Symbols Vigil: From the Booker Prize-Winning Author of ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ George Saunders

The Petition of Fake Scientist Signatures: Symbol of Corruption and Denial in Vigil

What the Petition Literally Is

The petition is a document that K.J. Boone uses during his decades-long career as an oil executive. On stage, he would hold it aloft, let it unfurl dramatically, and claim it bore the signatures of 17,000 scientists who doubted the consensus on climate change. In reality, many of those signatures were forged or belonged to fictional characters—Bugs Bunny, Mozart, Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley. The document is a fabricated prop designed to manufacture scientific authority for delaying environmental action.

Where the Petition Recurs in the Story

The petition appears only once in the novel’s present action, during Boone’s deathbed vigil in Chapter 2. As Boone drifts in and out of consciousness, he revisits a memory of his old schoolteacher Miss Eva. Miss Eva, conjured by his own mind, brings up the petition in a tone of fond defense, recalling that he would “stand onstage there in some packed auditorium and say: Right here, signatures from seventeen thousand scientists who don’t believe the science here is rock-solid.” Boone then mentally unfurls the document and remembers how the crowd’s doubt would soften. The petition does not appear elsewhere in the narrated events; it is a memory-trigger, rising from Boone’s psyche as he faces his own mortality.

How the Meaning of the Petition Changes

Initially, for Boone, the petition is a triumphant weapon. It allows him to reframe a settled scientific matter as a debatable controversy, giving license to inaction. He recalls the “sound of minds being changed” and the way it served “the cause.” At this stage, the petition represents power over public perception.

As the vigil progresses, the meaning darkens. When Miss Eva presses him—“Do you find it honorable, Kenneth? To confess only the most minor of your sins?”—the petition becomes a symbol of Boone’s self-exoneration, a minor confession designed to mask larger harms. The document’s absurdity (Elvis Presley as a scientist) highlights the flimsiness of his justifications. By the end of the scene, Boone dismisses the whole line of questioning as “the drugs,” but the petition has already exposed a fault line in his identity: his need to believe his own lies.

Finally, in conjunction with the visit from G. and R.—two dead “scientists” who once helped Boone manufacture doubt—the petition comes to represent the entire system of corrupted expertise. G. and R. wear lab coats over business suits, their identities flickering between science and commerce. They celebrate the petition as one of their tools: “You really helped us promulgate our views … Thanks to you, nothing much has been done about it.” The petition thus evolves from a personal prop into a collective mechanism of denial.

Relevant Character and Theme Connections

Character Links

  • K.J. Boone: The petition is his creation and his crutch. He uses it to avoid confronting the environmental guilt that the Frenchman’s display of extinct birds forces upon him. Even at the point of death, Boone cannot fully repudiate the document; he merely admits that it contained some “spurious signatures” and calls it a “white lie.”

  • Miss Eva: As a projection of Boone’s own conscience, Miss Eva draws the petition out of him. She neither condemns nor absolves; she simply forces him to look at the gap between the petition’s public use and the truth. Her role connects to the theme of truth and self-deception.

  • Mother Boone: When Miss Eva summons Mother Boone into the memory, Mother glowers and says, “What have you got yourself into, Kenneth?” She represents a moral judgment from Boone’s past that the petition was meant to suppress.

  • G. and R.: These dead “scientists” are the petition’s spiritual kin. They produced think tanks with wholesome names like “The Healthy Earth Alliance” and “The Intelligent Energy Consortium.” Their visit reinforces the theme of legacy and unredeemed life—Boone’s actions have outlived him and continue to shape the world.

Theme Connections

  • Environmental Guilt and Denial: The petition is the central instrument of denial. It allows Boone to pretend that reasonable doubt exists, even as the Frenchman displays bird species driven extinct by the very industry Boone championed.

  • Truth and Self-Deception: Boone knows the signatures are fake—he admits as much to Miss Eva—yet he continues to use the document. The gap between what he knows and what he says is the essence of self-deception.

  • The Role of the Guide: The unnamed spirit narrator tries to comfort Boone, but she cannot make him genuinely acknowledge the petition’s harm. Her inability hints that some forms of denial are resistant even to supernatural intervention.

  • Death and the Afterlife: The petition is a relic of Boone’s living career, but it haunts his deathbed. Its reappearance suggests that what we leave behind—documents, legacies, lies—continues to weigh on us in the threshold between worlds.

Four Study Questions with Answers

1. How does the petition function as a symbol of self-deception rather than outright fraud?

Boone does not initially set out to deceive others; he rationalizes the forged signatures as a “white lie,” comparing the document to a stage prop that everyone knows isn’t real. The deeper deception is with himself. He prefers to believe the petition merely “served the cause” and that his use of it was justified. When Miss Eva presses him, he admits the signatures were spurious but immediately frames the admission as a minor confession, brushing aside the larger harm. The petition thus symbolizes the way Boone deceives himself about his own moral responsibility.

2. In what ways do G. and R. embody the petition’s logic of fabricated expertise?

G. and R. are dead men who pose as scientists (their lab coats switching with business suits). In life they produced think tanks that generated doubt on behalf of Boone’s industry. They speak in rhetorical questions—“Is it lying when a person uses his reputation to redirect attention?”—which mirror the petition’s tactic of raising false doubt. Both the petition and the Mels are tools for manufacturing consent under the guise of scientific authority. Their endless replication (tiny Mels spawning from their rears) suggests that such fabricated expertise can reproduce itself infinitely, spreading doubt.

3. How does the petition connect to the novel’s treatment of environmental guilt and redemption?

The Frenchman’s display of extinct birds presents Boone with direct evidence of environmental harm. Boone’s response is to retreat into the petition’s logic: he insists that he merely asked for “a higher level of certainty” and that he never “denied” anything. The petition is his shield against guilt. The narrator’s attempts to comfort him fail because Boone cannot admit that the petition was a means of delaying action. True redemption, the novel suggests, would require Boone to repudiate the document and the system it represents, but he dies without doing so.

4. Why does Miss Eva, a memory projection, drive the petition’s exposure rather than the narrator?

The narrator is a spirit guide whose role is comfort, not moral confrontation. She can enter Boone’s thoughts and sympathize with his perspective, but she lacks the authority to accuse him. Miss Eva, by contrast, is a figure from Boone’s past who represents childhood moral education. As a projection of his own conscience, she can ask the uncomfortable questions the narrator cannot. When she says “I don’t envy you, Kenneth, even with all your many houses,” she links the petition to Boone’s material success, suggesting that the petition is a symptom of a life built on compromised values. The choice to expose the petition through Miss Eva underscores that Boone’s judgment comes from within, not from an external force.