Allison Farrell

Professor Michael Flower

Life Unlimited
Natural, Modified, and The Windup Girl
Deciding what is natural versus unnatural is a hotly debated topic today and is expanded
upon in the fictional novel by Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl, an imaginative take on where
humanity will be in 200 years. In our world presently, the debate rages over organic natural
foods and unnatural genetically modified foods. The concept is pushed further in Bacigalupis
story, as he imagines society to be torn apart by globalization, detrimental environmental abuse,
and GMOs, resulting in world-wide collapse of trade, rising oceans, and rapidly spreading
viruses that scientists must constantly race against by engineering new fruits and vegetables
resistant to the latest deadly strains. Genetic modification has even pushed past simply foods,
into genetically modified humans. These humanoid GMOs are called New People or windups,
and are the victims of abuse and discrimination by a world unsure how to react. Created in Japan
in order to make up for a dwindling number of young people in the new generation, they are
heavily modified humans, spliced with genes from other animals in order to give them certain
attributes beneficial to their caste, such as soldier, interpreter, or companion. In Thailand, where
the book takes place, there is a significant religious backlash against the unnatural windups
echoing the fervent distrust of so-called frankenfoods in our reality. Emiko, the eponymous
windup girl, is trapped in Thailand and experiences first-hand the abuse and discrimination based
off of her modified state.
The line between what is natural and modified might seem distinct but it is actually
nebulous, as the two are not black and white, but instead a hazy grey. A person might go by the

definition and say that natural is something created by nature, and therefore anything not
inherently produced by nature itself is modified and use that as reasoning against GMOs or
New People, but this topic is multi-faceted and not so easily defined. Its difficult to establish a
definite border in regards to this topic because human beings have been modifying nature for as
long as theyve existed. At what point do we decide that this modification is wrong? Where is the
cut off? What in our modern way of living is truly natural? Certainly not the cities we live in, or
the cars we drive, or the medicine we take. Not even the dogs we pet or the food we eat. The
menagerie of dog breeds out there are a result of generations of selective breeding and unhealthy
inbreeding to create an unnatural animal. Nature would never have created a chihuahua, but Man
did.
Masses of people condemn GMOs in principle, claiming that they only want to eat
natural foods. But look a little closer at whats in the grocery store. Theres something unnatural
just below the surface. Many of the most common foods we eat today are sprayed with
pesticides, waxed to protect but also enhance their appearance to make them more appealing, and
also heavily modified from their original states. Carrots, for example, do not naturally look like
how they do today. The earliest known wild carrots were stunted, heavily forked, white or purple,
and very bitter. Spread across Central Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean, they were used
medicinally until the deliberate planting by humans began to breed new forms of the species that
were edible. This human-induced evolution eventually resulted in the sweet, orange, smooth,
non-forked carrots that fill the shelves of grocery stores across the world. But thats not all. Wild
bananas are quite different from the bright yellow fruit found in the supermarket. Those, the
stereotypical banana, are the Cavendish banana. They actually did not come into existence until
1836. Wild bananas have hard seeds and come in a variety of colors ranging from brown, red,

green, and even bright pink. Due to their delicate nature, prone to bruising and spoiling, traders
have had a history of difficulty transporting bananas for international trade. This eventually led
to the breeding of new banana species and the modern technique of growing and transportation
that is, to say, quite unnatural. Being seedless, the modern banana cannot even reproduce on its
own. It must be spliced to other banana plants artificially, making all of the bananas in
supermarkets genetically identical (this splicing technique is also used for other artificially
seedless fruits, such as oranges).Then they are picked while green and unripe, and shipped to
their destination. Upon arrival they are placed in air-tight chambers pumped full of ethylene gas
to trigger ripening. In fact, this gas is the reason behind their bright yellow color. This is an
extreme modification of a natural plant, and yet that causes no controversy, while scientifically
enhanced GMOs do. This is not to say that either is bad or good, but it highlights the
complexities of this tangled subject as the lines begin to blur and it becomes evident that things
are not as simple as they appear.
Humans are constantly modifying nature to better suit our needs, but it is only the newest
modes that cause distress. In the Windup Girl, the New People are hated because they are
modified and unnatural, making them soulless and evil. But ironically, all the food the humans
eat is genetically modified. It shouldnt exist. Its been created by scientists in laboratories to
outrace the ravaging diseases created by humanities own folly. The animals that do their labor,
megodonts, are genetically modified. Thats all fine and good because its useful. Unnatural
things are fine as long as they serve their purpose as slaves to humanity, but humans refuse to
accept anything less than pure human as an equal. This is reminiscent of racism and sexism
throughout history as perceived biological differences are used as an excuse to disenfranchise
groups of people. For example, it was claimed that there was a difference in intelligence of the

races, whites being superior, based off of pseudoscience intelligence tests that were unfair and
biased. Henry H. Goddard, a psychologist, believed that intelligence was hereditary and therefore
people of low-intelligence, the feeble-minded should be sterilized so that they would not
produce children who would undoubtedly be feeble-minded as well. He performed a French
intelligence test on recent immigrants to Ellis Island in 1913. He chose people "representative of
their respective groups" and came to the conclusion that roughly 80% of the immigrants were
feeble-minded. These results were used as reasoning to disenfranchise the new immigrants based
off of faulty evidence and to justify racism and discrimination. Goddard specifically chose who
he would test, meaning he could select only people he suspected already had low intelligence,
and give them a test in English, a language they, as fresh immigrants, would hardly be
comfortable using.
He also had a pseudoscientific experiment called The Kallikak Family: A Study in the
Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, where he supposedly studied the descendants of a Martin
Kallikak who had offspring with an unnamed, feeble-minded tavern girl and later on, when he
married, with a Quaker woman. Goddard claimed that all the descendants from the tavern girl
were wrought with feeble-mindedness, alcoholism, and sexual misconduct while the descendants
of the Quaker woman were good and successful. He concluded that these traits were hereditary
and his findings became very popular, later on supported by the Nazi party. His study was poor
science, as his facts were doubtful and information that did not fit his beliefs was ignored and his
conclusions poor. It was simply propaganda to continue the abuse of a certain people. This is a
common process in human history as people constantly grasp for any reason why they should be
able to abuse and mistreat others. Physical differences, intelligence, or nationality are used as
standards of whether someone is deserving of rights or not. Why is that? Why must a being be a

certain level of intelligence to warrant compassion? Why must Emiko be an unaltered human to
deserve equal treatment?
Spirituality plays a part in the debate between natural versus modified, with an inherent
distaste for things deemed unnatural on the belief that it goes against god (or gods) and
undermines the order of how things should be. It has to do with the idea of a soul. In Windup
Girl, religion is the main reason behind the prejudice against Emiko. In a chapter from her own
perspective, she is described as Not human, certainly, but also not the threat that the people of
this savage basic culture made her out to be. Certainly not the devils that the Grahamites warn
against at their pulpits, or the soulless creatures imagined out of hell that the forest monk
Buddhists claim; not a creature unable to ever achieve a soul or a place in the cycles of rebirth
and striving for Nirvana (Chapter 3, pg. 35). They believe that because she was created in a
lab, she has no soul and this lack of a soul makes her nothing. But how do they know who does
or does not have a soul? Theres no science behind it. Its a convenient excuse to disregard her as
a person. She has all the attributes that supposedly make us human; she has a consciousness, a
mind capable of high-level, rational thought, complex emotions, with memories, beliefs, and
dreams. But somehow she is still not deserving of basic rights. But like most prejudice, this will
eventually change with understanding and sympathy and understanding, as foreshadowed in
chapter 17, page 173, as two characters debate the cold-blooded slaughter of cheshires,
genetically modified cats that have bred beyond humans control and are often killed on sight.
Ive killed thousands of themSometimes I wonder if my familys cibiscosis was
karmic retribution for all those cheshires.
It couldnt be. Theyre not natural.
Somchai shrugs. They breed. They eat. They live. They breathe. He smiles slightly. If
you pet them, they will purr.

Jaidee makes a face of disgust.

Its true. I have touched them. They are real. As much as you or I.

Natural and modified are not opposites that can be easily defined. The world is constantly
being modified, and just because something is modified does not make it inherently wrong, just
as something being natural does not make it immediately good. Disease is natural, but we fight
it. Some may say it is in our nature to modify. Our world may not be at the point of despair that
is described in The Windup Girl, but reading it may help us to decide that maybe natural and
modified are not mutually exclusive, and perhaps the problem isnt with defining the two and
sticking to one side, but instead in how we deal with them.