Symbols The Book of Elsewhere Keanu Reeves and China Miéville

The Babirusa (Deer-Pig): Self-Destruction and the Mirror of Immortality in The Book of Elsewhere

What Is the Babirusa?

In The Book of Elsewhere, the babirusa—also called a deer-pig—is a real animal transformed into a supernatural antagonist. Physically, it is a pig with four tusks: two lower tusks that curve back like sled runners and two upper tusks that grow upward from the snout, curling toward the forehead. The most disturbing trait is that these upper tusks, if left unchecked, will eventually pierce the animal’s own skull, a fact that becomes central to the novel’s symbolic meaning.

The babirusa is not merely a wild pig; it shares with the protagonist Unute (also called B) an immortality born of blue lightning. It has been resurrecting and attacking him for roughly 78,000 years, making it both his oldest enemy and his strangest kin.

Where It Recurs

The babirusa appears in multiple chapters, each revealing a new layer of its relationship with Unute:

  • Chapter 8 (“Child’s Pose”): Unute tries to permanently kill the babirusa by destroying its head, but the creature hatches again from an egg inside a lab, immediately attacking the reinforced window in fury.
  • Chapter 9 (“Tooth”): The longest treatment. Unute narrates their history—from the babirusa’s birth, its first death, and countless rebirths across continents. He kills it once more and discovers a tattoo on its belly: a circle with four lines, a sigil he has never seen before.
  • Chapter 22 (“An Insect Crawled”): Unute hatches a new babirusa in the desert, releases it, and lets it walk away, marking a shift from killing to accepting.
  • Chapter 23 (“The Doctor’s Story”): Unute’s analyst recounts the patient’s story of the babirusa that drives its tusk into its own brain, interpreting this as a metaphor for infinite mortality.

How Its Meaning Changes

The babirusa begins as a violent, incomprehensible force. Unute first encounters it as a piglet he pulls from its dying mother’s womb, and it imprints on him as the cause of her death. For millennia it attacks him with blind rage. When Unute kills it, it resurrects and finds him again, across oceans and continents. The animal’s rage is automatic, almost mechanical—a “program of hate” (though the novel does not use that phrase).

Over time, Unute’s perspective shifts. He stops hunting the babirusa and instead waits for it. In chapter 22, he deliberately hatches it, embraces it, and releases it into the desert, demanding nothing. This is the first act of acceptance, and it changes the dynamic. The creature still screams and attacks, but Unute’s response is no longer fight—it is farewell.

The final symbolic shift occurs in the therapist’s office. Unute shows the doctor a photograph of a babirusa skull where the upper tusk has drilled into the brain. The doctor reframes the creature not as a monster but as a mirror of Unute: both are beings whose very nature destroys them. The babirusa’s death spiral becomes a model for Unute’s own pattern of endless killing and rebirth. Where Unute once saw a rival, the doctor reveals a fellow prisoner of existence.

Character and Theme Connections

Unute (B)

The babirusa is Unute’s shadow self. As the chapter 9 evidence states, “If you were tasked to make a weapon you would not make a person, either… but you are the world’s weapon.” The babirusa is the same: a living weapon that cannot stop. Unute’s search for meaning in the pig—watching it through lives, hoping to learn something about himself—parallels his entire arc across the novel. When he releases it in chapter 22, he is simultaneously releasing his own need for violent resolution.

Diana

Diana observes Unute’s strange care for mundane preferences (chairs, popcorn) and comes to understand that everything matters to him. The babirusa extends this: Unute grieves for a creature that wants him dead. Diana’s own role as witness to this relationship deepens her understanding of Unute’s complexity.

The Doctor

The therapist in chapter 23 provides the key intellectual framework. He refutes Unute’s claim of perfect memory and challenges him to consider his dreams. When shown the babirusa skull, the doctor says, “Or enlighten it,” suggesting that self-destruction might also be a form of revelation. This reframes the babirusa from a simple curse to a figure of tragic wisdom.

Themes

  • Immortality as Curse: The babirusa and Unute both cannot die, but their eternal return is not liberation—it is repetition of violence and pain.
  • Cycle of Violence: The endless killing and resurrection cycle is embodied in the pig’s attacks and Unute’s responses. Breaking the cycle requires nonviolence, as when Unute releases the pig.
  • Transformation and Rebirth: The babirusa’s eggs and metamorphoses mirror Unute’s own rebirths. The doctor’s caterpillar metaphor—dissolving in a chrysalis—applies equally to both.
  • Identity and Self-Discovery: Unute asks “What sort of man am I?” The babirusa forces him to confront that identity as something shared with a beast.
  • The Nature of Gods: If gods are immortal entities, then the babirusa and Unute inhabit a godlike state, but one defined by suffering. The tattooed sigil and the “ink bearer” role hint at deeper cosmic structures.

Study Questions with Answers

  1. Why does Unute keep returning to the babirusa even after millennia of attacks?
    Answer: Unute feels “curiosity and fraternity.” He believes the pig’s berserker violence might reveal something about his own nature. He also carries guilt over killing the pig’s mother during birth. The connection is both intellectual and emotional—he cannot abandon the creature despite its hatred.

  2. What does the continuous growth of the babirusa’s tusk toward its own brain represent?
    Answer: The tusk symbolizes self-inflicted destruction inherent to identity. Just as the pig’s tusk will eventually pierce its skull, Unute’s own repeated dying and killing gnaws away at any sense of self. It is a physical metaphor for the psychological damage of immortality.

  3. How does the doctor’s interpretation in chapter 23 differ from Unute’s own view of the babirusa?
    Answer: Unute sees the pig as a literal enemy, something to be killed and disposed of. The doctor reframes it as Unute’s mirror: both are “infinitely mortal” rather than immortal, dying over and over. The doctor also suggests the pig might be seeking enlightenment through the tusk’s intrusion, not just destruction.

  4. What is the significance of Unute hatching and releasing the babirusa in chapter 22?
    Answer: It marks Unute’s first act of nonviolence toward the creature. Instead of killing it, he helps it be born and lets it go. This choice breaks the cycle of attack and counterattack. The novel implies that acceptance of shared suffering—rather than victory—is the only path forward for both beings.