Conceptions of Humanity in Three Works of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

79 Pages·2016·0.78 MB·English

Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Tereza Šplíchalová

Conceptions of Humanity in Three
Works of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D.

2016
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..
Author’s signature
Acknowledgement
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D., for his
patience, excellent guidance and words of encouragement. Many thanks go to all who had to cope
with me and my apocalyptic frame of mind during the entire process of writing.
Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................... - 5 -
1 The Theory behind the End of the World ............................................................... - 9 -
2 The Last Man ......................................................................................................... - 14 -
2.1 Post-Apocalypse as Personal Testimony ....................................................... - 14 -
2.2 Society Reflected: Anatomy of Failed Ideals ................................................ - 22 -
3 The Scarlet Plague ................................................................................................ - 30 -
3.1 Darwinism, Social Darwinism and Evolutionary Throwback ....................... - 30 -
3.2 Humanity Lost: Culture, Science, Language ................................................. - 39 -
4 The Road ............................................................................................................... - 48 -
4.1 Language of Post-Apocalypse and Religious View ...................................... - 48 -
4.2 Motivations, Love and Hope.......................................................................... - 57 -
4.3 Morality and Ethical Choices......................................................................... - 63 -
Conclusions .................................................................................................................. - 72 -
Works Cited .................................................................................................................. - 75 -
Résumé ......................................................................................................................... - 78 -
Resumé ......................................................................................................................... - 79 -
Introduction
Humanity has been said to be pre-occupied with a sense of crisis. Such feelings are
undoubtedly reflected in literature and might as well answer the question what makes post-
apocalyptic genre so appealing and popular today. Post-apocalyptic representations often
examine how mankind behaves in times of crisis and what, with respect to humanity as a
quality, ends and what is preserved. This thesis focuses on different conceptions of humanity
in three works of post-apocalyptic fiction, namely The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley, The Scarlet Plague by Jack London and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. These
three novels, published within a 180 years range, provide a framework within which different
conceptions are defined with respect to the oddities of the genre. The main focus is put on
the aftermath of apocalypse, i.e. how, in particular areas of concern, humanity changed or
developed after having to face the world’s end. The main objective aims to show how
humanity is, both in terms of population and quality, treated by three different authors and
what can one deduce from it with regard to the author’s historical background or personal
convictions. The possibility that any apocalypse can be highly personal is discussed, as well
as the option that it responds to the current affairs taking place during the author’s lifetime.
Each novel is approached individually as they, besides the issues directly connected to post-
apocalypse, differ in themes and motifs connected to the conceptions of humanity. The motif
of apocalypse is discussed separately as the end itself, its actual nature and the outcome of
it form the core of any post-apocalyptic narrative.
In order to provide a comprehensive image, the first chapter is devoted to the theory
behind the end of the world and used methodology. It traces the origin of the idea of
apocalypse back to the Bible and offers several possibilities of interpretation, as well as a
proposed methodology of how to understand apocalypse and whether it really has to look
like the end of the world in the biblical sense. Three another interpretations are offered so as
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to illustrate how broadly the genre can be construed. The first chapter compiles relevant
passages from the Bible – for this purpose, The New International Version is used. The
theoretical part is largely based on James Berger’s study After the End: Representations of
Post-Apocalypse which provides a framework and a base from which one can proceed
toward his/her own interpretation. Berger offers a distinct point of view on how to look on
post-apocalyptic fiction and interpret it within the means of today’s culture. His ideas are
implemented throughout the thesis as he provides many thoughts on the genre in general.
The second chapter studies The Last Man and is divided into two subchapters
according to two main areas of concern and two different modes of interpretation. The first
part reads The Last Man as Mary Shelley’s personal testimony and explores to what extent
the novel can be read as autobiographical. The second part looks into its political statements
and presents The Last Man as a list of failed ideologies - hereby it greatly relies on Lee
Sterrenburg’s article “The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions”. Sterrenburg gives a
brief overview of the political situation in Mary Shelley’s era and explains the concept of
revolution with its ideals as well as its dangers. He interprets The Last Man as Mary Shelley’s
response to what is happening in her world outside her private life and thus serves as an
antithesis to the first part. Both parts implement Anne K. Mellor’s observations compiled in
the introduction to The Last Man where she attempts to spot the author’s persona in her
writing and illustrate the way Mary Shelley’s personal life is projected in The Last Man,
with regard to character construction, described events or proposed ideology. To support
Mellor’s claims, Mary Shelley’s personal journals are used, mainly to emphasize the link
between herself and the narrator’s situation. To give a full credit to Mary Shelley’s
contribution to the genre as known today, the first chapter also deals with the concept of the
last man and his position as the narrator of post-apocalypse. The relevancy of his testimony
and its significance is explained through John Leslie’s The End of the World: The Science
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and Ethics of Human Extinction, which aims to prove that without such figure, any
apocalypse is in general irrelevant. The chapter further proceeds to depict a frequently
occurring figure of post-apocalypse, the false prophet.
The third chapter examines The Scarlet Plague and is as well divided into two parts.
The first part reads the novel as London’s projection of Darwinist thoughts, his greatest
inspiration. London presents the devolution of humanity and creates a double narrative to
emphasize the distinction between the pre-apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic world. Such
division marks any apocalyptic event as a divisive tool, as something that divides the world
into before and after and expands the thought of apocalyptic timetable discussed in the first
chapter. This part further examines London’s attempts to undermine the idea of social
Darwinism and assigns it to his political convictions that are also noticeable in London’s
treatment of the concept of social equality. The second part focuses on what precisely
constitutes humanity as such and what is, in the world after, inevitably lost. Culture, science
and language are three pillars that, according to London, are inseparable from humanity at
its evolved stage and thus act as a marker of what does it mean to be human. To understand
London’s background, the article “Jack London and Evolution: From Spencer to Huxley”
by Lawrence I. Berkove is used. It provides a comprehensive view on London’s journey to
accepting Darwinism with its amoral aspects and, besides other London’s works, searches
for social interpretation of The Scarlet Plague. Berkove’s ideas complement those presented
by Berger as both attempt to explain what happens to society when it is confronted with great
changes, such as apocalypses.
The last chapter studies post-apocalyptic representations in The Road, altogether with a
number of aspects connected to greatly reduced humanity. McCarthy’s minimalistic
approach supports the idea of condensed humanity as he illustrates the fate of the human
race on two central characters only. This thesis is particularly concerned with two major
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themes, religion and morality, since they both contribute to the eventual interpretation of
The Road. This chapter constitutes of three parts; the first one claims that The Road can be
read as a highly religious novel featuring the search for New Jerusalem and aims to interpret
a number of religious representations that pervade the novel. The second subchapter focuses
on the central characters and their personas and defines the moral codex they promote. The
third part provides a synthesis of the novel’s most complicated ethical issues and looks into
how they do or do not correspond with the moral codex defined in previous subchapter. This
chapter is largely based on Ashley Kunsa’s linguistic study “’Maps of the World in Its
Becoming’: Post-Apocalyptic Naming in Cormac McCarthy's The Road” and Elizabeth
Tallent’s review “Thinking about The Road”. Both authors look into the complexity of
ethical choices of the survivors and derive the conclusions that are in accordance with what
this thesis advocates. Kunsa focuses on McCarthy’s stylistic nihilism and interprets it as a
sign of new kind of fiction; her observations on the account of McCarthy’s use of proper
names are of great use, just as Tallent’s polemic on the moral aspects of cannibalism.

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1 The Theory behind the End of the World
The idea of apocalypse together with its consequences is a central theme of post-
apocalyptic fiction. It changes the world and enables a new one to arise from the ashes.
Apocalypse, for now simply the end of the world, in the biblical sense does not much differ
from apocalypses one can find in today’s works in terms of the actual execution. What differs
greatly are the connotations and the reason the apocalypse was brought about for, as well as
what happens after.
James Berger points out that post-apocalypse is a genre of paradoxes, given that it
follows what happens after the actual, definitive end (5). Nearly every apocalyptic fiction
announces and describes the end of the world, but in the moment of the apocalypse, the
fictional world presented in the narrative does not end, nor does the narrative itself (5). In
short, “something remains after the end” (Berger 5). This paradox might give a brief
overview of what post-apocalyptic genre precisely follows and provide a key to decide which
representations can be classified as post-apocalyptic, and which not. The generally accepted
definition states that post-apocalyptic fiction employs a narrative that happens after the end,
after some kind of apocalypse. In order to understand the genre, it is necessary to determine
what an apocalypse in fact is. According to Berger, apocalypse as such can be perceived in
three senses, first one of them being “the eschaton, the actual imagined end of the world, as
presented in New Testament Apocalypse of John and other Jewish and early Christian
apocalypses, or as imagined by medieval millenarian movements” (5). The eschaton, or the
apocalypse in the biblical sense, has its roots in the Book of Revelation, and in simple terms
marks the unification of God with people, destroying everything that was before. As for the
actual execution, biblical apocalypse plays on fruitful imagery of destruction – “the heavens
will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and
everything done in it will be laid bare” (The New International Version Bible, 2 Peter 3:10).
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It describes a violent annihilation of the entire planet caused by superficial force, a world set
ablaze, leaving nothing behind. The apocalypse, thus, “will bring about the destruction of
the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat” (2 Peter 3:11). In respect to the
great flood leaving only the microcosm of Noah’s Ark, one can perceive that both
apocalypses in the Bible has much to do with elements – in the end, it is nature that destroys
humanity, either by water or fire; however, especially in the Book of Revelation, there are
other signs that will mark the lord’s coming – “you will hear of wars and rumors of wars . . .
nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and
earthquakes in various places” (Matthew 24:6-7). The world will crumble, and people will
turn against each other. Furthermore, the biblical apocalypse predicts the existence of false
prophets, “for false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and
wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24). Apocalyptic signs are
further enhanced with the coming of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, i.e. symbolic
descriptions of different events that will happen in the end times. Although only the fourth
horseman is named – “there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death”
(Revelation 6:7) – they are all traditionally given names according to their description,
resulting in Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. The interpretation of the first horseman,
however, fluctuates between more appellations, varying from Pestilence to Plague or
Conquest, as he “held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent
on conquest“ (Revelation 6:2). Either way, these events will take place in order to end the
world, the flood as a punishment for misconduct of mankind, the apocalypse described in
the Book of Revelation as a final act of God’s rule. However, neither of these apocalypses
is definitive, there is no void as an outcome – the first results in re-populating of the Earth
owing to Noah’s Ark, the latter is followed by God’s creation of “a new heaven and a new
earth” (Revelation 21:1), thus “the new Jerusalem” (Revelation 21:2). Overall, the biblical
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