So, I’m doing my Master’s degree in Germany (it’s on hold atm on account of the new-born… and also I’m now in Taiwan) and I’m trying to find ways to explore the Post-Apocalyptic genre wherever possible within the course. Whenever I manage to write something that has links to my favourite genre, I’ll post it here after I get graded.
This piece was particularly fun to write, and I managed to get a 1.3 on the final grade, which is far better than I could have ever hoped. So, if you’ve got some free time, and the inclination - feel free to take a look.
A Link Between Romanticism and Post-Apocalyptic Narratives
A towering mountain range, a sweeping valley, a rolling thunderstorm over the sea, humanity has stood in awe of the destructive power and majestic beauty of nature since our inception. Humanity has perpetually existed at the fickle whims of nature, with our various civilizations being collective efforts to carve out a place within it. As these civilizations developed, and humanity was safeguarded from the threat, and beauty, of nature, we continued to find ourselves drawn from the safety of civilization to explore nature’s rugged allure. But what could happen if the walls of civilization were removed entirely, and humanity were trust back into nature? If Romanticism was the birthplace of the Sublime, then the Post-apocalyptic genre is where it now resides. This essay will explore the similarities between Romanticism and the Post-apocalyptic genre, focusing on Mary Shelley’s Romantic text Frankenstein in contrast to Cormac McCarthy’s Post-apocalyptic novel The Road, with particular attention to the literary concept of the Sublime via representations of nature and ruins.
1. What is the Sublime?
Though it has lost much of its nuance in the modern day, the closest synonym we have for the sublime is the traditional meaning of the word “awesome”. When an encounter with something that is so overwhelmingly powerful, the viewer is left dumbstruck by the grandeur of it. The viewer is overcome with awe as their mind grapples with the beautiful terror of the sublime phenomenon. As a type of aesthetic appreciation, the sublime has elements of pleasure, attraction, and admiration, but there is also an element of fear (Cochrane 125). The contrast in scale, of the viewer and the sublime phenomenon, is a key element, as an encounter with the sublime reveals the vast disparity between the viewer and the phenomenon in terms of size, power, or time. The sublime, as depicted in literature, is a conveyance of this awe as author and reader enter an emotional resonance via the language of the text itself. Though it has an affective structure as well as a rhetoric, the sublime has a fluid movement across generic boundaries and so is not a genre itself (Ramazani 175).
1.1 Sublime – Nature
Nature itself has often been the subject of sublime depiction in literature, with the forces of our very own world being able to overpower any single one of us without resistance. There is a vast amount of beauty in the world, but it is a world that humanity have been forced to struggled to survive in for thousands of years. It is only recently that humanity has developed the technology that allows us to survive all but the worst that nature has to offer and even then there are natural disasters that continue to destroy everything and kill anyone they encounter. The illusion that we are in complete control of our own home planet is shattered all too frequently.
A rocky mountain that towers over the surrounding country side, its snowcapped peaks obscured by the clouds that hang high above, is a prime example of the sublime. Not only does its naturally formed structure dwarf anything that humanity has created, an avalanche that could result from its windswept peak could wipe out a town, let alone the potential destruction caused by any one of its rocky outcroppings shearing loose and tumbling down below. On top of its physical size and potential for wide spread destruction, the mountain itself is antediluvian in age. The mountain is so old that it defies human comprehension. As large as the mountain is at the time the viewer gazes up at it, that is all that remains after its millions of years of endurance. The mountain has seen epochs start and end, watched as species rise and die out, over and over, it has stood the test of time. As diminished as the mountain is from its initial form, a mere shadow of its original self, the mountain still towers over any collective human endeavour, let alone any individual human. A person who stands at the foot of the mountain can gaze upward and appreciate its beauty. They might be able to see its peak, but they will never be able to comprehend the forces that went into its creation, how long ago it was formed or how long it will remain after they are gone.
It is more direct, if not easier, for a painter to depict a mountain and invoke the sublime in the viewer than it is for an author to write about a mountain and convey that same experience. An author can, with the proper combination of adjectives, create such a cumulative force that the reader is able to visualize some approximation of the mountain the author wishes them to visualize (Staver 486). The more talented the author, the more fine-tuned their selection of adjectives will be, resulting in a more accurate visualization on the behalf of the reader. The author cannot directly show the reader the mountain itself, but they can lead them towards summoning it forth in their imaginations, as well as the feelings of the sublime that follow with it, with the proper word choice.
1.2 Sublime – Ruins
Ruins are a core aspect of both Romanticism and the Post-apocalyptic genres. Far from simply interesting set pieces for the narrative to work within, ruin are sites of history, loss and potentially violence. Ruins symbolize long-gone grandeur, a melancholic representation of how fragile civilization is (Romantic Ruins). Often conceptualized as disjointed fragments, ruins elicit notions of mortality, the fleetingness of time and of the sublime (Scarbrough 448). Ruins are the physical remains of civilization, structures abandoned by humanity and taken back by nature. Structures are originally constructed to be both functional and aesthetic, but once they become ruins, having lost their functional purpose, they are merely aesthetic (Ziolkowski 266). In literature, ruins become symbols of decay, the transience of humanity and the power of nature itself. In the time of the industrial revolution, ruins would have been a nostalgic critique of modernity and industry. What use was all the efforts of urbanization when even the greatest structures of the past eventually fell to ruin? Was it worth despoiling nature, uprooting people from their ancestral homes and relocating them to the cities, if it would all fall to ruin and return to nature anyway? A powerful narrative symbol for Romantic writers, ruins could transfer deep emotions as well as historical information because they were not simple structures but were also imbued with the histories of their former inhabitants and events that occurred within (Lake 447). The Romantics found ruins to be the perfect vector for the sublime, as they were objects that brought to mind the inevitable decay of history, the callousness of nature and the inexorable march of time (Korsmeyer 431).
Ruins are similarly positioned to be the perfect symbol for the Post-apocalyptic genre that they are considered a thematic keystone. While the Romantics only had use of all the ruins that had come before them, Post-apocalyptic authors also have access to those ruins, all the ruins that have appeared since then, as well as all the ruins that could potentially exist if modern society were to fall to an apocalypse. This layering of ruins, built by different people from from different eras, did not originate with modern Post-apocalyptic authors. Writings left behind by the Anglo-Saxons tell a tale of a culture that views itself, literally and metaphorically, built upon the ruins of previous cultures (Estes 61). The presence of ruins locks the connection between past and present, by keeping the remnants of the past in front of those who remain alive in the present. For the Post-apocalyptic genre, ruins could symbolize the comforts and excess of the world before the apocalypse, or they could symbolize the hubris that lead to the apocalypse itself. The potential symbolism of ruins also depends on the viewer, if they were alive before the apocalypse the ruins will represent the disparity between the past and the present, but if they were born after the apocalypse then they will only see remnants of a world more alien than any foreign culture. Ruins are given meaning by the viewer, acting as a canvas for speculative strategies that tell us more about the viewer than the ruin itself (Estes 62).
The type of ruins that appear in literature has also subtly shifted over time, but the repercussions of this are significant for the themes that are available to writers. In the era of the Romantics, the types of buildings that would have been available to become ruins was limited. Houses and other small structures, if built of stone, would have been in plentiful supply, but they were typically built less sturdily and were more likely to be repaired and reinhabited, or simply dismantled to aid in the construction of another near building. Castles, forts, churches and abbeys were grand structures that would have taken years to build and would have potentially stood for centuries, as they were typically made of solid stone. These structures are already laden with symbolism and meaning upon their construction; castles were home to nobility or even royalty, forts were sites of military conflict, while churches and abbeys were holy sites of faith that were typically built on consecrated grounds and sometimes even had accompanying graveyards. The original meaning and symbolism of these structures would still be there when they became ruins, but there would also be other layers on top of that. The splendour of the original architecture, however overgrown by nature, demolished by conflict or modified by subsequent inhabitants, still radiates from within (Zucker 130). Ruined castles stand forlorn, their once noble inhabitants fallen from grace and forgotten, ruined churches were once houses of god that now stand abandoned by the divine and are home only to the dead. The types of buildings that would have had the opportunity to become ruins for the Romantics are very different to the types of buildings that become ruins for the Post-apocalyptic writers.
Post-apocalyptic authors, while they do have access to most of the older ruins that the Romanics had access to, tend to focus on the ruins of the modern world. Modern architecture does not fall to ruin like the architecture of old, modern materials do not decay in the same way as the simple materials of solid stone blocks and thick oak beams. The increased complexity of modern building materials allows for easier production, but at the cost of structural longevity. Modern buildings themselves decay faster, but the materials used to build them stay around longer. The ruins of modern architecture refuse to relinquish their stored culture to nature (Huyssen 20). Even in that fact there is meaning to be found, that structures built from man-made materials do not last as long as those built with materials taken straight from nature. It is a generally accepted fact, if an unconscious one, that long after the last skyscraper tumbles down, the ruins of ancient Egypt will still remain. Conversely, modern architecture is not without its symbolic opportunities. It is by mere fortune that a ruined city of skyscrapers tends to look like a graveyard of towering tombstones when all the lights are out and all the humans have left. Paved roads and concrete dams crack and break as the years wear on and they are no longer maintained, showcasing the constant battle between civilization and nature. Suburban homes sag under the strain of trapped rainwater, or are inhabited by wild animals that once again claim the streets as their own. Survivors travelling along broken and weed-choked roads is a central trope of Post-apocalyptic fiction (Kaup 226). Whatever modern architecture there was has fallen to ruin and decay, and the amplitude of nature seizes upon our abandoned efforts to return them to the colossal, spiritually charged landscape (Baker 304). All the technological advancements of humanity are revealed for what they are in the ruins of a modern building. Steel beams rust, glass shatters while concrete cracks and crumbles, humanity has spent its existence attempting to distance itself from nature but in the end it is revealed that we were never apart from it. Ruins are the intersection of the beauty of nature and man-made beauty, creating a sublime beauty that is greater than either when taken individually (Hetzler 54).
2. The Romantic Genre
Romanticism, as a literary movement, sprung from Europe in the late 18th and early 19tn centuries as a reaction the literary movement of Rationalism. Romantic texts focused on emotion, individualism, and imagination, while celebrating the beauty of the natural world and the subjective human experience. In a quickly industrialising world, the Romantics tapped into a nostalgia for more pastoral times in their depictions of the majestic beauty and raw power of nature. This yearning for a simpler time focused the Romantic’s attention on the past, specifically on medieval history and mythology, as well as the physical ruins of buildings. Overall, it is arguable that the greatest legacy of the Romantics is their codification of the concept of the sublime. In a world that was being destroyed and paved over by industry in the pursuit of profit, as masses of people were leaving their ancestral homes to move to the cities, the sublime was the answer to such wide-spread dehumanization. The transcendent wonder and overwhelming awe of the sublime, both thrilling and terrible, sparked emotions that many readers at the time had thought long buried by the modern world. Is it any wonder that these moments of the sublime were to be discovered in the remote corners of the natural world or in the ruins of the past itself, as far from the smoke-clogged, depersonalized urban present that the Romantics could reach?
Another interesting aspect of the Romantic Literary movement was its focus on individualism, and the subjective human experience. With the enlightenment in full swing, science and rational thinking were filling in the corners of the map and erasing much of the mystique of the world. Despite the innumerable technological and social advancements that the enlightenment brought, the price of all this advancement and understanding was that it also made the world seem a bit more mundane. Society, as a whole, was forging ahead and it would have felt as though individuals were ether lost in the crowd or being outright left behind. Romanticism tapped into this by exploring the full gamut of emotionally charged narratives, with characters that bucked the norm and forged their own paths through life. Romantic protagonists were passionate characters who had high-highs and low-lows, as they often rebelled against the societies that surrounded them. Oftentimes these characters would leave the very mundane real world behind and step into a realms of fantasy, interacting the with supernatural. In almost every aspect of its creation and execution, literary Romanticism seems to have looked at the modern world of its era and decided that it had erred somewhere and was no longer fit for task.
2.1 Frankenstein
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the story of one man’s search for knowledge above all else, and the dire consequences of that all-encompassing pursuit of knowledge. Though Victor Frankenstein lives a blessed life, given the best education while surrounded by the sublime vistas of Europe, his exploration of the sciences results in an abomination that is simultaneously as horrific as it is beautiful. An old adage states that ‘you don’t know where the line is, until you cross it.’ In simpler terms, sometimes you do not know something is wrong until it is too late and you have already done it. Victor Frankenstein’s creation of the Monster, a supposed blasphemy against nature itself, was one such foray across the line of acceptability. Monsters, as fascinating and frighting as they are as outcasts from our system of self-definition, mark the boundaries of cultural values (Kirk 7) This so-called sin against nature, created outside the bounds of acceptable society, wreaks havoc on his creator before leading him on a chase to the furthest and most inhospitable reaches of the planet where humanity rarely treads.
Just as the landscapes in Frankenstein are described to evoke the Sublime, so too is the creature itself. It is frighteningly powerful and hauntingly beautiful, both in a way that leave the viewer feeling a sense of unease and dread. Frankenstein knows that the creation of the creature was wrong, and so abandons his creation and hides its existence from society at large. In this way, created outside the norms of society, and forced to live outside its bounds, the creature has more to do with nature than of civilization. Subsequently, despite being a creation of man, the creature is more of a force of nature than of humanity’s civilization and reveals itself more of a sin against humanity than a sin against nature itself. The sublime is a transcendental impulse, one that is ultimately self-destructive to the point of being apocalyptic (Ramazani 171). The creature is eloquent and elegant, rugged enough to exist on its own, able to learn and survive in the harshest of wildernesses that would kill most humans. Part of the dread the creature inspires in people is the fact that it is superior to humanity in almost every fashion. Frankenstein’s ultimate reasoning behind refusing to create the creature a bride was the fear of what would happen to humanity if he did so.
In an often-overlooked element of the narrative, Frankenstein could be viewed as an apocalyptic text. At the end of the text, Frankenstein’s creation states that it will flee to the furthest reaches of the world and self-immolate, but there is no guarantee that he follows through with this promise of suicide. Furthermore, alongside the countless sightings of the creature across the continent, there is the documentation of the very text itself. With verifiable proof that the creature did in fact exist before, all an aspirational scientist with questionable morals would need to do is follow the clues left in Captain Walton’s letters that tell of Frankenstein’s journey in order to replicate the process in the creation of another inhuman creature. There were no shortage of conflicts in the late 1700’s that would warrant the scientific research into the creation of such a powerful abomination. Were the narrative to continue beyond the original text, it is not difficult to see how thing in the world of Frankenstein would quickly begin to unravel. With the proverbial genie out of the bottle, it would be impossible to get it back in, and Victor Frankenstein’s sublime transgression against human civilization could spell doom for the human species long after his own death. The letters he sent could have been published by Captain Walter’s sister, the originally intended recipient, in a recognizable England, or they could have been published by another creature in a wholly new society bereft of its human creators.
3. The Post-apocalyptic Genre
An exploration of the world’s end is innately sublime, however it plays out. The sheer immensity of the apocalypse, once the domain of the gods alone, is awe-inspiring in its significance. A baseline definition of Post-apocalyptic fiction is narratives that focus on the depiction and exploration (literal and metaphorical) of globalized ruin (Hicks 6). Up until the 19th century, grand disasters were attributed to the divine, awful and sublime acts of god where the difference between life and death was a matter of fate, but during the 20th century, humanity was horrified to realize that we could be agents of our own demise (Nye). This shift in public perspective caused most authors to move their focus from the Apocalyptic genre to the Post-apocalyptic genre. The primary difference between the two genres is that the Post-apocalyptic narrative casts the apocalypse as an origin, as the beginning of a new story rather than the more obvious end of another (Brent 57). After the Second World War the world was a ruin, a shadow of what it once was, because the apocalypse had already come and gone, and representations of the apocalypse were now a matter of retrospection (Berger 389). Post-apocalyptic narratives can have scenarios that are more realistic and plausible in nature, all the way to fantastic and supernatural. Whatever form these stories take, they share an aesthetic and geographical focus with post-industrial ruins, delivering a form of Anthropocene-porn (Lorimer 130). After the old world dies, those few that survive to sift through the ruins are forced to find new ways to live in a world that is irrevocably changed, just as they themselves are changed. The mere fact that an individual survives the end of the world while billions of others die, often by luck alone, is itself a brush with the sublime. The Post-apocalyptic genre, in its depictions and exploration of unimaginable destruction and aesthetics of ruin, can be considered the epitome of the sublime (Hicks 110) The core element of every Post-apocalyptic narrative, the ruined civilization of humanity brought back to nature, is a manifestation of the sublime.
Post-apocalyptic narratives are almost universally set within the ruins of our own earth. The shock of seeing recognizable monuments and buildings brought to ruin necessitates an earth-based narrative (Brent 60). As an individual would be shocked to see their home in ruins, regardless of where that home is, this requirement of setting Post-apocalyptic stories on earth is for the readers, rather than the characters within the narrative. A fictional world only ever depicted in ruin was never whole to begin with, but a depiction of well-known real-world locations is much more evocative in its disparity between fiction and reality. A Post-apocalyptic story asks its readers to imagine their world, but to imagine a version of it where they, and everyone they know, is dead, or where all the buildings they are familiar with are laying in ruins. Beyond the off chance that a version of themselves is present within the text, a Post-apocalyptic narrative asks its readers to imagine a world where they are longer present. Whatever the particulars of the apocalyptic scenario that played out in the narrative, all the generational efforts of human endeavour were not enough to stand in the face of it. When the collective resistance of humanity crumbles in opposition to the overwhelming power of the apocalypse, what hope does an isolated band of survivors, or lone individual, have of surviving the aftermath? Not only are characters in a Post-apocalyptic narrative faced with the physical and moral struggles of day to day survival in a ruined world without modern civilization, they are burdened with the fact humanity as a whole failed.
It can be said that the only real difference between an Apocalyptic narrative and a Post-Apocalyptic narrative is that some characters survive the apocalypse in the latter. This is because when it comes to the end of the world, from Norse Mythology to the Bible, there is usually just enough survivors to allow for an honest chance of a new beginning (Lisboa 53). While the survivors find themselves physically surviving to live in the ruins of the old world, their metaphysical lives, of who they were in the old world, are just as ruined as the rubble around them. Living on after the end of the world is a radical break that requires a transformation into a new model of selfhood (Kaup 11). As lucky as they are to survive the end of the world, these survivors are still products of the old world and thus bring with them old-world problems. Whatever form the new world takes, its foundations are often flawed with prototypes of the same mistakes that brought the old world to ruin, allowing the process to repeat indefinitely (Lisboa 54).
In this way, the Post-apocalyptic genre has more in common with Romanticism than one might initially think. Stories from both genres carry within them an innate notion that something about the modern world is wrong, that modern society has taken a misstep somewhere and forgotten itself. While Romanticism remedies this notion by focusing on the corners of the world that remain untouched, or by exploring the fantastical, Post-Apocalyptic narratives deal with it by destroying the modern world and getting back to basics. While the Romantics want to get at the heart of what it means to be human, the Post-Apocalyptic authors make the claim that the essence of humanity is revealed by the apocalypse (Berger 10). While Romanticism focuses on the impassioned individual and their emotional experience of life as they chafe under the restraint of modern society, Post-apocalyptic literature showcases what happens to the masses who lack individualism and are too reliant on modern society when it is ripped away. Narratives in both genres are open to the inclusion of the supernatural, though neither are reliant on its presence. Both genres have a nostalgic element to them, Romanticism has a fascination with an idealized past, while Post-apocalyptic literature instead focuses on the luxuries that were lost in the apocalypse. Characters in Romantic narratives often rebel against tradition, feeling constrained by the established norms of society, but characters in a Post-apocalyptic narrative are liberated from society, in a sense, when it is upended by the apocalypse. The focus on the exotic present within Romanticism is represented in Post-apocalyptic narratives by the new and strange cultures that have emerged in the wake of the apocalypse. Characters in both genres find themselves abandoning the superficial trappings of modern society in favor of focusing on the essentials of life. Finally, the sublime plays an active role in both genres as characters are exposed to the elements where they witness awe-inspiring phenomena and take part in terrifying experiences that are beyond mere-human understanding.
3.1 The Road
The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy, is a story about a father and son, known as The Man and The Boy, travelling across a post-apocalyptic United States of America. They are travelling southward because in the ruined world, the weather is growing harsher by the year and the father thinks their best chances of survival lay in the south. Far from the action-packed tales of other Post-apocalyptic narratives, The Road is a haunting narrative about maintaining a moral core amid the depraved decline of humanity. Though the story is one based on a realistic depiction of earth, the narration follows the lead of Romantic writers and dips into fantastic elements of dreams and interpretation which add a surreal element to the story. It is never revealed what exactly caused the apocalypse in The Road, but the widespread aftermath is clear and all-encompassing. The world itself seems to be dying around them, and each step they take they encounter a landscape that is decaying, as though some spiritual aspect of nature is dead. But McCarthy does not just lament the loss of the natural world, for there is a tenderness to his depictions of man-made remnants of civilization, too (Hardwig 44). There is a sense of loss for both civilization as well as nature, and The Road treats their passing with all the sombreness of a eulogy.
The Man is the primary guide and protector of the Boy, whom he sees as an object of purity and goodness in a fallen world. The Man is not only protecting the Boy because he is his son, but also because he sees his son as one of the last remnants of untainted purity and goodness left in the world. Despite the horrific bleakness of the world that is dying around them, filled with roaming gangs that have given in to their bestial natures, McCarthy manifests the sublime through The Man’s descriptions of The Boy, regarding his beauty as being equated with inherent moral goodness (Wilhelm 135). Much like the Romantics, McCarthy paints an idealized vison of the past. The Man is plagued by his life from before the apocalypse, a world that is cast as Edenic in comparison (Edwards 58). Despite the fact that the seeds of the apocalypse are already buried in this Edenic view of the past (Edwards 58), The Road’s suffusion of the sublime into the pre-apocalyptic world suggests an acknowledgment of our luck of living on this side of the apocalypse (Hardwig 49).
Despite this bleak view of the present given to us in The Road, there are still moments of peace to be found in the decay. Amid seeing burning forests collapse under their rotting weight, running from cannibals, and finding the bodies of those who lost the will to carry on, there are moments of physical and spiritual respite for The Man and The Boy. A scene where father and son are able to bathe in a waterfall, and another where they find some morels growing in a dead orchard nearby, are pastoral and sublime (Walsh 53). But these moments of respite do not just come from the natural world, they also find a storehouse of food and safe place to sleep. As well as this, when winter is setting in and things are looking bleak, they find a house, where they are able to trim their hair, change their clothes and take warmer blankets from a deceased couple who still lay on the bed. Far from seeming like moments of deus-ex machina, these strokes of good fortune come across as a hand guiding the pair through the darkest of days. Despite the Man’s death at the end of the book, The Road suggests that this is part of a grander plan as The Boy is able to join a wandering family and is never left alone in the world. The world of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is so bleak, but it is written so in order for the seemingly mundane moments of light to shine all the brighter in contrast.
4. The Apocalyptic Sublime
There is a horrific peace to be found in the widespread destruction of all life on earth. Post-apocalyptic narratives offer readers a sublime experience, in that they open the door for them to contemplate the end of time on a human scale (Horner & Zlosnik 57). As with Romantic authors, Post-apocalyptic authors are tapping into an often unspoken notion held by the public at large that something has gone awry with civilization, which is why these narratives resonate with so many readers. No more bills, business meetings, university assignments, family dinners or taxes, all the non-essential noise of the modern world would be stripped away and life would recede back to the basics. Who would you become in such a scenario? Freed from the constructedness of modernist foundations and put into a state of instability, the sublime experience of the apocalypse is potentially liberating (Gunn & Beard 284). It should be noted that there is no guarantee of a better life after an apocalypse, merely a chance to start again with a radically different playing field and a new set of rules. For individuals who have not ended up with the life they would have wanted in this world, it is no stretch of the imagination to see why they might find this radical paradigm shift an acceptable trade. What are billions of deaths in comparison to a legitimate second chance of achieving happiness? This is why thoughts of the apocalypse can create surprisingly alluring feelings of uncomfortable pleasure, it is the promise of transformational change that has traditionally been unachievable (Alexander). A Post-apocalyptic novel shows what life could be like were all the worst parts of society to be swept away, the so-called villains of the world would be brought out into the light for the protagonists to tackle head on. Post Apocalyptic novels are a form of wish-fulfillment, a manifestation of the if-only daydreams of a lost generation who escape into fantasies of exploring a ruined world bereft of humans, discovering hidden communities of survivors and fighting off one’s neighbours (Brent 50).
Just as nature is a focus in Romanticism, so too does the power of nature reassert itself in a Post-apocalyptic narrative. People may think that humanity is secure in its domination of the planet, but it only takes some severe weather to reveal how tenuous that control is. Civilization is itself a bulwark against the more extreme aspects of nature, while every other species on earth adapts to its environment, humanity has spent generations modifying our environment to suit ourselves. Bereft of the protective layers of insulation that civilization brings, humanity is thrown back to the stone age in terms of combatting the elements. A blizzard that would have been a minor inconvenience in the old world, with central heating and a working power grid, now threatens the lives of everyone in the region. Wildfires rage across the countryside unchecked, cyclones arrive without warning, a drought ruins crops for years, earthquakes topple already failing infrastructure. Packs of wild dogs, no longer man’s-best-friend but returned to the ways of their own lupine ancestors, stalk the weed-infested streets. Without the countless generations of defences against nature, humanity is reduced to little more than cave-dwellers, hiding out in abandoned buildings, and waiting for the manifestation of nature’s wrath to pass. While this would no doubt be an issue of grave concern for anyone actually going through such an appalling scenario, for those reading about it in a Post-apocalyptic novel it is nothing if not riveting. Getting to live vicariously through a protagonist with modern sensibilities, who is forced to combat the elements in the ruins of our own civilization, is simultaneously familiar yet also alien. That juxtaposition is one of the places in which the Post-apocalyptic genre manifests the sublime, that disconnect between what was and what now is. Looking out a high-rise window on a rainy Friday night, watching the near-infinite lights of the city flash, is mundane. Camping on the top floor of a skyscraper to avoid predators, listening to the wind howl through the shattered windows as you look out over the deserted and overgrown city is sublime.
In conclusion, Romanticism and the Post-apocalyptic genre have a lot in common. Both the Romantic and Post-apocalyptic genres stem from times of great social upheaval, and at their cores they are both explorations and critiques of modern society. The Romantic literary movement was a response to enlightenment values, rationalism and a quickly industrialising world. The Post-apocalyptic literary movement was a response to horrors of World War II and the burgeoning notion that modern society is not as stable as we would like to believe, but also that life might continue onward after such an apocalyptic event. Both genres have a focus on nature and ruins, as was explored with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Both genres depict nature as a sublime force that is simultaneously powerfully destructive and majestically beautiful, a force that humanity has been attempting to insulate itself from for generations. Ruins are the remnants of such attempts at insulation from nature, the remains of abandoned structures that stand on the previous frontiers of society. These ruined structures are representation of the sublime, carrying it in their metaphorical themes of isolation, the transience of human endeavour, and the decay of both time and history. Both Romantic and Post-apocalyptic literature have the potential to be narratives of deep and layered meaning, and their capacity to house and represent the sublime is a link that should not be overlooked.
Citations
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