My Dedicated Readers,
Diving further and further into the realm of the apocalyptic literature genre, I have finished Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. There are two really big themes in this book that stood out to me. The first one is fear. Obviously, fear is a very important theme in apocalyptic literature because anytime there is extreme change occurring, fear will present itself. Yet, Station Eleven provides some further insight on fear of change and more specially, anxiety. One of the characters, Jeevan, suffers from an anxiety disorder and when he hears about the “Georgia Flu” that is coming he immediately begins to stock up on food and water from the grocery store. During the past SARS epidemic in the book, Jeevan suffers from severe anxiety brought by the fear of the disease when his friend Hua says “You were freaked out. I had to talk you down.” While everyone can experience fear, I think Station Eleven provides key insight on the power that fear actually has. Fear shapes the way a disease can spread throughout a population and determines how certain communities can react to it. Fear also sparks from the fear of the unknown. The book recalls “no more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween.” The absence of normalcy is truly the fuel of fear during times of dire and change. The other all-encompassing theme is the importance of the arts. Throughout the entirety of the novel, the arts are an important aspect of survival and life for most of the main characters. Miranda, a writer, spends most of her time working on a comic called Station Eleven. Station Eleven is a fictional work that allows Miranda to escape the personal turmoil in her life and allows her to cope with the changing world around her. It gives her peace and allows her to focus on what she enjoys, not what will evoke fear or worry within her. For the main characters in this book “survival is insufficient.” There are travelling orchestras, focus on theatre arts, dancing, singing, and many other forms or artistic expression. The characters in this book use all these mediums to slowly cope with the Georgia Flu and their own personal drama. This reminds me of the Danse Macabre artistic genre in the late Middle Ages that allowed the people suffering from the effects of the black plague and other diseases to release pent up emotion pertaining to the death that surrounded them. The similarities between this period of time in history and the story in this novel are striking. If you’re at all interested in investigating these similarities for yourself, here is a link to the Wikipedia page about Danse Macabre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre Overall, I really enjoyed this book. The modern time period, realistic characters, and overall relatability of the story make this book not only enjoyable to read, but also thought evoking. The world will continue to change around us, I just hope man kind is brave and strong enough to change with it. Source for photo: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/carolinemurta/danse-macabre/
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My Dear Readers,
I bring forth, once again, another interesting literary piece pertaining to mankind’s inevitable demise--Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich. This novel touches on so many major themes such as abortion, government control, oppression of the Native American population, identity crisis, women’s rights, and so much more. The one big overlapping themes of the book that piqued my interest the most is this idea of “de-evolution” or the process of returning to a more primitive state as a species. Future Home of the Living God is set in a widespread apocalypse brought on by disease and how Cedar, a pregnant woman, is trying to survive in a time where fertile and pregnant women are being captured in order to protect humanity. As the end of the world settles in, Cedar and the people around her notice how animals of many species seem to be de-evolving to a wild state. The “reports are coming in of experiments hastily conducted on fruit flies, DNA experts who say on the molecular level it is like skipping around in time, and that small-celled creatures and plants have been shuffling through random adaptations for months now. And hasn’t anyone noticed that dogs, cats, horses, pigs, etc. have stopped breeding true?” (44). I think that evolution is something that we believe we understand, but in reality, it is a lot bigger than we expect. Our DNA and molecular makeup are extremely complex, yet who’s to say that we won’t mutate tomorrow? The whole theory behind devolving is still argued today by many biologists. The article found here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/10/reverse-evolution-explained-hagfish-penguins-snakes-science/ seems to contain some striking evidence of it happening in many animal species, yet scientists seem to believe that humans are too good for such a degrading feat. The Future Home of the Living God goes on to state that “we do not have a true fossil record of human evolution… or any other species for that matter… We might actually see chaos. We might roll back adaptation through adaptation, the way canines will revert to type left on their own until they reach a wild dog/wolflike status” (55). I think the notion that humans cannot devolve is selfish and self-centered. At the end of the day, we are just like other mammals. Of course, we have evolved and dominated much of the animal kingdom, but are we really the ones in control? Maybe even “turning around to the beginning. Maybe that’s not the same as going backwards” (208). While humans are not the evil, selfish creatures that I am making them out to be, they do always seem to be “superfluous troublemakers” (226). At the end of the day, I am glad I no longer have a little tail or webbed fingers. I plan to keep the scientific world on it’s toes and hope to gain a less human-centered view on the world. Source for image: https://www.uv.es/jgpausas/he.htm |
AuthorJosephine Graft is a passionate student who believes in the power of the human mind. Anything is achievable when you put your mind to it! Archives
April 2021
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