Mosquitos

The mosquitos represent the connection between nature and humanity in the novel. As creatures which bite and take blood from humans, they are an interface between the natural world and humanity. Thus, they reflect on the role of accident in evolution and history. As an interface between humans and nature, mosquitos also become the primary site of human intervention in nature, emblematized by the Moskeetoze drones used to inject the Zambian population with a gene-altering HIV vaccine. Mosquitos narrate the novel from an omniscient perspective in the present tense, suggesting that they are reflecting from a future and all-knowing perspective, in contrast with the humans whose stories are told in the third person and past tense. The existence of the mosquitos and their inadvertent role in spreading disease and immunity leads them to suggest that error is the most important force in human history, an assertion...