Within the lines of every horrific and unsettling story of the apocalyptic realm lies the drastic measures and elements that create the daunting and suspenseful apocalyptic story. These elements thrive within the apocalyptic world and create the same devastating aftermath that lures in the darkness of an apocalypse. These specific elements tend to arise and create the main layout of the story along with the ideas and adjustments brought by the author. When writing an apocalyptic story, authors tend to focus on a similar path that branches off into their own apocalyptic mayhem. Within every work of apocalyptic literature, Main themes within the writings seem to capture the eagerness of the audience's attention. These elements being harsh conditions, …show more content…
When a catastrophic apocalyptic event occurs, it naturally eliminates a massive chunk of the population and creates mass destruction along with harsh conditions that become unbearable for humankind. Harsh conditions can be disastrous because it forces the remaining population to survive and adjust to the change in weather. In the story The People of Sand and Slag the earth was in such a harsh condition that plants, animals, and normal humans could not live there and either died or had to evolve to sufficiently thrive in that specific atmosphere. Although the conditions in this story were severe and traumatic, even small changes in normal conditions such as temperature fluctuation can be tough to endure. Harsh conditions disrupt the way humans struggle to survive by damaging and eliminating major necessary resources that are needed for …show more content…
In most cases, apocalyptic encounters naturally bring about loss of life and scatterings among the human population. Many apocalyptic works such as The Walking Dead, World War Z, and practically any zombie infested work, has shown traumatic losses within the world's population. This specific theme of population decrease has become a major role in most apocalyptic works because it can be created from many other elements such as disease, zombies, and difficult living conditions. When creating an apocalyptic story, it is hard to not to encounter any sort of population decrease and is shown to be a top theme for most apocalyptic
Are you one of those people who thinks the world is going to end any day now? Many people do, and experience it vicariously through television shows like the Walking Dead, which deals with a zombie apocalypse. However, these visions of destruction can also appeal to people as a kind of utopian society, one with perfect or desirable qualities. In his article, The Apocalyptic Strain in Popular Culture, Paul A. Cantor explains that “popular culture has stepped forward to offer Americans a chance to explore these possibilities imaginatively and to rethink the American Dream” (287). Many people in our society have been let down by the American Dream, since it is extremely difficult or impossible to achieve, so this translates into an attraction
In Ray Bradbury’s " There Will Come Soft Rains, " he fabricates a story with two themes about the end of the world. The first theme is that humans are so reliant on technology, that it leads the destruction of the world, and the second theme is that a world without humans would be peaceful, however no one would be able to enjoy it. Bradbury uses literary devices, such as narrative structure, personnification, and pathos to effectively address human extinction. One aspect which illustrates how he portrays human extinction can be identified as narrative structure, he structured the story in a way that it slowly abolishes the facade of technological improvements made by people to reveal the devastation that technology can cause. The story started
Marked by two world wars and the anxiety that accompanies humanity's knowledge of the ability to destroy itself, the Twentieth Century has produced literature that attempts to depict the plight of the modern man living in a modern waste land. If this sounds dismal and bleak, it is. And that is precisely why the dark humor of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. shines through our post-modern age. The devastating bombing of Dresden, Germany at the close of World War II is the subject of Vonnegut's most highly acclaimed work, Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death. Vonnegut's experience as an American POW in Dresden fuels the narrative that unconventionally defines his generation through the life and death of Billy Pilgrim. The survival of Billy Pilgrim at Dresden and his re-entry to the shell-shocked world reveal a modern day journey of the anti-hero. Vonnegut's unusual style and black satire provide a refreshing backdrop for a vehement anti-war theme and enhance his adept ability to depict the face of humanity complete with all of its beauty and blemishes. Likewise, Vonnegut adds his own philosophy concerning time, our place in it, and connection (or disconnection) to it and one other. Perhaps the most crucial step in understanding this intriguing work is to start with its title, which holds the key to Vonnegut's most prevailing theme.
Kurt Vonnegut's apocalyptic novel, Cat's Cradle, might well be called an intricate network of paradox and irony. It is with such irony and paradox that Vonnegut himself describes his work as "poisoning minds with humanity...to encourage them to make a better world" (The Vonnegut Statement 107). In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut does not tie his co-mingled plots into easy to digest bites as the short chapter structure of his story implies. Rather, he implores his reader to resolve the paradoxes and ironies of Cat's Cradle by simply allowing them to exist. By drawing our attention to the paradoxical nature of life, Vonnegut releases the reader from the necessity of creating meaning into a realm of infinite possibility. It appears that Vonnegut sees the impulse toward making a better world as fundamental to the human spirit; that when the obstacle of meaning is removed the reader, he supposes, will naturally improve the world.
The fight against the zombie metaphor within World War Z gives the reader a purpose for finding a way to hold on to hope, and to ultimately celebrate life, ideally a healthy one, itself. With the zombie metaphor referring to uncontrollable fears in today’s modern society, the thriller is a realistic speculation about an airborne virus entering the human species and spreading on a global scale. With influenza outbreaks being a familiar scenario within modern society, the fear of an uncontrollable disease sends shockwaves of fear through the human race, especially when a vaccine has yet to be found and distributed, as in the film. The fear of a viral infection spreading stems from the idea that people do not simply “give” another individual the virus; a virus is a form of life that evolves and mutates in order to survive environmental changes.
Imagine a world where everything is black and covered in layers of ash, where dead bodies are scattered throughout the streets and food is scarce. When earth, once green and alive, turns dark and deadly. A story about a man, his son and their will to survive. Within the novel Cormac McCarthy shows how people turn to animalistic and hasty characteristics during a post-apocalyptic time. Their need to survive tops all other circumstances, no matter the consequences. The hardships they face will forever be imprinted in their mind. In the novel, The Road, author Cormac McCarthy utilizes morbid diction and visual imagery to portray a desperate tone when discussing the loss of humanity, proving that desperate times can lead a person to act in careless ways.
What is your opinion of the idea that the ability to face hardship is an essential Human Quality?
When writing a story that is meant to scare the reader, authors use a variety of different literary elements to intensify fear. This is apparent in the stories “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “beware: do not read this poem,” and “House Taken Over”. It is shown through transformation in the character, setting, and sometimes even the story or poem itself, adding to the scariness that the reader feels when reading it. While there are some examples of transformation not being scary or not playing a role in stories meant to scare us, transformation plays a crucial role in making the reader of these stories scared.
Novelist Cormac McCarthy believes his dark books reflect the harsh events of human nature. McCarthy had a vision of life that was plain and simple in his mind making it harder for some readers to accept. In an interview Oprah asks McCarthy where the apocalyptic dream came from and he replied “I went and stood at a window, and I could hear the trains coming through, a very lonesome sound. I just had this image of these fires up on the hill and I thought a lot about my little boy” (New York Times
covers the area, causing people, animals, and structures to practically disintegrate. Even years afterwards people were still dying and having
Through the use of recurring ideas of death, hope and reality, McCarthy conveys that there is no escape; either from the universal destruction caused by the apocalypse or the emotionally destructive effects of dreams. In The Road, dreams reveal the human nature of the characters. McCarthy illustrates the gradual dehumanization of people when life completely changes; he argues that all the terrible things that people could do have already been done, underlining the frailty of our existence. McCarthy ultimately shows us how reliant we are on the past and that we must let go of the past to make way for the future.
This short story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. It is unclear to the readers how the world got to be this way. This story takes place four years after all this chaos began. The narrator does an excellent job setting the scene throughout the story using lots of details. It is revealed throughout the story that it takes place during
Natural disasters can range between hundreds of different situations and it can happen to anyone. In “darkness” Lord Byron uses a dream of the end of the world to describe the belief of humanity ending. This poem talks about the life of the world as the ending world unfolds. The fact of this happening to everyone causes darkness and changes the mood of a whole civilization. The hidden darkness of the world now is all the hate of other creatures and vandalizing of nature.
Yolen, Jane. "Gray." After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia. Ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. New York: Hyperion, 2012. 281-82. Print.