What is bewilderment the book about?

What is bewilderment the book about?

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals.

Is bewilderment a sequel to The Overstory?

“Bewilderment” is the follow-up to “The Overstory” (2018), his beloved novel about trees, the importance of maintaining forests and people, in that order. It won a Pulitzer Prize and made Powers something close to a secular saint.

Are the characters in bewilderment black?

Two characters identified as Black play briefly but significantly into the narrative arc of “Bewilderment.” On the depth spectrum, I’d say they occupy spots somewhere between extras and archetypes; their choices help Powers trip the switch on certain narrative inevitabilities, but, by and large, the bewilderment of the …

How long is bewilderment by Richard Powers?

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What are 2 synonyms for bewilderment?

synonyms for bewilderment

• confusion.
• disorientation.
• perplexity.
• bafflement.
• daze.
• discombobulation.
• surprise.

What is the synonym of bewildered?

Some common synonyms of bewilder are confound, distract, dumbfound, nonplus, perplex, and puzzle. While all these words mean “to baffle and disturb mentally,” bewilder stresses a confusion of mind that hampers clear and decisive thinking.

Why did overstory win the Pulitzer Prize?

Richard Powers won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for “The Overstory,” which the Pulitzer Board described as “an ingeniously structured narrative that branches and canopies like the trees at the core of the story whose wonder and connectivity echo those of the humans living amongst them.”

What happens to Robin in bewilderment?

Theo finds Robin injured and freezing in the river. Unable to get him to safety in time, Robin dies. The book ends with Martin Currier texting a very depressed Theo after the funeral. He asks if Theo wants “to be with” Robin (by training using Robin’s brain scans).

Are the planets in bewilderment real?

In Bewilderment, Theo conjures up bedtime stories about alien life on a series of fictional planets, which he and his bereft son explore together in their imaginations.

What happens in the end of bewilderment?

The book ends with Theo and Robin on a trip where Robin gets injured and dies. The book opens with Theo Byrne on a trip in the Smokies with his 9-year-old son Robin.

What is the opposite of bewilderment?

Opposite of a feeling of being perplexed and confused. clarity. clearness. lucidity. simplicity.

What is an antonym of bewildered?

Antonyms. unperplexed clearheaded coherent organized oriented thoughtless regenerate. befuddled confounded perplexed mazed confused.

What is the moral of The Overstory?

Primarily, the novel questions how humanity can grow to recognize the life-or-death matter of saving the trees considering what has proven again and again to be inherent to human nature: the unstoppable desire to “grow harder; grow faster.” The Overstory acknowledges the many flaws in human nature and psychology—the …

Is The Overstory based on true events?

Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” is a fictional book about trees and a group of people who decide to defend them. But along the way, readers also find out many surprising facts about trees’ own capabilities, including how they communicate, protect themselves and each other, and even give back to forests after death.

Is DVAU a real planet?

Dvau is a planet like Earth, but without a large moon to stabilise its rotation it can’t support life beyond a microscopic level. Falasha is an orphan with no sun, a planet so dark that life (in the form of crabs and worms) only thrives near the hydrothermal vents at the bottom of its oceans.

Where is Richard Powers now?

He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award in 2006 for his novel, “The Echo Maker.” Powers has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.

What is another word for bewilderment?

In this page you can discover 27 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for bewilderment, like: bemusement, puzzlement, bafflement, daze, obfuscation, muddle, trance, uneasiness, stupefaction, mystification and amazement.

What are 2 synonyms for bewildered?

bewildered

• astonished.
• awed.
• baffled.
• befuddled.
• dazed.
• mystified.
• perplexed.
• puzzled.

What do you call a person that is confused?

baffled, befuddled, bewildered, dazed, disorganized, distracted, muddled, perplexed, perturbed, puzzled, chaotic, messy, abashed, addled, discombobulated, disconcerted, flummoxed, flustered, gone, misled.

What are the 5 trees in The Overstory?

Another way to summarize the novel would be to list its trees: the American chestnut that survives the decimating blight on the Hoel family’s Iowa farm; the mulberry tree that Mimi’s Chinese immigrant father plants in their backyard; the banyan that saves Douglas’s life when he is shot out of the sky in Vietnam; the …

Is The Overstory overrated?

Book review: The Overstory, admirably ambitious but ultimately overrated.

Why is The Overstory called The Overstory?

The “overstory” of Richard Powers’s title is a term for the canopy of a forest, the foliage at the top of the trees. Powers has sometimes been criticized for being a “top-down” novelist, one who presents characters from the high or long perspective of history, science, or music.

How many Earths are there?

There are a billion Earths in this galaxy, roughly speaking. Not a million.

Is there a planet like Earth?

Kepler-452b (sometimes quoted to be an Earth 2.0 or Earth’s Cousin based on its characteristics; also known by its Kepler Object of Interest designation KOI-7016.01) is a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting within the inner edge of the habitable zone of the sunlike star Kepler-452 and is the only planet in the system …

What is the message in The Overstory?

Published in 2018 by W. W. Norton, The Overstory is an ambitious environmental fable of nine main characters (yes, nine) that explores our relationship with nature, the psychology of why we’re so bad at acting on climate change, our perception of time, the meaning of hope, and so much more.