SMITH, CHRISTINA JEAN. What Disappears and What Remains

than the possibilities for "social survival" which followed - as America (and Americanwriters) became more inundated with possible apocalyptic scenarios (and thus, less certain ofhow those apocalyptic scenarios might play out) and less trusting of a government which,they felt, had lied to their parents and grandparents about the gravity of nuclear technology.Thus in The Road (2006), Cormac McCarthy envisions a human society that isembodied in the smallest of family units, a father and son. This community treads slowlyacross the post-apocalyptic terrain utilizing or ingesting the remnants of the old world - itsneighborhoods and marketplaces - and moving towards an eventual progression of"community" since the boy joins, at the end of the novel, a new family that incorporates thespiritual and communal values he has longed for and the survivalist mentality that his fatherfought to impart to him.And in "Speech Sounds", Octavia Butler envisions an apocalyptic landscape that ismired in a pre-linguistic present. Because the inhabitants of her world cannot read, write orspeak - "history" has ceased to exist and seems poised to be extinguished altogether. Thepost-apocalyptic community, therefore, is both stuck in the present (since the animalisticinhabitants of the terrain cannot "engage" with history) and in motion since Butler shows thesemi-linguistic humans struggling against atavistic definitions of community by playing outtheir old roles (as busdriver, policeman, teacher)In each of the stories, there is no guarantee these evolving communities will surviveor graduate to a new, more positive social model. However, there is - in each story -evidence of the fluidity of society as it strains against the blighted landscape and the7