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TRANSCRIPT
A Karen Nieto saga
Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World
&El Dios de Darwin
(Darwin’s God)
bySabina Berman
“Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you’reworthless. You’re not; you’re just different.”
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INDEXp4 Press
p5 Sabina Berman’s biography
p6 Factsheet
1. Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World(MAIN PLOT):
p8 Synopsis
p9 Plot
p14 Context
p15 Tone and references
p16 Main characters
p17 Secondary characters
2. El Dios de Darwin (Darwin’s God):p22 Synopsis
p23 Plot
p29 Context
p30 Tone and references
p31 Main characters
p32 Secondary charactersp36 Audiovisual Project
p37 Chapter I.
p39 CONTACT
3
“A fable of self-discovery within
a vigorous plot of fishing
industries in dispute.” - Carles Barba, La Vanguardia.
“… There are no sermons,
just a hymn to the sacred
conection between all
species.” - A.W. The Oprah Magazine
“This is a book that will
spread by word to mouth.
Good.” - Javier Goñi, Babelia.
“It’s not a work that makes you
‘feel good.’ It’s a work to feel,
that makes you know that
change is possible.”
- Lisa Dillman, Reader’s Report.
“Sabina Berman’s novel
skillfully combines the
different scenes that
compound the story.”- Lluís Fernández, La Razón.
4
Sabina Berman
Born in Mexico City in 1955, she is a writer, a playwright, a journalist and a screenwriter. Berman studied Psychology and Mexican Literature
at the Ibero-American University. With humor and a great need to surpass what can be said through language, Berman’s works have turned
her into one of the most important Mexican current writers. She writes articles for the weekly Mexican magazine, Proceso, and collaborates in
El Universal, Letras Libres and Nexos. She has been awarded with the National Award of Journalism twice.
As regards her literary career, Berman has published novels such as Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World – bought by 33 publishing houses
and translated to 11 languages – and El Dios de Darwin (i.e. Darwin’s God). She has won the National Prize of Theatre of Mexico four times.
Furthermore, her creations transcend borders, since they have been performed in Canada, the US and Latin America.
Her film Backyard was nominated to the Academy Awars, and it won the Silver medal for Best Screenplay at the Toronto International Film
Festival, and the Independent Spir Award at the International Festival of Ibiza. Her film Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda has also been awarded
at many festivals throughout the world, and it was selected to represent Mexico at the Academy Awards.
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FactsheetKaren Nieto Saga
TITLES: 1. Me, Who Dove Into the Heart of the World. 2. Darwin’s God.
GENRE: Warm drama / Thriller, Female Fiction.
THEMES: Humanity, Overcoming, Empathy, Human Rights, Savant Syndrome, Love, Family,
Ambition, Corruption, Interest, Politics, Business, Differences, Social Relations, Animals, Science,
Investigation, Religion, LGBT, Murder, Kidnapping.
RELEVANT INFORMATION: Awarded Sabina Berman is considered as the most
critically and commercially successful author, playwright and screenwriter. She has won the Premio
Nacional de Teatro de México four times. She has worked as a screenwriter in important film
projects for great directors like Alejandro G. Iñárritu or Alfonso Cuarón. Among her many awards, she
has one nomination and one Premio Ariel for Best Screenplay, one nomination to the Academy
Awards, a Silver Medal for Best Screenplay at the Toronto International Film Festival, etc.
Her novel, Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World, is one of the most exported works of Mexican
literature, as it has been a comercial success acquired by publishing houses of 33 countries and
translated into 11 languages.6
PART I:
Me, Who Dove into theHeart of the World
SynopsisKaren Nieto is a little girl who already existed before she started tothink. After her mom passes away, her aunt Isabel arrives inMazatlán to take charge of the family business, Atunes Consuelo,and also to take care of her niece Karen.
Karen is special; she has Asperger’s syndrome, and this changes theprocess of learning. At the beginning, she does not even speak; sheseemed to be an animal. However, Isabel is determined to educateher and turn her into a human being.
While Karen begins to become an “I”, her aunt teaches her what herfuture will consist on: she will inherit a fishing company that isthreatened by the US commercial embargoes.
Fortunately for the Nieto’s, Karen is not a standard person. Whileshe walks around the tuna company in her scuba diving suit anddives into the sea, she realizes of many things that average humanscannot see. Her peculiar behaviours will help her find solutions foran apparently deep and hopeless situation.
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Plot
9
1. At the beginningThe story of Karen Nieto starts with a different person. More precisely, it starts on the day in which elegant, slender and very blonde IsabelPerrin (40) arrives on a plane to the small airport of Mazatlán, a coast city in Sinaloa, to take possession of the inheritance that her older sisterhad left her after passing away: Atunes Consuelo, the biggest tuna Company in Mexico (founded by theri grandfather), and a 19th centurymansion.
When she arrived, she saw that the house was in ruins, totally uninhabitable The housekeeper, La Gorda, an extremely fat indigenous woman,told her about the second inhabitant of the house: the Girl (Karen) who lived in the water. A 12-year-old girl who, in that very moment, waslaying on the shore, breathing through a hose, while gazing at orange fishes swim. When Isabel saw her, Girl was covered in mud and seaweed,and she refused to take off a pair of swimming goggles that made her look monstrous. Ater puting Karen in a bathtub to clean the mud off ofher body, Isabel realized of four facts: the Girl did not speak, she only made noises and whistled like a bird; she had brutal cigarette burns on herback made by her mother, who never accepted her. Moreover, she had lice, so shaving her head was indispensable (this was something Karenhappily accepted and decided to keep for the rest of her life). And finally, after taking off her goggles, she saw that her eyes were very green, likeher own. Karen was a biped primate that she had to turn into a human being. That is, she had to teach her how to speak, how to read, and thenhow to live among humans.
Isabel decides to take Karen to a school for special children in Mazatlán, where Karen doesn’t fit either. Eventually, she receives home education,after promising aunt Isabel that she will learn English and everything about the tuna company. Karen then spends most of her time there,wearing her inseparable little scuba diving suit. She learns that humans don’t see similarities between animals and humans when she witnessessomething that means a turning point in her life: engineer Peña, in charge of the accounts and relations of Atunes Consuelo, brutally hits otherworkers with a tuna fish. Karen realizes of the actual work of the Company, and that shocks her
Karen speaks about these issues with Ricardo, also coordinator of the company boats, and they reach a common ground. He tells Karen, who isnow 17 years old, that it is possible to fish without violence like in Sicily, where he was born and worked until he wanted to travel the world.Thanks to the fact that Karen listens to Ricardo in a different and particular way – and it couldn’t be any other way – he starts feeling a specialaffection for her. Before she leaves for Berkeley to study Zootechnics, he gives her two leaves from a lemon tree and starts writing letters onthem. Even though he sends her the letters, she never answers them.
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At university, Karen always carries a label that says “different abilities.” This allows her not to have to socialize with
the rest of the people. However, it sometimes contribute to people to make fun of her, like professor Charles, “the
Killer” Huntington.
Karen does not have any friends in her class until, after a long time alone, Selma arrives to her room. She is a
Mexican Psychology student who is fascinated by Karen’s Asperger’s syndrome. She takes Karen to the campus
parties, but she gets bored because she does not agree with the ways of socialization of students. In fact, Karen
always attends as an observer, as if they were animals.
As Huntington’s final project, the students have to draw the plans of a slaughterhouse, and Karen decides to
recreate one of the designs of profesor Charles himself. To do so, and along with Selma, Karen trespasses the
fences and enters in the factory dressed as an ordinary worker. She films the whole tour with the camera she uses to
record all the lectures. Then, Karen Nieto draws an exact plan of the building: same exits, colors of the walls, and
even a piece of fabric someone had forgotten.
After having corrected the projects, prof. Huntington invites Karen home to talk about the course. Despite fearing
to have failed the subject, Karen is complimented by the teacher and offered a job as his personal draftswoman.
“You’ll never be a real zootechnician”, assures him. If she does not accept the job, Huntington is determined to fail
her. After realizing the intentions of “the Killer” (keeping Karen’s plan for himself), Karen does not hesitate to
break in his office and take the Project back. Trying to protect himself, Huntington drops his gun and Karen takes
it and shoots unintentionally the window down. Consequetly, Karen is expelled from university and goes back to
Mazatlán.
2. Karen at university
11
3. Karen and the tuna companyIn Mazatlán, Karen carries out in Atunes Consuelo a “non-violent” slaughter of tunas, with the approval of Greenpiece.However, neither the media nor the US consider the action as positive; the comercial embargo is still ongoing. It didn’t evenmatter that there was a rabbi certifying that the tunas were kosher.
Mr. Gould (70) then arrives to the house of the Nieto’s. He is a great businessman that left Scotland after confronting all hissuperiors and built up his own businesses all over the world. He wants to become partners with the Nieto’s and proposes to openvenues all over the world (non-violent slaughters will be kept). They accept, and this is how, in Tokyo, Karen begins her tripsaround the world to be trained as the perfect businesswoman. She meets Yasuko , a PhD in Business and Karen’s interpreterduring the negotiations. Everything goes better than expected, so they plan to open a tuna company in Portugal.
A Portuguese sailor tells Karen that the cages are way too big; too much iron to be supported. It is then when Karen comes upwith the setting up of a fish farm in which the tuna fishes will receive the most expensive care and attention. In Paris, Karen isgiven an award for her non-violent slaughters. Nevetheless, the audience suddenly boos her and she does not know why. It turnsout that the Mexican politicians linked to the Fishing Ministry are all corrupt, so people assume Karen is fraudulent too.
The next morning, somebody knocks on her door at the hotel; four men enter the room and kidnap her. They are the so-called“Animal’s Right Militia” (ARM). They threaten to kill her, since they consider Karen’s death the fairest way to compensate thehundreds killings of tuna fishes her company carried out. When they let her go, Portuguese detective Iñaki Belloso tells her thatif the ARM contacts her again, she must tell him immediately, no matter where he is.
The tuna fish in Porto de Caeiro start laying eggs. The eggs hatch and thus, Karen manages to make fish in captivity procreate forthe first time ever. Karen receives a medal from the Pro Humane Slaughter Committee for her hard work.
Every fortnight, Karen receives an anonymous envelope with two razors. She knows they are from ARM, but she does not notifydetective Belloso for it, because they remind her of the lemon tree leaves Ricardo used to send her. In addition, razors are verydifficult to find, and she makes a profit from them by shaving her head.
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4. Karen goes back homeYasuko informs Karen that Mr. Gould, her partner, is lying to her. She then gets a call from La Gorda; aunt Isabel issick. Karen then hops on the first plane to Mazatlán. When she arrives to her house, she finds her aunt’s threeboyfriends, each one taking care of her in his own particular way. When she goes up to see her, La Gorda tells her itwill be hard due to her deteriorated appearance: Isabel had her head open, grey hair, and her the body wasconsumed. Isabel suffered a stroke, just as Karen’s mom right before she died.
Karen spends the last two weeks of Isabel’s life with her and her boyfriends, and then both of them alone. The lackof words Karen used to have when she was a kid, comes back at the end of her aunt’s life. When she dies, she buriesher among Ricardo’s lemon trees.
Gould calls Karen to tell her the ARM has detonated the tuna companies. The fishes seem to be okay, though. Thebusinessman explains her that the Company will have to be renovated somewhere else. Karen, however, exposes herown idea: to open other sanctuaries where the tunas will not be killed. Gould does not understand the aim of thebusiness without the slaughter. Karen explains that her plan very easily: they will breed the fishes, and then they willfreed. In fact, since she inherited her aunt’s shares, Karen is the major shareholder of True Blue Tune. Therefore, itis Karen the only one who decides how the company will develop.
Karen gives a check to La Gorda and the deeds of Atunes Consuelo to Peña. She dives into the bottom of theMazatlecan ocean to kill herself, but she remembers what Isabel used to say: she would be the one that would savethe animals and that would contribute to the reconciliation between them and humans. Now Karen is sure aboutsomething: she will take care of her tuna fish in sanctuaries to free them afterwards, until she has a stroke.
Finally, she writes her life up to that moment in a book.13
Context
1
2
3
4
5
The story takes place in several locations:1. Mazatlán, Sinaloa (Mexico): this is where
Karen lives in her 19th century mansion
and she acquires Atunes Consuelo.
2. Porto de Caeiro, Portugal (fictional
location). There, Karen has the most
important tuna company in Europe.
3. University of Berkeley, California, where
Karen studies Zootechnics. She is expelled
from it due to a misadventure with a
profesor.
4. Tokio, where Karen travels to with Goud to
negotiate the purchase of Atunes Consuelo
at a higher prize. Karen feels comfortable
in Japan, because of the social customs
where there is no physical contact between
people.
5. Paris, where Karen gets an award for her
non-violent killings. Some ecological
terrorists kidnap her here.
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ToneThe story is very human and exciting but, at the same time, the tone is direct, funny, politicallyincorrect and brutally honest. Moving, thanks to Karen’s narration, between humor and adifferent and wonderful simplification of the abstract – a point of view after all, outside of theregular human’s.
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Main CharactersKaren Nieto: Protagonist and narrator of the story. It starts when she is a girlwithout a language, abandoned in a cave next to the sea. Little by little, sheturns into a woman able to enter and exit the bubble of language at will, whichgives her a decisive advantage over standard human beings. She is determinedand quiet. Her head is shaved, she always wears jeans and a white t-shirt, whichshe replaces by entering a store and getting some more. She never touchesanyone, nor hold hands. Furthermore, she does not look into anyone’s eyes. Shelacks imagination and so she is unable to lie or to understand euphemisms orsymbols. She undestands everything literaly. She falls in love easily withextraordinarily handsome men, with which she has no bond that lasts morethan a single sexual encounter. She is a biologist and Darwin is her intellectualguru. She sleeps in a hammock. She is addicted to aspirins and she is amisanthrope. She lacks any kind of respect for rules, traditions or establishedvalues in the world of standard humans. However, she has an almost telepathiccommunication with animals.
Isabel: Karen’s aunt. She travels from Berkeley to Mazatlán to take charge ofmany things. Among them, the education of her niece. She has long, blond hairand green eyes, and she is slim. Sometimes, she has problems with alcohol.Isabel tries to put the legacy of her family in order, but she wouldn’t be able todo so without Karen, who eventually becomes her own savior, and the one whoalso saves the tuna company..
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Secondary Characters
La Gorda: The housekeeper. She took care of Karen’s
mom and, sometimes, of Karen too. Of Huichol origins,
she is always after Karen and her aunt. She is quite discreet
as regards her personal life, but when she speaks, she is
wise.
Ingeneer Peña: Karen calls him “the autistic man”. He is
cruel with animals. He is in charge of the accounts at
Atunes Consuelo.
Nunutsi: Karen’s white cat. Given the importance of her
relationship with animals, it is essential for this character to
have its own space.
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Ricardo: A 34-year-old Sicilian. Blonde hair, tanned skin withscars and a tattoo. Captain of the boats of Atunes Consuelo. Hehas always been a fisher. He loves Karen, but he never gets tohave anything with her beyond a “listening” relationship.
Mr. Gould: “The drainpipe’s bastard”. An 80-year-old Scottishman, several-times-married, with lots of children andgrandchildren. A millionaire businessman that comes to Karenand Isabel with the aim to open tuna companies in othercountries throughout the world to get what he loves the most:money in abundance.
Yasuko: Karen’s translator in Japan and assistant of Mr. Gould.Short and with black hair.
Secondary Characters
18
Professor Charles Huntington: “The Killer”. Karen’sprofessor at Berkeley. He invented the pneumatic weapon forthe humane slaughter of animals. Slim, tall and with bigglasses. He constantly makes fun of Karen.
Gabriel Short: Short, as his name indicates, and bald. He isprofessor Huntington’s assistant.
Paulina Glickman: Psychometrics professor. She wearsgigantic square glasses, a gray fringe, the shoes of a child withstiffness and the smile of a beaver. She does an intelligenceanalysis to Karen.
Secondary Characters
19
Iñaki Belloso: Portuguese detective at Interpol. Karenknows him because he is investigating the threats that theecologist terrorists send her in Portugal. He is attractive andhas a British accent when he speaks English.
Selma: Karen’s roommate at Berkeley. She studiespsychology. She is Mexican, nice and attractive. Her hair islong and black and she wears short Scottish skirts and whitelong socks.
Secondary Characters
20
PART II:
El Dios de Darwin(Darwin’s God)
Synopsis
Karen Nieto is a worldwide famous biologist who lives in herboat, taking care of her tuna fish and cataloguing newspecies. After months disconnected from the world, shereceives a strange message: her university colleague, Dr.Antonio Márquez, has disappeared. She will be key in thesearch, because she was the last person he contacted, but thereason for his last mail goes beyond friendship.
The search for Antonio means going into the secret originsof the relation between science and religion. Dr. Márquezfinds a theological autobiography written by Charles Darwinthat could mean something absolutely groundbreaking forthe paradigms of the two most important structures ofhumanity: the dissolution of the barriers between science andreligion. Karen will get herself into a very dangerousinvestigation of both poles to, following the stepts ofDarwin, complement them in a practical way.
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Plot
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1. Antonio disappears.«Outside of words, there is a neverending place. It’s called Reality. There, our first story begins». Karen lives in themiddle of the ocean in her boat with a Chinese assistant, so that she doesn’t have to speak at all. There, she keepsinvestigating and taking care of the tuna fish. She spends long periods of time without having any contact with theworld, cataloguing new species that she sends to Dr. Edward O. Willis, who intends to catalogue all the living beingsin the planet. When she opens her computer to notify him about a new discovery, she sees an email from MaxEldrich, director of the Faculty of Biology of the University of California, Berkeley. It says that her colleague –whom she vaguely remembers– Antonio Márquez, has disappeared. He went missing after sending his last email…to Karen.
At Berkeley, Karen talks to Eldrich about Tonio. Months before, a university student’s father, a hardcore Christian,had threaten to take his enormous economical donations to the university if the teacher didn’t leave, for Márquezwas a transvestite and taught his lectures while wearing a skirt. Since they couldn’t legally fire him, the university haddecided to give him indefinite sabbatical time with his complete salary, so he went to work at the UN Commissionon Human Rights. He was sent to an Arab country to stop the stoning of a woman that had had sexual intercoursewith her brother-in-law. There, he went missing until his email to Karen, with the subject: THE LAST THING IDO.
Tonio, through the clues that Karen deciphers, tells her to search every document that has to do with Miss Hope inthe archives of the Westminster Abbey. Karen travels to London – she is horrified to learn that the tomb of a greatatheist is in a religious place – and gets to the archives to find out what was it that Tonio found before he died.
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2. Antonio and Franco.«Our second story starts in an intermediate space between words and the outside of words. In two sobs. I write it inthird person because I did not witness it, I was simply told it.» A woman dressed provocatively and a man walkdown an Arab city. She could be a prostitute destined to the Western visitors. A man called The Judge follows themand gets to them after they refuse to go to the touristic part of the city, thus breaking their moral rules. The womanturns out to be professor Antonio Márquez, who, cross-dressed, traveled with his lover Franco, who is Arab andSpanish. Since Antonio could not totally stop the stoning, but only managed to reduce the punishment of publiclashing, he decided to walk around the city dressed as a woman as a form of protest. The Judge condemns Tonio togenital extirpation for sodomizing Franco after he discovers they are lovers. Before he bleeds out, he manages tosend Karen the email.
Franco is abandoned in the middle of the desert. He walks until he finds a mosque that belongs to the Brothers ofthe Faith, a congregation of believers known also for their training of assassins. There, The Judge and the othermembers convert him to Islam and shape him into their ideology.
Sibelius, curator of the Museum of Word in Rome, met Tonio before he disappeared to verify his discovery:Darwin’s theological autobiography. The text was hidden for 150 years by Queen Victoria after it was given to her bythe scientist’s scribe, Miss Hope. The fact that he had found an organizing principle in nature that wasn’t only Godor only science scared the monarch and so she decided to hide the text to avoid any sort of controversy. Márquez(Tonio) found it in the Abbey and stole it to bring it to light. Sibelius, after Tonio disappears, goes to the mosque toask Franco for help to decipher the manuscript. He refuses, and The Judge sees an opportunity to fight the biggestenemies of the muslim people: the atheists. He provides Franco with every means to travel to London and find outif the book can actually be the conciliation between Science and Religion.
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In the library of the archive, Karen reads a text that is apparently Darwin’s repentance for writing his theologicalautobiography, but it is a false report of a conversation between Queen Victoria and Miss Hope to hide thetruth. Where the autobiography should be, there is just blank pages. Tonio stole the text a while back. Karenrealices that two men are watching her, and she escapes. Karen then meets Franco, who tells her that Tonio isdead but that he is there to help her.
Antonio had come up with a plan after stealing the manuscript; he would divide it in four parts that would onlybe decipherable by four distinguished scientists that would know how to treat the text with the care it deservedwhen it was to be published: Antonio himself, Karen Nieto, the polemist John “The Great Blasphemous” Fordand Edna R. Garden. His plan is ruined by the stoning event formerly mentioned and his death. Thanks to this,the first and the second stories clash into one from the moment that Karen and Franco meet.
Karen reads the first part, which happens in James Island (Galapagos) and sees Darwin’s questionings aboutGod. In the deciphered second part, Darwin travels the world gathering different species and goes to theGeology Museum where he meets John Gould, who chews him out for being a tourist and not a scientist.Darwin joins Charles Lyell, a geologist, to work in the theories of the transmutation of the species wonderingwhy a God would make 18 different finches come from a same origin, or why he would give a blind mole a pairof useless eyes. While Karen reads the part that she deciphered, Franco goes to The Judges’ house in Londonand, from one of his computers, he changes the restrictions of the archives. This way, Sibelius and his Master canalso read them in their tablets.
3. Darwin’s Archive.
26
Karen meets John Ford, who believes that the Holy Alliance (Muslim, Catholic and Jewish union) has falsified the text. He calls it into
question. In this part, Darwin tells how Alfred Wallace managed to get to the same conclusion in twenty pages that he did in thirty pages
regarding evolution. He meets Charles Lyell and Thomas Huxley to decide what to do about it. They decide to give more credit to Darwin,
but to acknowledge Wallace as well.
Before reading that part, Karen and Franco meet Sibelius to go over the consequences that Darwin’s work had and the strategies of the
Church to counteract: the reconquest of God in three steps. It started with John Paul visiting the cell of a muslim that tried to kill him in the
name of God; the second step was to capture the controversy of democracies with Benedict XVI after the death of John Paul. The Church
allied with fascisms to stay in the political sphere.; the third step was to capture science. Karen and Franco come back with Ford and, while
they keep reading, Darwin wonders about the problem of altruism, which could not be resolved through science because he did not know
about genetics. He never read Mendel. Karen is pissed about the discussion over genetics and she leaves. Ford threatens Franco with a video
that shows that Franco is a traitor. The film shows Tonio’s mutilation being tortured by Franco. When he sees himself cornered, Franco slit
Ford’s throat, he burns his house and from his phone he sends Karen a message saying that he won’t be able to go to La Veta La Palma
because some “personal tragedy” has happened. Karen doesn’t even think about asking what happened, so she just lets it ride. Franco stays
with a Brother of the Faith who gives him a hand gun. He then throws Ford’s phone and the knife he used to kill him into the sea.
The Judge asks Franco to destroy Drwin’s text, but he refuses because God acts through him, so he must wait until they’ve finished reading
the whole thing. After this, he and Karen go to La Veta La Palma to find Edna R. Garden and decipher the last part of the autobiography.
Here, Darwin tells about his encounter with Queen Victoria and confesses that he was wrong with what he said in The Origin of the Species
because he based himself only in the theory of the survival of the fittest and it was only later that he understood that species associate: where
there’s abundance, there’s no necessity anymore and violence disappears. The Queen is shocked because society is not ready to assume a
dissociating law like that of the survival of the fittest, so both agree that God is a necessary lie to unite society. Being ruled by the survival of
the fittest law is for her a justification to go back to a barbaric regime. “Science does not teach us how to live together.”
4. The consequences of an uncomfortable investigation.
27
Sibelius and the Master, Benedict XVI, met to read the autobiography together as the parts were deciphered,reading at the same time as Karen. The Master knows they can’t let the Vatican die at this point in human history,so he orders Sibelius to get rid of the text. Sibelius cries in silence after he realized that he has been fighting forthe triumph of religion over science for 32 years. Eclesia semper reformada says Benedict to Sibelius. They knowthey must evolve like nature to survive.
Karen and Franco go to Seville, to La Veta La Palma. After reading with Edna the last part they stay alone in alitte rowboat in the lagoons. Edna has a cast on so she doesn’t go with them. Franco takes out his gun and asksKaren to delete the text, but she refuses. When he is distracted, Karen hits him with an oar. He shoots her. Afterthe fight, Karen takes Franco’s body out of the water, still alive. She leaves him laying in the rowboat so that theGuadalquivir takes him where it wants to. She goes to the airport of Seville. When she arrives, she sees in thenews that Benedict XVI has given up the papal throne. Someone younger will come to oxygenate St. Peter’s, theysay.
Back home, Karen goes back to her tuna fish and her investigation. Karen draws a tuna fish larva, the first in thefertilisation since she went back home. She draws it to us and she seems to have finished her story, until we findDarwin’s Positive Laws: “As the Eart will continue to go round and natural forms will continue to vary, thehuman account of life will continue to adjust and expand, and anyway, it will never be perfect and it will nevercover the whole of life.”
5. Science and Religion.
28
Context
5
2
4
3
6
4
1. Current London is where most part of the story
takes place. In Westminster Abbey, where Darwin
is buried, Karen finds his theological biography.
2. In 19th century London, some fragments of
Darwin’s life take place to support the main story
in the present.
3. University of Berkeley, where Antonio lived
before going to work at the UN.
4. Arab country (not specified), where Antonio is
kidnapped by the Brothers of the Faith and the
Police of the Moral. The real Antonio Márquez
disappeared in Dubai.
5. James Island, Galápagos. Currently called
Santiago Island. There, Darwin had his first
encounters with the origin of the species and his
doubts about God.
6. Granja Marina Veta La Palma (España). Dr.
Garden lives there.
7. In the Vatican, where religious conspiracies
take place.
1 2
5
29
The story is an investigation in the present with a reconstruction of the case supported by events in the past(19th century), as Darwin’s documents are studied.
In El Dios de Darwin we see a clear evolution in Karen Nieto. The tone of the story gets darker, harder; itbecomes less structural in comparison with Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World. However, it still hasKaren’s sense of humor, logic and authentic personality.
Tone
30
Main Characters (present)
Karen Nieto: Protagonist and narrator of the series. In this
second part we see her evolution, almost like the beings described inDarwin’s work. Karen must go to places beyond the world of words,reality. She must dive into the metaphors entailed in religion andscience.
Antonio Márquez: Tonio. Spanish. He studied with Karen at
Berkeley and together (alone) they formed the Darwin Club. He is arenowned university professor. Investigator of salmons, defender ofhuman rights at the UN and cross-dresser. Both his greatness as abiologist and his good behaviour always made him stand out.
Franco: Antonio Márquez’s lover. Spanish and Arab. His blue eyes
are his identity physical trait. He is kidnapped and converted to Islamand trained to kill for the Brothers of the Faith. He gives KarenDarwin’s theological autobiography that Tonio encrypted. Tonio’sfriends treat him like a obliging child. When he is about to becomeviolent, he hits himself twice in the neck to calm down.
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Secondary Characters (present)
The Judge: Policeman of the moral and member of the Brothers
of the Faith. He condemns Tonio for sodomizing Franco. He turnsFranco into one of his pawns in his fight for the establishment ofIslam and the rest of the theistic religions as the organizers of societybefore any other doctrine that corrupts faith.
Sibelius: Curator of the Museum of the Word in Rome. He was an
apprentice of Pope Benedict XVI. He wants Darwin’s text to see thelight after feeling disappointed in the religious fight. He is short, baldand fat. He tells Karen that before he became celibate he had lots ofsexual partners. Sometimes he has to calm his impulses with coldshowers.
The Master: In reality, it’s Pope Benedict XVI. Short, fat and with
white hair. He orders Sibelius to get rid of Darwin’s autobiography.
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Secondary Characters (present)
Edward O. Willis: Friend of Karen and investigator. He publishes
his texts in the Science magazine. He wants to make the biggestclassification of species in the world, and Karen helps him along withother collaborators.
John Ford: Polemist and scientist. He does not believe that Darwin’s
theological biography is authentic, so he doubts everything he ispresented with. He is an alcoholic, discourteous but elegant. He hatesFranco because he betrayed Tonio.
Edna R. Garden: Puerto Rican doctor, colleague of Tonio during
their doctorate. Just like Tonio, she is homosexual, and thanks to the factthat they shared the same language and intimacies, they strengthenedtheir friendship at the university.
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Secondary Characters (past)
Charles Darwin: It is him who links all characters in every era.
Shy, determined to find the origin of every species, even thetheological ones. He doubts everything and he is insecure. He is thegreatest atheist in the world, but he is also the most unknowntheological mediator in history.
Thomas Henry Huxley: Darwin’s “bulldog.” He was a loyal
defender of his theory. Biologist, agnostic. Member of the RoyalSociety.
Charles Lyell: Lawyer and father of modern geology. His texts
inspired Darwin when he traveled around the world in the Beagle towrite The Origin of the Species.
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Secondary Characters (past)
Queen Victoria:When Darwin gives her his
theological autobiography
she is shocked and hides it
as a state secret during 150
years because she is scared
of doubting God and of
dividing society.
Miss Elizabeth Hope:Scribe and Darwin’s
secretary during her old
age. She and the queen
think the text is dangerous.
When she gives Victoria the
biography, she awards her
with the title of lady.
Emma Darwin:Darwin’s cousin and wife.
She is very religious and
argues a lot with her
husband due to their
different beliefs.
Alfred Wallace:He writes a text to
Darwin where he arrives
to conclussions similar to
those in The Originwithout having ever met
each other.
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Audiovisual Project “Me” TV Series
THEMES: Humanity, Overcoming, Empathy, Human Rights, Savant Syndrome, Love, Family, Animals, Inheritance, Business, Differences, Social
Relations, Science, Investigation, Religion, Work, Ambition, Interest, Politics, LGBT.
GENRE: Warm Drama, Female Fiction.
The main plot of the show is based in the first book Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World, which tells the life of this extraordinary character through
flashbacks of her speechless childhood until she is 12 years old. When she is 40, Karen becomes an eccentric and unusual millionaire who has to deal
with a human world that she barely understands. It is a great character-driven drama that perfectly works as a project for a TV series of several seasons,
for the character of Karen Nieto has a great arc with lots of development potential. Each normal human situation is a great challenge for Karen, which
will make her evolve constantly.
The plot of the second book (Darwin’s God) is a great secondary plot for one of the seasons, where, in a tone of thriller, they investigate a case in which
one of Karen’s excolleagues finds a manuscript written by Charles Darwin and is murdered. This means a great potential to keep developing subplots
with cases related to the most contemporary themes (science, religion, LGBT, ecology, politics…) which Karen can ingeniously investigate under her
peculiar perspective – which gets her into hard as well as funny situations.
Interesting facts:
Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World is one of the most exported works in Mexian literature. At the end of Karen’s journey what we are
left with is humanity. It is a completely universal story. It is not a story to “feel good” per se. It is more a story to “feel”, one that makes you think
change is possible. It is not only appropriate, it is almost indispensable. In the present day, we need a message like this one.
Part of the action during Karen’s childhood happens in a coastal village in Mexico. However, there are no references that require previous knowledge
about local culture or politics. During her university years, Karen lives in California. As Karen becomes more international as a businesswoman, the
action moves to Tokyo, Paris and a little coast village in Portugal. In the second book, the action happens in the Vatican, London, an Arab country and
the Mediterranean coast of Spain. However, the production of this story is quite contained, since it mostly happens indoors.
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Karen Nieto (40) turns on her phone. She is a slim and muscular woman, shaved, with green eyes, dressed in white. She faces her phone. And starts her tale,
whistling like a swallow. She then meows like a cat. What do animals say when they ”speak”? She shrugs. No idea, she says. She repeats with her involuntary
echolalia: No idea. But I think, I’m not sure, that animals only say ”here I am”, and it is the emotion with which the express it that matters. You can meow saying
with happiness ”here I am.” Or you can meow with panic ”here I am.” Well, here I am, says Karen. In the last floor of a skyscraper named Karen, like me. How
did I get here? She stays silent. She shrugs. No idea, she sayd. No idea. To find out, she will tell her story.
Her story starts with another person, Isabel Perrin. More precisely, it starts on the day that the elegant, slim and very blonde Isabel Perrin (40) arrived on a rented
plane to the minuscule airport of Mazilán, a coastal village in California, to take possession of the inheritance that her recently deceased older sister had left her:
the Tuna Fish Company Dolores, founded by her grandfather and the biggest in the world, and a great mansion. Karen Nieto continues her story. Isabel visited
the enormous Tuna Fish Company Dolores and, after witnessing the mass boning of the fish – the slash cuts of their heads, the emptying of their guts and the
mountains of guts – she felt dizzy and had to og to the toilet to throw up.
When she arrived to the 19th century great mansion that she had inherited, she felt nausea again: it was in ruins and inhabitable. Its guardian, La Gorda, a very fat
indigenous woman, informed her of a second inhabitant of the mansion: the Girl who lived in the water. A 12-year-old girl that, in that moment, was laying on
the shore, breathing through a hose, while she looked at orange fish swim by.
Isabel asked for the girl to be taken out of the water, and she was horrified when she saw her: covered in mud and seaweed, she refused to take off a pair of
googles thad made her look hideous. She put her in a bathtub full of hot water to take off the mud crust and then she discovered four things. The Girl did not
speak, she only whistled like a bird. She had brutal burns on her back. She had lyce, which made it essential for her to be shaved. And, after taking off her
googles, she saw that she had very green eyes, like herself. Isabel lit up a cigarette, thinking about those four things, and then Karen escaped naked from the
bathroom, screaming madly. It was then that Isabel thought that the burns must have been done by her recently deceased older sister, with lit cigarettes; that it
was the rejected daughter of her sister, that is, her niece; that se has twelve years old and that she would be named Karen; and that she was a biped primate that
she had to turn back into a human being. That is, she had to teach her how to speak.
Isabel shaved the girl. Then, the first thing she taught her to say was: Me. Which Karen enjoyed learning. She walked around the house screaming, mumbling,
singing, Me, Me, Me. Then she taught her You. This was incomprehensible to the girl. Why does Me become You when it is said by someone that is not Me?
Then she taught her how to write. And taught her more and more words. The mansion, already fixed, was full of post-it notes with words written on them, stack
to the things they named, and the garden was full of lemmon-trees.
(Cont.)
MEChapter I. “I EXIST. AND (sometimes and with great difficulty) I THINK”.
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And Karen’s favourite room was the great library, preceded by the great quote, in golden letters, that her grandfather had put on a wall: I think, therefore I am.Karen used to laugh and shake her head at this entence. One evening, her aunt Isabel closed the notebook where she was writing and looked at her nieceKaren reading the book Little Women and told her to come to the head of the great table and asked her to tell the story of the book. When she did, Isabelnoticed that she understood everything her own way and that she thought that the characters of the story did the things they did because they were mad. Theaunt took her niece’s hand, Karen struggled to let go, as she did not like to be touched directly, and then the aunt, crying of pity for her niece and the uncertainfuture that awaited her when she, her only family, died, said that she had to start going to school and becoming more human. But, for this, she had to measureher. Measure me?, Karen asked. Yes, measure her, get to know her abilities. While her aunt kept talking, Karen loosened her jaws.Again facing her phone, 40-year-old Karen explains that, although she learned how to speak, she never forgot that reality that is not words, as the majority ofhuman beings believe, trapped in the blah-blah-blah bubbles. She never forgot that words are only noises, and that she invented a method to be able to get outof the words bubble: to loosen her throat and her jaws. Little Karen loosen her jaws and throat and we listen to her aunt emotively ”speaking to her”, withtears in her eyes, saying blah blah blah mixed with other noises.That evening, Karen climbed a staircase and changed the words of Descartes’ quote that dominated the library, so that they said: I exist, therefore I think. Andwith a felt-tip pen she added some other words so that the quote said: I exist, therefore (someimes and with great difficulty) I think. 40-year-old Karenannounces: And that is what has given me a decisive advange over standard humans. Karen was subjected to several psychometrical tests by a psychologist,that she failed one by one. She showed her ink stains to figure out what she saw in them (ink stains, said Karen invariably). She told her to put together piecesof wood to form a cube (it took four hours for Karen to do so). And they put her into a steel tube to see her brain. The psychologist gave Isabel the diagnosisin her office of the school for special children, while Karen waited outside, in the corridor, playing with a white cat. Karen was within the percentile ofintelligence between the idiots and the mentally weak. The advice of the psycholofist was that Karen stayed in the boarding school for special children. Butaunt Isabel lit up a cigarette and changed the diagnosis like she wanted. For her, the same figures meant something different. That Karen was a idiot in 90% ofthe standard human abilities, but a genius in the other 10%.When she went from the psychologist’s office to her car, Karen was not there. Karen was about to get to the roof by climbing a vine, going after the car. Andshe followed the cat to walk over the edge three floors up the garden. Karen!, aunt Isabel screamed, panicking. Get down!In the car, going back to Mazilán, aunt Isabel told Karen that she was different. And that it is different people that contribute to the world with differentthings. Never let anybody tell you that you are less, you are just different, that is what she said. Now, repeat it. You are just different, Karen repeated. Different,her echolalia said. Her aunt then informed her that she would hire a teacher to teach her whatever she wanted, and that she would that going to the Tuna FishCompany to be trained as the owner she was.That same evening, aunt Isabel was speaking in the library with the manager of Tuna Fish Dolores, Mr. Mario, when she saw the white cat walk by, followed byKaren. She stormed out to chew her out. How did the cat get here? Did you steal her? How did you steal her? Karen, with her head down, denied everything.She did not know how the cat arrived to the mansion. Don’t tell me she walked 200 kilometres and found your house, the aunt screamed. I’m not saying shewalked 200 kilometres, Karen answered.40-year-old Karen smiles and explains it to us: what I love most sometimes comes to me through mysetrious ways. Mysterious ways. And that is another oneof my decisive advantages over standard humans. Standard humans.
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