SMITH, CHRISTINA JEAN. What Disappears and What Remains

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Matthew Wolf-Meyer takes a similarly socio-psychological bent in his article,"Apocalypse, Ideology, America: Science Fiction and the Myth of the Post-ApocalypticEveryday". In it, Wolf-Meyer proposes that the purpose of post-apocalyptic fiction is toexplore the dominant ideologies of American culture (i.e. Capitalism) in an effort to"understand America", so that we might see ourselves more clearly (the ideologies that driveus) and make corrections to avoid these disaster scenarios (30). In this same article Wolf-Meyer also observes:Critics…tend to see the imagined post-apocalyptic world as a staticentity…Readers should, however, see these alternate histories…as glimpses ofnew progressions….for while we may assume that these are narratives ofbeing "bombed into the Stone Age", they are, rather, stories of the post-Atomic Age, and histories of a future yet to come (6).And this observation speaks to what I will discuss in the chapters that follow: a study of thefluidity of society, community and historical cycles as they are represented in three postapocalypticnarratives that span the sixty years since the A-bomb was dropped onHiroshima. 4The dropping of the Atom Bomb and the subsequent technological boom (withall the issues of pollution, over-population and climate change that go with these advances) -created a new type of apocalyptic scenario. This modern scenario was not one that may bevisited upon us by an angry God (if we displeased him) or one that would usher in a religiousGolden Age; it was, and is, a scenario that presses down upon us, all around us, every day.And so, what do we see when we look past the man-made apocalypse? With no pre-ordainedorder of events, no Anti-Christ or Armageddon and no divine power to decide our fates -what becomes of us? What few of us remain are left to look around the charred landscape4 And, thus, the sixty years during which post-apocalyptic fiction was being defined and validated as a new genre ofliterature apart from the Apocalypticism that preceded it.5
and ask "What now?". And the logical answer is that humanity almost always attempts tokeep going. First on an individual, survivalist level and then on a larger, societal level -humanity attempts to right itself and to work toward some reclamation of society as it wasbefore the apocalypse.I look at this fluidity or social evolution as it is represented and examined in WalterMiller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Octavia Butler's"Speech Sounds" and examine what remnants of society, community or family haveremained, in what ways those remainders are evolving and what ultimate vision the authorhas for the future of "community" and thus of human history.In the 1959 novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller envisions the large-scale evolutionof society over an 1800-year period following the "Flame Deluge". In his treatment of themain characters (Francis, Paulo and Zerchi) and in his dealings with the post-apocalypticaccoutrements of this terrain - Miller hints towards an inevitable "techno-primitive" cycle,which must be played out by this society again and again. The determinism of this vision fitswith the era in which Miller wrote Canticle (a mere decade removed from the dropping of thebomb) - a time when Americans were experiencing the fresh horror of seeing the Atom bombdeployed over Japan while retreating into a false sense of control over this new technology,propagated by the American government's propagandistic push that the A-bomb was apositive asset for America and a threat that, if properly prepared for, could be survived. 5Thus Miller's ending, though damning and deterministic, is less disquieting, on some levels,5 i.e. Nuclear drills were common in the 1950s - wherein schoolchildren practiced getting under their desks to avoid debrisand radiation from a possible nuclear attack. The government also encouraged the building of fallout shelters, and manyAmerican families in this era followed their advice - building small bunkers in their backyards.6
Page 1 and 2: ABSTRACTSMITH, CHRISTINA JEAN. What
Page 3 and 4: DedicationTo my mom and sister who
Page 5 and 6: Table of ContentsIntroduction……
Page 7 and 8: Ten years later, however - this gap
Page 9: the other side of such a scenario)
Page 13 and 14: dizzying, deconstructing effects of
Page 15 and 16: civilization - and is told mainly f
Page 17 and 18: humanity is only capable of a brief
Page 19 and 20: primitivism (lack of or rudimentary
Page 21 and 22: desert on a Lenten vigil. He must s
Page 23 and 24: weapons (since space compresses alo
Page 25 and 26: more importantly, he is the first p
Page 27 and 28: A second way in which Miller uses t
Page 29 and 30: able to recognize the lamp's dark p
Page 31 and 32: Chapter TwoA Flame in the Darkness:
Page 33 and 34: The novel's ending suggests, at bes
Page 35 and 36: een considered off-limits as a sour
Page 37 and 38: overarching human continuum and rai
Page 39 and 40: the detritus and scant remaining go
Page 41 and 42: of men tottering down the causeway"
Page 43 and 44: one the father and son come across
Page 45 and 46: while the father and son spend most
Page 47 and 48: Dear people, thank you for all this
Page 49 and 50: family have been fulfilled by this
Page 51 and 52: vision of transition as it applies
Page 53 and 54: "different"; she keeps a close hold
Page 55 and 56: (gather) books as well as wood to b
Page 57 and 58: have settled since any semi-safe mo
Page 59 and 60: ConclusionThe post-apocalyptic narr
Page 61 and 62:
leaves us room to hope that the fut
Page 63:
Patrides, C.A. and Joseph Wittrech,
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SMITH, CHRISTINA JEAN. What Disappears and What Remains

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