Humanity has long been enamored by the notion of our own demise. Recent events, however, have altered our end-of-the-world imaginings. Suddenly we have the ability to split an atom and destroy whole cities, whole countries - making us gods capable of bringing about our own end. With this knowledge, a new breed of apocalyptic tale has emerged, the post-apocalyptic novel. This study aims to look at three such works and examine the ways in which various authors have, in the past sixty years, envisioned humanity's fate after the end of the world - focusing specifically on the concepts of social fluidity and change as they play out in these landscapes that are both sterile and living at the same time. Chapter one of this thesis deals with Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz and examines the deterministic techno-primitive social cycle that Miller, a mere decade removed from the dropping of the A-bomb, saw playing out in a post-apocalyptic world. Chapter two looks at Cormac McCarthy's The Road and shows the "society of two", a father and son, who manage to maintain notions of family and society by carefully incorporating fragments of the old, rotting society into their schema of feral domesticity. Chapter three examines a short story, "Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler, and discusses the paradoxically moving but stunted social landscape of Butler's silent, post-apocalyptic realm.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-08212007-162538 |
| Date | 21 November 2007 |
| Creators | Smith, Christina Jean |
| Contributors | Dr. Jon Thompson, Dr. John Kessel, Dr. Devon Orgeron |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-08212007-162538/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dis sertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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