the present members of the group, Jared just list everybody, regardless of their being human or alien. It is partly because Wanda belongs to them, they look at her as there is nothing special about her. It is the same with the other group who has Burns. The leader of the other group puts it into words, why and how Burns managed to go native (Meyer 519): He's my best friend saved my life a hundred times. He's one of our family, and we don't take kindly to it when people try to kill him. (519) He talks about him as one would just talk about a normal human being. It seems that through the process of Wanda becoming human, the people also learnt something: acceptance. They also become more humanistic so to say. In the world taken by aliens people moved away from the traditional human values. Since they met Wanda, they

have become closer to that humanity they had before the invasion. This phenomenon is not unique, according to the book Aliens - The Anthropology of Science Fiction, getting in connection with the alien can result in man interacting with the alien to the point of altering his own shape in the process. (8) The humanization of Wanda can be contrasted by the behavior of the Seeker. As Istvan Csicsery-Ronay says [a]liens are necessary because the human species is alone. The lack that creates them is an Other to whom we can compare ourselves. Many fundamental qualities of spirit/mind appear to exist only in us, so we have nothing to measure them with, to allow us to see our limits, our contours, our connections. (Csicsery-Ronay 5) This comparison is also present in this case. Even though the Seeker is in the same situation as Wanda and Melanie, that is that the original soul stayed in the body, she behaves completely differently. She does not became either a human, nor a friend of human, but their deadly enemy. At some point of the novel, Wanda mentions that the Seeker is very different from the other souls as well, and she is the most confrontational (Meyer 54) she had ever met. Although souls do not hate, the Seeker was impossible to like (55), and it was not only because Wanda felt Melanies feelings, but mostly because the Seeker was so alien, so unhuman. However, the main difference between the Seeker and Wanda is the way they behave. The Seeker becomes obsessed with catching Wanda and would do anything for it. While Wanda learned a value system that there would be a limit beyond which she would not go. Their name implies this difference as well. While Wanda got a human name, she previously had another name, Wanderer, the other soul is always mentioned with the descriptive name, Seeker. In conclusion, Stephenie Meyer shows the steps of becoming human. Wanda gradually develops from an alien to a human being as she starts to act and feel like a human. This makes

the group to accept her and treat her as a normal person who is just part of the group. This transformation seems even more emphasized compared with the behavior of the Seeker, who is completely alien in terms of feelings and moral codes.

Works Cited "Bio." The Official Website of Stephenie Meyer. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr. "Some Things We Know About Aliens." The Yearbook of English Studies 37.2 (2007): 1-23. Print. Slusser, George E., and Eric S. Rabkin, eds. Aliens - The Anthropology of Science Fiction. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Souther Illinois UP, 1987. Print.