Annihilation and Anxiety

Jeff VanderMeers' novel, Annihilation, does an excellent job in depicting what anxiety feels like and dealing with human-kinds fear of the unknown. It does an especially good job at making you feel perpetual uneasiness by never identifying any of the characters by name, making it even easier for you to project yourself onto them and their fear. Throughout a large portion of the story, the main character, the biologist, takes note on how it feels as though she's being watched even though no one is there and how everything feels "off" or "wrong" but she can't ever really explain why. This is a good representation of what it's like to live with anxiety. Sure, most people experience anxiety in the way that one would before giving a very big important speech to a huge crowd of people, but having an anxiety order is another thing entirely. You experience anxiety over everything. Over nothing, really. You make things up in your head or you just get the sense of impending doom for no particular reason and you can't explain it or rationalize it. Of course, there's all sorts of variations of anxiety disorders and everyone experiences things differently so I don't claim to speak on behalf of everyone and every sort of disorder, but these tend to be things I hear quite frequently from those who do have an anxiety disorder. Fear of the unknown can play a huge part in this as well, especially because it is something almost every person deals with, not just those with anxiety disorders. Historically, most people are afraid of things that are new and/or different; things that they do not know. Annihilation has a ton of this. The team in the novel know next to nothing about the place that they are in and are attempting, but for the most part failing, to learn as they go. It's very easy to find yourself on edge when the biologist is talking about how she thinks that the walls of the tower/tunnel are moving as if the place is breathing because you too know nothing about this place and that can cause some anxiety. Not knowing what to expect from something or what is real will cause anxiety in most people. Listening to the audiobook, I know that I certainly felt anxious in places, and I think that ensuring that most of your audience is experiencing some sort of unease throughout the majority of your story is very effective within the horror genre and makes this a fantastic horror novel.