ALL THAT REMAINS
POST-APOCALYPTIC FICTION EXPLORED
THROUGH CORMAC MCCARTHY’S THE ROAD
AND POST-9/11 DISCOURSE
SUBMITTED BY
TALITHA DEHAENE
1426745
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE AND LITERARY THEORY
AT UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
JULY 2015
UNDER SUPERVISION OF MARIA BOLETSI
FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
WORDS: 18443
WITHOUT QUOTATIONS: 16123
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
2
INTRODUCTION
3
CHAPTER 1: THEORY
6
WHAT IS A GENRE AND HOW IS IT DEFINED?
6
CONVENTIONS OF THE GENRE
9
SURVIVAL VERSUS HUMANITY
10
JOURNEY TOWARDS HOPE
12
AN ULTIMATE GOAL AND/OR FIXABLE CAUSE
13
REMAINS
15
CAUSE OF THE APOCALYPSE
16
GROUPS
17
GOOD GUYS VERSUS BAD GUYS
17
(DIS)ADVANTAGED CHARACTERS
19
CHAPTER 2: POST-APOCALYPTIC GENRE AFTER 9/11
21
ORIGINS OF THE GENRE
21
POST-APOCALYPTIC FICTION AND THE 9/11 NOVEL
25
RHETORIC OF 9/11
31
CHAPTER 3: THE ROAD AS A POST-APOCALYPTIC 9/11 NOVEL
POST-APOCALYPTIC CONVENTIONS IN THE ROAD
36
38
BORROWED TIME
38
“EACH THE OTHER’S WORLD ENTIRE”
41
IS THIS COFFEE?
42
CARRYING THE FIRE
45
RHETORIC OF 9/11 IN THE ROAD
51
CONCLUSION
55
LITERATURE
56
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Fiction re-complicates what politicians wish to oversimplify. (Mohsin Hamid, in Kohair)
INTRODUCTION
James Berger, author of After The End: Representations of Post-apocalypse (1999)
pointedly identifies the paradox in post-apocalyptic fiction: it tells stories that
happen after the end, “in which the ending, paradoxically, both does and does not
take place” (XII). Post-apocalyptic fiction explores the aftermath of the
apocalypse in a world inhabited by only a tiny fraction of the original population,
of which every single survivor is damaged in one way or another. To summarize
the essence of the genre: “It is about aftermaths and remainders, about how to
imagine what happens after an event conceived of as final” (Berger XII). I have
always been fascinated by post-apocalyptic fiction, however gruesome it may
seem. I wanted to incorporate the genre in my master’s thesis, but during my
initial explorative research I often did not find the scientific literature that I was
looking for. There seem to be very few theoretical studies on post-apocalyptic
fiction as a genre on its own. With this thesis, I would like to contribute a work of
academic literature on the genre and attempt to take the first step towards a
genre-theoretical foundation for post-apocalyptic fiction.
As my first research question I would like to find out what is so typical
about post-apocalyptic fiction. A rather crude definition of the genre would
require that the story takes place after an apocalypse-like event (because
technically there can be no aftermath after an actual world-ending apocalypse).
In genre theory, though, this requirement alone would not be enough to
delineate all aspects of the particular genre. Certain characteristic conventions
regarding both content and/or form are important for its distinction as an
independent genre. In this thesis, I distinguish three basic elements on which the
genre of post-apocalyptic fiction is based: 1) there has been an apocalypse-like
event, 2) few people have survived, and 3) these sole survivors have to make do
without any form (or with very little) of modern technology. These elements set
the genre apart from others that share similarities, such as dystopian or
apocalyptic fiction. Of course, a work of fiction can have elements of both or
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more genres, but this will be discussed later on in this thesis when I talk about
genre theory. Apart from these main elements of the plot, the genre also includes
a specific set of characteristic conventions. These are conventions of plot, story
and narrative. They are not necessary elements of the genre and do not occur in
every single work of post-apocalyptic fiction. Rather, they are familiar generic
motifs and tropes that recur in the genre. My first research question is then:
what are the characteristic conventions of the post-apocalyptic genre?
Additionally, I want to study the literary functions of these conventions in terms
of story, plot and narrative of texts within the genre. For this, I will use Cormac
McCarthy’s 2004 novel The Road as a case study.
Furthermore, in this thesis I will demonstrate how The Road is not only a
post-apocalyptic work of fiction, but also a post-9/11 novel. I propose that in
playing with the generic conventions of the genre, the novel also responds
critically to the dominant 9/11 rhetoric established by American media and the
Bush administration. My second research question focuses on how exactly this
happens in The Road.
The scope of this thesis is narrowed down to Western, and more
specifically, Anglo-American post-apocalyptic fiction. This is mostly a practical
choice, as most of the post-apocalyptic fiction known to me is Anglo-American.
Additionally, shrinking the scope to a certain region is necessary in any case,
because of the limited amount of time and words available for a master’s thesis.
In the same sense most of the works of fiction mentioned in this thesis are
contemporary.
This thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 lays the theoretical
groundwork by discussing the main concepts used, such as genre, postapocalyptic fiction, post-apocalyptic conventions, plot, story and narrative. In
this chapter I also present my list of characteristic conventions of the postapocalyptic genre. Chapter 2 consists of two main parts. First, the postapocalyptic genre is situated in a historical and socio-political context as I
explore its historic origins and various reasons for its overall popularity. Then, I
focus on its particular popularity in times of crises. From there on, I go to the
second part of the chapter and focus on the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I discuss
the genre of the 9/11 novel and how it has responded to the 9/11 rhetoric of the
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Bush administration. In chapter 3, all of these topics are tied together in an
analysis of Cormac McCarthy’s 2004 novel The Road as a post-apocalyptic post9/11 novel.
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What does this mean, this oxymoron “after the end”?
Before the beginning and after the end, there can only be nothing. (Berger XI)
CHAPTER 1: THEORY
In this chapter, I will first cover the theoretical basics of the concept of ‘genre’. I
will explore some theoretical classifications of genres and then establish which
approach I will be using in this thesis. Furthermore, I will try to define the genre
of post-apocalyptic fiction. The second part of this chapter is dedicated to the
conventions that are specific to the post-apocalyptic genre. I will discuss exactly
why they are characteristic and how they function in terms of story, plot and
narrative within the genre.
WHAT IS A GENRE AND HOW IS IT DEFINED?
The classification of texts into genres (such as ‘western’, ‘romantic comedy’,
‘thriller’, ‘whodunit’, and so on) is not an objective, neutral or even very scientific
procedure. There is often considerable theoretical disagreement about the
definition of specific genres (Chandler 1). A fundamental problem with genre
identification, for example, is the empiricist dilemma as pointed out by Andrew
Tudor:
To take a genre such as the 'western', analyze it, and list its
principal characteristics, is to beg the question that we must first
isolate the body of films which are 'westerns'. But they can only be
isolated on the basis of the 'principal characteristics' which can
only be discovered from the films themselves after they have been
isolated. (225-226)
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Moreover, there is the division between the concepts of ‘theoretical’ and
‘empirical’ genres. Theoretical genres are based on a theoretical definition after
which empirical research is conducted into existing works of fiction that might fit
that definition. The definition of empirical genres is based on common features
that are shared by an existing body of works. However, it is not very difficult to
find texts that are exceptions to any given definition of a particular genre
(Chandler 2). Christine Gledhill states that there are no rigid rules of inclusion or
exclusion to genres, because they are not “discrete systems consisting of a fixed
number of listable items” (60-64). Particular characteristics of a genre are not
specifically unique to it: they are distinctive because of their relative
prominence, combination and functions (Neale 22-23). Moreover, some
definitions of genres are more loose and flexible in their conventions and
boundaries than others.
A common approach to genre definition is based on the psycholinguistic
concept of prototypicality, in which some characteristics and even entire texts
would be widely regarded as being more typical of a genre than others (Chandler
2). Another way to theorize genres is in terms of ‘family resemblances’, which is
an alternative approach that contemporary theorists often favor over more
traditional, rigid approaches to genre theory (Swales 49). In this approach, a
genre includes a loosely grouped family of works that are related by a set of
family resemblances, instead of essential defining features. Individual texts
within a genre rarely feature all of its literary characteristics, so each member of
a genre family shares some of these resemblances with others but not
necessarily with all the other members. This approach is focused on inclusion
rather than exclusion, as it proposes that a single work of fiction can relate to a
generic genre family by different degrees. The idea of a pure genre with clear
boundaries is rejected. In this thesis, I adopt the ‘family resemblances’ approach
for defining the post-apocalyptic genre.
Genres can often share similar conventions but still be separate genres,
just like texts can exhibit the conventions of more than one genre as well
(Chandler 2). For example: apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction are often
studied together because they share certain family resemblances. Still, most
critics and scholars generally distinguish between both genres, because even
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though the aftermath always presupposes an actual catastrophe that caused it,
each genre is typified by a different combination of conventions.
A genre is often recognizable and familiar because its body of works
shares particular resemblances that are associated with the genre family as a
whole. As readers enter the narrative, they can expect satisfaction from certain
formulaic structures that they expected based on the genre family (Becker 2930). A handful of basic characteristics clearly set post-apocalyptic fiction apart
from other genres. These are three structural elements that are considered to be
crucial for the genre. First of all, the typical post-apocalyptic story takes place in
a world or civilization after some kind of apocalyptic disaster has happened. This
is common knowledge. Secondly, although most of the human population has
been wiped out, there are a few people scattered around who have survived
(Hart & Holba 54). This is a necessary element because, obviously, otherwise
there would be nobody to tell a story about. Finally, these survivors are forced to
manage without any form (or very little) of modern technology (Broderick).
Most post-apocalyptic stories are set in a time frame immediately after
the apocalypse has taken place, while some focus on a new world that has been
established considerably later. In the latter cases, the aforementioned second
and third basic characteristics usually do not really apply anymore. It is
questionable, however, if these stories can be called ‘post-apocalyptic’ or
whether they are actually just ‘regular’ science fiction set in a distant future,
especially when the past apocalyptic event is merely treated as a detail to the
story. If the post-apocalyptic genre would include these stories too, every
modern film set in the twenty-first century could be seen as post-apocalyptic as
well, because technically it is about a civilization established long after the
apocalyptic event of, for example, the Ice Age. To avoid broadening the genre too
much, this thesis will consider post-apocalyptic fiction a genre based on the
three elements named earlier, stressing the fact that the events in these stories
take place a reasonable amount of time after the apocalypse, when a new society
has not yet been formed.
In this thesis, I put forward the three aforementioned basic elements as
those that make up the genre of post-apocalyptic fiction and set it apart from
other genres, such as apocalyptic or dystopian fiction. This means that without
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these three present in a text, it cannot be regarded as a work of post-apocalyptic
fiction. Besides these main elements of the plot, there is, as explained before, a
set of characteristic conventions that are specific to the genre as well. These do
not necessarily make up the genre or appear in every work of post-apocalyptic
fiction. Rather, they are familiar generic motifs and tropes of plot, story and
narrative that have acquired new impetus in the post-apocalyptic scenario
(Broderick).
CONVENTIONS OF THE GENRE
In this part of the chapter I will explore the most prevalent and, in my opinion,
important characteristic conventions primarily found in contemporary AngloAmerican post-apocalyptic books and films. I will discuss exactly why they are so
characteristic and how they function in terms of story, plot and narrative within
the genre.
When discussing the functions of these conventions in terms of story, plot
and narrative in works of fiction it is important to understand the difference
between these concepts (Cobley). Story refers to the set of relevant events in
chronological order: how the events of the story told in a book or film actually
happened, with all of the details in between. For example: the main character
waking up, brushing his teeth, washing his hair and having breakfast before
going to work. Plot refers to the way in which certain events are sequenced and
selected into a certain structure for telling the story with maximum effect.
Instead of telling the entire sequence of events of that morning, the plot could
jump from ‘the main character wakes up’ to ‘he leaves for work’ instead. A
traditional way of organizing the plot is by following Gustav Freytag’s pyramid of
plot, in which the story is divided into five parts: exposition (of the situation:
who, where, what, etc.), rising action (through the inciting of an incident and
conflict), climax (the turning point), falling action (when everything comes
together and falls into place) and resolution. Finally, narrative refers to the way
the plot and story are communicated to the reader. This includes, for example,
the focalization and mode of narration, The narrative is what connects the
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separate events in a meaningful way. If the main character would, for example,
decide not to brush his teeth or have breakfast before leaving for work, the
narrative could link these events by explaining that he got up too late so he has
to hurry. Authors can also use narrative techniques such as flashbacks and –
forwards to accomplish this (Cobley).
I initially composed a list of conventions based on my own findings. Later
on, I combined it with information I found in literature on the genre, removing
any feature that wasn’t mentioned at least once. Eventually, the following list
was composed.
SURVIVAL VERSUS HUMANITY
“When nature dies, so do language, culture and ethics. Concepts that previously
made sense are rendered absurd and dysfunctional”, says Inger-Anne Søfting
(707). When the world as we know it has ended, so have our society and its
rules. Of course, people always try to hold on to the ethics and morals they are
used to. But in the post-apocalyptic world, what is the use of that? In the
aftermath, important things such as shelter, food and water are scarce.
Depending on the number of survivors, sooner or later conflicts rise about the
much-needed resources. And not everyone wants to hold on to the ethical rules
of the pre-apocalyptic times, simply because these would get in the way of what
they want. Every individual has to fight to survive, but the question is: how far
will they go? How much of their humanity are they willing to give up for food or
shelter? Would they still be willing to help other people when winter comes and
they do not have any solid shoes or warm blankets, while the starving old man
does? Which ethical rules of the past do they hold on to, which do they let go of,
and why would any of it matter anyway? Mick Broderick calls the situation I have
sketched above “the (ir)relevance of pre-holocaust social mores and institutions
in the post-nuclear world.” What is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’ when the world in
which these concepts were invented no longer exists? What is humanity in its
essence? These are serious questions that are generally explored within this
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genre, because as a consequence of the post-apocalyptic situation, the categories
of good and evil become blurred (Hart & Halbo 56).
The ethical dilemma of preserving one's humanity or doing what is
necessary to survive is a key narrative element within the genre as it serves to
engage the audience. It makes you think about what is right and what is wrong:
where exactly should the line between right and wrong be drawn in a dramatic
situation like the apocalyptic aftermath? This dilemma touches on our personal
emotions as well: where would we stand in all of this? What would we, as
individuals, do to survive? The engaging effect is exactly why the humanity
versus survival aspect of events in post-apocalyptic stories is often stressed.
This specific dilemma has been getting much attention within the genre,
particularly in the last few years. An important work of fiction in this respect has
been The Walking Dead: Season One (2012), a video game by Telltale Games
based on the graphic novels series of the same name. In this game, you are Lee, a
man who wakes up in a forest after an unknown virus has caused people to turn
into zombies. Throughout the game, you meet different people and have to make
crucial decisions. You choose who you want in your group. You choose whether
you leave a girl in the street to die after a zombie has bitten her. You choose
which one of your two friends you save when zombies attack both of them. This
game is probably the closest any of us would ever come to experiencing just how
difficult it is to have to make these kinds of choices when every one of them is a
matter of survival. The story and, with it, the way the other characters treat you
change according to your decisions. At the end of the game, statistics are shown
in which your decisions are compared to those of others who have played the
game. The Walking Dead: Season One explores the dilemma of humanity versus
survival that is characteristic of the post-apocalyptic genre in a way few other
media have been able to do before, because not only does it place you at the
heart of the story and forces you to make the decisions yourself, you also have to
deal with the consequences for the rest of the story.
The apocalypse unveils the world to its final transparent nakedness, says
James Berger (38). In the traditional post-apocalyptic scenario, things like
feminism, democracy and social justice are considered decadent luxuries (Berger
8). These are concepts from the past that hold no actual value in the present.
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Nonetheless, he says, most post-apocalyptic fiction shows characters trying to
preserve a version of humanity in the midst of an inhuman world (10). Usually,
the main characters in post-apocalyptic fiction are shown struggling with this
dilemma of humanity versus survival. They try to maintain what little is left of
human values and solidarity in the post-apocalyptic world, as long as it does not
threaten their own survival. The protagonists are almost always the ‘good guys’,
so the audience feels sympathetic towards them. Because of the generally deep
exploration of the moral aspects of survival, the audience can understand better
the sometimes rather harsh choices the characters make.
Moreover, the ethical dilemma of humanity versus survival has a
reassuring function. It tells us that no matter how bad things could
hypothetically get, there will always be decent human beings left. There will
always be some sort of morality. Trying to maintain your humanity does not
mean you are necessarily the loser who will die first. In other words: there is
hope. Additionally, the audience can imagine themselves being among the few
good people left, doing the right thing after all, which makes them feel good
about themselves.
JOURNEY TOWARDS HOPE
The aftermath is never pretty. There is always destruction, wasteland and
devastation. The size of it depends on the cause of the apocalypse. This is why
characters in post-apocalyptic fiction almost always travel: they look for a better
place. There is often no way of communicating with other parts of the country
(or the world) anymore, so they need to see for themselves that everything has
been destroyed, everywhere. Besides that, it is also an inherently human quality
to always assume, or at least suspect, that the grass is greener elsewhere. In
certain post-apocalyptic conditions, traveling the country can also simply be the
wisest option: fleeing a capital city because of the dead bodies piling up, or just
trying to stay away from roaming gangs are examples of what motivates
characters to move. Whatever the reason, most post-apocalyptic fiction centers
on survivors undertaking a journey.
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Wolfe characterizes this as the “journey through the wasteland” stage of
post-apocalyptic fiction. He points out as well that journeying is often one of the
most important elements in post-apocalyptic fiction. This would, at least
partially, serve as a form of purgation of despair of the main characters (10). In
any case, it serves the plot well. The journey provides the protagonists with an
endless array of possible locations to see, people to meet and situations to get
stuck in. It also makes sure there is a certain flow in the narrative: the story does
not just linger on in the same spot, it moves at a certain pace because of the
traveling. The plot only features some parts of the journey: the start, some issues
in the middle (such as conflicts in the group or some other action-packed
situations) and the endpoint, which is hopefully the intended destination.
In the 2009 TV series The Walking Dead, (based on the graphic novels
series of the same name as well) the main characters are on a journey across the
country for most of the time. After a while, they end up in an abandoned prison
with enough food and water to last them a very long time. This situation goes on
for quite a while, but eventually something happens that forces them to leave the
safety of the prison and wander around looking for a new place again. They need
to get out on the road because this brings with it a whole new sort of suspense
and mystery. The audience wonders if they will ever reach their destination. And
also: what will happen then?
The journey also serves the narrative as it often sets the scene and tone of
the story. There is a lot of room for scenic descriptions of the post-apocalyptic
world they travel through. This works well in both novels and films because it
achieves maximum dramatic effect. Moreover, a journey through a postapocalyptic land is often very dangerous, so there is also an added layer of
suspense in the narrative.
AN ULTIMATE GOAL AND/OR FIXABLE CAUSE
This common post-apocalyptic journey of course has a particular destination.
Most of the times the goal is to get away from something, to seek refuge or
shelter. The survivors need a place with more food, easier access to water, better
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defenses from people with bad intentions or better shelter for the cold winter
months. In terms of its function in the narrative, the journey has a goal because
there needs to be an actual climax to work up to, a sense of suspense over the
expectations of the final destination and usually also a clear ending for the story.
This course of events is an excellent example of Freytag’s pyramid for plot as
mentioned earlier.
However, reaching the intended destination or goal does not always end
the story. In The Walking Dead the survivors travel in search for a good place to
stay for a while, then catch their breath at a prison for a season and a half, but
ultimately leave again. Their goal had been reached and this usually means the
end of the story. However, because the series continued, they had to leave again,
but with a new goal. So in the most recent season, they were travelling towards a
refugee camp called Terminus. In The Stand (1978) by Stephen King, a deadly
type of influenza wipes out 99,4% of the human population. The book focuses on
different groups of people who are travelling the country for different reasons:
Fran, Harold, Stu and Glen are one their way to the CDC in Stovington to find
someone of authority, while Larry is heading towards the coast for the summer.
The journey is a very common theme but always comes with a clear and hopeful
goal. With this, the narrative turns optimistic and hopeful because of an ultimate
goal in sight.
Some post-apocalyptic stories go even further and imply that the cause of
the apocalypse is fixable. The main characters then have to try and find the
solution. In the first season of The Walking Dead, the party of main characters
undertakes a big journey to reach a CDC laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia, where
they hope scientists have developed a cure for the zombie outbreak. In World
War Z (2013) the main character travels to South Korea, Israel and Wales to
trace Patient Zero and find a vaccine for the zombie virus. And in The Stand
protagonists Nick, Tom and Ralph travel to Nebraska searching for Mother
Abigail, an old woman who has appeared in their dreams and who they hope will
be their savior. There is always hope in post-apocalyptic stories, even when the
world has ended (Andrade 5).
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REMAINS
Post-apocalyptic fiction cannot be entirely separated from the apocalyptic genre:
the world after the end must and will be seen in light of the world before it, and
its actual apocalypse. Or, as Berger puts it, post-apocalyptic fiction “straddles the
boundary between before and after some event that has obliterated what went
before yet defines what will come after” (19).
In “Keeping The Lights on” (2011), Jeremy R. Grossman refers to cultural
artifacts that pass from contemporary times through the apocalyptic event as
‘post-apocalyptic remains’ (ii). I would like to adopt the concept of the "remain"
for this thesis. Remains are a very important aspect of the post-apocalyptic genre
because if everything is destroyed, there simply is no “post” (Grossman 144).
They function mostly as emotional reminders for the audience of what has been
destroyed and are carried forward into the narrative to assist the audience in
making sense of the apocalypse (Grossman 4). They form the crucial link
between our contemporary world, the post-apocalyptic story and the audience.
They serve both internal narrative functions and functions pertaining to the
relation between the work and the audience: on the one hand, they connect
sometimes unrelated pieces of the story together in meaningful ways, and on the
other hand they connect the story to the audience (Grossman 6).
Remains of the pre-apocalyptic world usually evoke feelings of nostalgia
within the characters. The concept of nostalgia involves dissatisfaction with the
present moment, so this is especially relevant to the study of post-apocalyptic
narratives. Post-apocalyptic remains usually take on heightened emotional
power because of their contrast with the ravaged earth; they would not have the
same poignancy if the story were set in a more utopian present (Anderson 271).
Grossman has divided these post-apocalyptic remains in three categories, which
I will adopt as well: material items, cultural knowledge and rituals. Remains are
often material items, but can also be seen more broadly as, for example, a wide
shot of a completely abandoned Times Square in New York. The broader
category of cultural knowledge encompasses overt ideological beliefs, language,
morality, and other identifiable aspects of thought or belief. Lastly, postapocalyptic rituals drawn from the everyday, such as before-meal rituals, also
15
function as remains, and particularly as reminders of a mode of living before the
apocalyptic event (Grossman ii).
Remains allow both the writer and the audience to be at two places at
once: imagining the post-apocalyptic world and paradoxically ‘remembering’ the
world as it was (Berger 6). They establish an emotional connection of the
audience with the post-apocalyptic world, providing opportunities for the
audience to vividly imagine how horrible it would be to see entire cities
abandoned, school yards destroyed and libraries untouched; to see all of that
waste of everything the contemporary world has to offer. Major iconic devices
include the deserted city, the discovery of incongruous human skeletal remains
and newspapers as testimonials to events immediately preceding the apocalypse
(Broderick). The presence of remains generally achieves dramatic, nostalgic and
emotional effect. The remains are often connected to narrative techniques such
as flashbacks, which illuminate the contrast between (fictional) past and present.
CAUSE OF THE APOCALYPSE
As mentioned before, the post-apocalypse cannot be seen separately from the
apocalypse itself. The cause for the apocalypse is therefore almost always
known. It is always the prerequisite for the story, as post-apocalyptic fiction only
exists in the aftermath of it. The cause is not very often directly depicted as the
starting point for the plot, though. There is usually more mystery attached to it.
Sometimes it is shown or narrated by the characters through flashbacks.
Sometimes, however, the audience has to put the pieces together themselves
through the visible consequences. Lots of different events can cause the end of
the world: alien invasion, environmental disasters, zombies, nuclear attack,
technology, war, disease, population explosion and meteors are among the most
common (Murphy 235). Knowing what caused this post-apocalyptic situation is
often vital: it justifies the journey and provides both a goal and opposed forces to
fight off. Moreover, a known cause also makes it possible to conceive of a remedy
or solution. When described or shown, it satisfies the audience’s fascination for
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destruction of familiar things. In most cases, it enhances the didactic function of
warning in post-apocalyptic works of fiction as well.
GROUPS
Survivors generally cluster together in groups. Usually the story starts out with
one or two survivors who already had a bond before the apocalypse (they are
family, lovers or friends). On their journey towards whatever goal they have,
they meet new people who join them, forming a group. The element of the group
gives the writer several creative options with room for new forms of conflict,
romance, etc. (Meyer 33). This provides the story with a lot of dialogue and often
also an extra layer of suspense. There is generally a clear group dynamic in the
stories, often in the form of a democratic organization led by one person (very
likely the protagonist). A recurring element is that all the different personalities
clash at one point. The group is diverse because all the members have been
thrown together very randomly: all they have in common is the fact that they are
survivors of the apocalypse. This often leads to a power struggle and a growing
frustration over the fact that although democracy seems to be the fairest way to
organize the group, democratic decision-making slows them down. The mix of
different personalities sometimes gets in the way of making tough decisions.
Apart from all these obstacles, though, the group-formation usually proves to be
very useful in the post-apocalyptic world, as tasks can be divided and there is a
better chance of fighting the enemy effectively.
GOOD GUYS VERSUS BAD GUYS
The group of main characters is generally portrayed as that of ‘the good guys’.
This suggests that they need a counterpart: the Others. Most post-apocalyptic
stories have an obvious good versus evil plot line (Hart & Halbo 56). When the
cause of the apocalypse is war or alien invasion, it is clear who these Others are.
With a deadly or dangerous disease, the infected become the Others. When there
is no obvious culprit, other survivors become the bad guys. Although everyone is
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essentially a victim of the apocalypse, this perception of all characters as victims
only seems to be promoted when there is a main enemy that has caused the
apocalypse. Otherwise, only the good guys are seen as victims, while the other
survivors are usually seen as primarily dangerous.
Falling Skies, a 2011 science fiction TV series where aliens have invaded
the Earth, showed an ‘evil’ motor gang in the first season, but had them turn into
good guys as well after the first few episodes showed just how evil the actual
Others (the alien invaders) were. In The Walking Dead, even the bad guys are
portrayed as mere victims of the zombie apocalypse, just like everyone else,
because in the end the zombies are the real enemy. In the 2006 TV series Jericho,
however, there are no clear Others, so everybody outside of the town (and some
bad seeds within it) function as the bad guys. They are the looters and the
gangsters, even though they are technically as much victims of the situation as
the protagonists are.
The ‘good versus bad guys’ narrative is recurrent in many genres, but is
particularly prominent in post-apocalyptic fiction. “Everyone knows how the
world ends”, Michael Chabon wrote in his review on The Road for The New York
Review (2007).
First radiation, plague, an asteroid, or some other cataclysm kills
most of humankind. The remnants mutate, lapse into feudalism, or
revert to prehistoric brutality. Old cults are revived with their
knives and brutal gods, while tiny noble bands cling to the tatters
of the lost civilization.
Because the situation is often so dire and hopeless, it is almost logical that some
survivors will turn ‘evil’. They will show more violent, ruthless and in general
less sympathetic behavior than what is morally accepted in Western societies
nowadays. They become more selfish and focused on their own survival, which
often means robbing or cheating other survivors. In very extreme cases, it can
mean they allow themselves to divulge in excesses such as rape, slavery and even
cannibalism. The element of good versus evil often goes hand in hand with the
ethical issues brought on by the humanity versus survival dilemma. It is
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interesting for the story because it is suspenseful, dramatic and in a way also
reassuring, as there will always be good guys to fight off the bad ones. The
narrative is very dependent on the protagonists, as they influence the concepts
of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Although they often have to hurt or even kill other people as
well, their reasons are portrayed as more just, precisely because the story is
usually focalized from their perspective, and hence the dominant narrative is
theirs.
(DIS)ADVANTAGED CHARACTERS
The diverse group of survivors at the center of post-apocalyptic stories usually
features at least one character with special skills and one with a disadvantage.
The latter can be a pregnant woman and/or (later on) a mother with a
baby/toddler, an elderly, a disabled or very sick person, a convict, etc. People can
be considered a disadvantage to the group when they need more care or
protection than the rest, when they cannot be left alone or cannot be expected to
perform the same tasks as the others. A character with special skills is much
more useful, however. This can be a doctor or nurse, a farmer, a mechanic or a
hunter: everyone with a set of skills that is particularly useful in primitive postapocalyptic conditions. Characters with special skills are important to the story
because they allow the group to survive for much longer or achieve much greater
things than they would otherwise have, if they would have all been accountants
or librarians.
A number of interesting plot lines can spring from having at least one of
each of these two types of characters. Characters with disadvantages cause extra
problems and stress for the group because they slow them down or need special
items (such as baby food or medicines) that are hard to come by in a postapocalyptic setting. There is also the ethical dilemma of whether or not to leave
them behind. The skilled character, on the other hand, is vital to the survival of
the group, so a lot of suspense and drama would be created if something bad
happened to them (they could go missing or become very sick). These characters
then add extra challenges to the quest of survival. Moreover, disadvantages often
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bring an extra emotional effect, as for example is the case with a baby born
amidst the ruins of a zombie-infected prison in The Walking Dead. Typical
examples of skilled characters are doctors/veterinarians (Anne in Falling Skies,
Eric in Jericho, Dan in the 1959 novel Alas, Babylon, Hershel in The Walking
Dead), police- or military men (Colonel Weaver in Falling Skies, Peter in the 1959
film On The Beach, Rick in The Walking Dead), scientists (Robert in the 1954
novel I Am Legend) and hunters (Eli in the 2010 film The Book of Eli, Daryl in The
Walking Dead). Skilled characters are essential to the story because without
them, there would not even be one. If none of the survivors possess any useful
skill, they will simply die.
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We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn't, why would there be so many of them? There's
something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world,
scrounging cans of Campbell's pork and beans, defending one's family from marauders. Sure it's
horrible, sure we weep for all those dead people. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good
to survive, to start over. Secretly, we know we'll survive. All those other folks will die. That's what
after-the-bomb stories are all about. (Varley 210)
CHAPTER 2: POST-APOCALYPTIC GENRE AFTER 9/11
In this chapter, I will explore the historical development of the post-apocalyptic
genre within an Anglo-American context. For this purpose, I will offer a short
overview of the genre to place it into historical context. This overview will range
from the first published work of post-apocalyptic fiction (The Last Man by Mary
Shelley, published in 1826) up until now, with the exclusion of religious texts. I
will explain how the genre has come to be so popular, especially in times of
crisis. From there on, I will focus on the apocalypse-like events in New York City
on September 11, 2001. I will explore the genre of the 9/11 novel and how this is
linked to that of post-apocalyptic fiction. Lastly, I will discuss 9/11 rhetoric and
how these have been addressed in 9/11 novels.
ORIGINS OF THE GENRE
Post-apocalyptic fiction originated as a form of social and/or political critique.
Beale (1) views apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic works as “criticisms of life
[that] express a great dissatisfaction with the way things are.” The apocalypse as
an imagined event has been around in recorded literature at least since the Book
of Revelations and even then it already functioned as a social critique, according
to James Berger:
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic representations serve varied
psychological and political purposes. Most prevalently, they put
forward a total critique of any existing social order. From the Book
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of Revelation’s condemnation of Babylon, through the millenarian
movements of the Middle Ages [sic], to more recent apocalyptic
thinking – both religious and secular – visions of the end and its
aftermath emphasize that no social reform can cure the world’s
diseases. (7)
Life after the apocalypse, however, has only been imagined and fictionalized
much later on. The first known work of post-apocalyptic fiction is Mary Shelley’s
1826 novel The Last Man. The novel not only features the aftermath, but also the
apocalyptic event itself and even a part the protagonist’s pre-apocalyptic life.
That is often the case with similar stories and illustrates perfectly how it can
sometimes be rather difficult to distinguish between apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction. Historically, both have peaked in popularity over certain
periods of time, especially during global crises. This part of the chapter gives a
brief historical overview of these periods and I have tried to focus on postapocalyptic fiction, but some of the works mentioned can be considered
apocalyptic in nature as well.
The social and/or political critique issued through post-apocalyptic
fiction most commonly stems from feelings of dissatisfaction with the present
situation or society as a whole, but can also function as a response to major
global threats, such as pollution, capitalism or multi-continent wars. Certain
scholars, such as Angela Becerra Vidergar in her doctoral dissertation “Fictions
of Destruction: Post-1945 Narrative and Disaster in the Collective Imaginary”
(2013), have noticed an increase in the post-apocalyptic genre in both literature
and film after major global events, such as the First and Second World War, the
nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cold War threat, the terrorist
attacks of 9/11 and the widespread attention for global warming after Al Gore’s
impressive 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
The First World War, for example, ended an era of optimism about the
future. Afterwards, utopian literature was very difficult to write, whereas the
idea that humanity was flawed was prominent in many dystopian views (Beale
2). Of course, this makes perfect sense. The war’s impact on people’s thoughts
about, and feelings towards, the future was inevitable, as it put an end to a
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previous optimism, which was mainly grounded in the rapid succession of
technological advances. The general idea of the Western public in the late
nineteenth century was that all of these technological evolutions would certainly
make the world a better place. Together with the modern democratic political
systems of that day and the seemingly unstoppable rise of global liberal
capitalism, there was a sense that the world was heading in the right direction,
on the road to genuine progress. But then the First and Second World War came
along and showed everyone the dark side and easy abuse of those modern
‘advancements’. Technology as a cause of apocalypse spawned a lot of
apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction after both World Wars: Quinzinzinzili
(1935) by Régis Messac, The Death Guard (1939) by Philip George Chadwick and
The Black Flame (1948) by Stanley G. Weinbaum, to name a few.
By the end of the Second World War, Hiroshima and Nagasaki put the
bitter cherry on top. For the first time, humanity experienced a weapon that
could literally annihilate the planet (Beale 2). Humanity became aware of its own
destructive capacity and its ability to produce an actual end to the world (Becker
2). It then comes as no surprise that fears of nuclear destruction were played out
in both film and literature afterwards. Films such as Five (1951), The World, the
Flesh and the Devil (1959), On the Beach (1959) and Panic in Year Zero (1962) hit
theatres. Literature such as Mr. Adam (1946) by Pat Frank, Second Variety (1953)
by Philip K. Dick, The Chrysalids (1955) by John Wyndham, The Long Tomorrow
(1955) by Leigh Brackett and Alas, Babylon (1959) by Pat Frank was published.
All of these are examples of post-apocalyptic narratives that came out after the
nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The proceeding Cold War fed the nuclear fear even more. In that era, The
Aftermath (1982), Warriors of the Apocalypse (1985) and America 3000 (1986)
were released and The Rats (1974) by James Herbert was published. Dozens of
articles have been written on the reflection of this mushroom cloud paranoia in
post-apocalyptic fiction of that time, such as “Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and
the Cold War” by Keith Booker (2001) and “Paranoia, the Bomb and 1950s
Science-Fiction Films” by Cyndy Hendershot (1999). To put it in James Berger’s
words: “The most dystopic [sic] visions of science fiction can do no more than
replicate the actual historical catastrophes of the twentieth century” (XIII). To
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him, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic writing itself are remains: aftermaths of
some disorienting catastrophe (7). The narrativization of existential fears in
post-apocalyptic fiction can often be seen as an effort to come to terms with a
crisis-ridden present. The stories afford the audience a glimpse of futures based
on fears and fantasies derived from the current sociopolitical context.
Post-apocalyptic fiction in the aftermath of one or both of the World Wars
then gradually came to serve an extra purpose:
However comically presented, representations of the apocalypse
are often (…) meant to serve as a type of warning, implying that
the apocalypse is not a desirable end. This is, of course, the
premise for social critique within post-apocalyptic narrative.
(Grossman 59)
Post-apocalyptic narratives warned the world about possible consequences if
nothing would change, thus performing an additional didactic fiction. They
showed the wasted land, the ashes in the sky, the corpses along the streets, all of
the destruction on the big screen. They described the gruesome details of the
aftermath, of trying to survive, the utter hopelessness when everything and
everyone you once knew are gone. This is what war will ultimately bring. This is
what will happen if we don’t change our ways of dealing with the environment.
This is the bitter downside of our hunger for technological advancements. Postapocalyptic fiction often functions as one big fat obvious warning sign, according
to Mick Broderick.
More often than not [post-apocalyptic] movies articulate overt
messages of warning both through expository dialogue and in the
depiction of dehumanized futures the survivor species struggle to
inhabit.
This applies specifically to the previously mentioned works created in the first
two decades after both World Wars, but also to those created during the
suspense of the Cold War or the never ending bad news show of global warming
24
today (Booker; Hendershot). Contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction generally
focuses on problems of the twentieth century, such as environmental issues (for
example, the 2008 film WALL-E) and biological warfare (for example, Stephen
King’s The Stand and the 2007 remake of I Am Legend).
POST-APOCALYPTIC FICTION AND THE 9/11 NOVEL
The notable increase in production of post-apocalyptic fiction after major global
events is not a one-sided phenomenon. Time and time again, the audience has
seemed unable to resist indulging in fictional depictions of their own worst case
scenarios. Whereas other genres clearly functioned as distracting entertainment
during stressful times such as, for example, the Cold War, post-apocalyptic fiction
focused exactly on the impending global threat causing the stress. Yet, it seems
like the genre hardly ever flourished more than during that particular historical
period. This is because, apart from serving as a warning for all kinds of horrible
threats, post-apocalyptic fiction at the same time also satisfies the audience’s
need for reassurance caused exactly by those threats. Nadia de Boer states in her
thesis “The Development of the Apocalyptic Genre in Film and the Influence of
9/11” (2010) that post-apocalyptic fiction appeals to many people because they
are actually scared that the world is going to be hit with apocalypse-like events,
so they develop a paradoxical need to see their worst fears being realized.
Afterwards, they can just get up from the theatre seats and go home, having lived
through it all. This provides them with a much-needed feeling of survival:
The instinct for survival, for living through disasters, is deeply
imbedded in human nature, which makes these movies appeal to
us as much as they do. The audience feels safe in the knowledge
that many people “died”, that the world fell apart, but they still
manage to get up and leave as soon as the lights come on in the
theatre. The spectators enjoy their survival of the disaster that had
just enfolded right in front of them, which now leaves them
reassured and hopeful. (de Boer 12)
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At the same time, post-apocalyptic stories can easily be discarded as fiction,
purely meant for entertainment. This takes away the gravity of the feared events,
which adds to the feeling of reassurance. According to Becker, the primary
appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction lies in the opportunity for readers to indulge
fantasy worlds into which they may, in reality, fear to tread. In this way, “readers
can participate in the unraveling of a world of nightmare prophecies without
being vaporized by a nuclear blast, infected with a deadly virus, or devastated by
a colossal natural disaster” (52-53)
Exactly that sort of participation seems to be, in fact, very appealing to
various people. “There is a kind of pleasure that people get in seeing familiar
things destroyed”, James Gunn says (Beale 1). It is so hard to imagine our entire
society being annihilated that it becomes a fascination: trying to imagine the
unimaginable. As de Boer puts it:
The images of this destruction have a certain morbid way of
fascinating us as an audience, since we have proof that such
disasters can and did happen. However, most of us have
(fortunately) never encountered these circumstances in reality, so
the images are not familiar to us, which is exactly what sparks our
interests, namely, the unknown. (16)
This fear for, and fascination with, imagining the end of days has ingrained itself
into artistic post-apocalyptic imagination, with writers envisaging brave new
worlds and wastelands (Mavri 1).
Global destruction can also serve its reassuring function in the sense of a
clean slate. This brings us back to the subject of post-apocalyptic fiction as a form
of political and/or social critique: when the human race is the main cause of the
apocalypse, its (nearly) complete extinction can be regarded as a sort of
purification of the earth. This utopian view hopes that, when the apocalypse has
finally ‘cleansed’ the planet, the few surviving humans might eventually be able
to build a new, infinitely better world, purified as they are through the sacrifice
of a larger percentage of its members (Bartter 148). Apocalyptic destruction
26
could be seen as the ultimate opportunity to finally make everyone equal. Of
course, you and I would both die. But at least all of the self-righteous and
complacent individuals and institutions we all know would die as well. Finally
everyone gets their comeuppance, with nobody receiving any sort of special
treatment (Berger 32)! We are all human, and most of us would probably find
some sort of satisfaction in this idea.
Moreover, James Berger suggests that there is also an intense cultural
fixation on the image of the Survivor. Since the late 1970’s the fascination with,
and authority vested in the figure of, the survivor has been one of the defining
features of the American post-apocalyptic sensibility (47).
We see this fascination in the revival of interest in the testimonies
of Holocaust survivors, in the changing evaluations given the
Vietnam veteran, in the explosive issues surrounding child abuse
and incest, in the bizarre world of the talk show, in court TV, in
“real life” police and rescue shows, in accounts of “near death”
experiences and alien abductions, and in the pervasive public
appetite for first-person accounts of all kinds. (47)
This theory can be expanded to the rest of the contemporary Western world,
where paramount value is being placed on the figure and the testimony of the
first-hand witness: the one who has experienced, who has passed through and
has emerged from an event seen as both catastrophic and revelatory (Berger 47).
The reasons for the popularity of post-apocalyptic fiction seem to be
heavily intertwined: authors and audience alike seem to both need and love it.
Post-apocalyptic stories often function as a mirror image for contemporary
issues and can be seen as forms of social and/or political critique. They often
emerge from stressful times of crises and global threats. Post-apocalyptic fiction
can have a didactic function but, at the same time, also give the audience a sense
of reassurance. In this way, the genre gives the truth but also covers it up – it
offers a realization of fantasies and fears about the future but also appeases
these fears by ‘fictionalizing’ them.
27
Kristjan Mavri argues that the ideological underpinnings for the twentyfirst century surge in popularity of the post-apocalyptic genre are then plain to
see: the aftermath of September 11, the war in Iraq, global warming, and the
impending ecological disaster (2). Stephan Keane argues in his book Disaster
Movies (2006) that in times of crisis the need for survival seems to thrive within
the cinematic world (5). This, de Boer says, is exactly what has transpired after
9/11. According to her, people needed to be reassured after 9/11 and this task
was partially taken on by the entertainment industry (4). Post-apocalyptic fiction
flourished once again in the post-9/11 decade. Films like I Am Legend, World
War Z, Maggie, Snowpiercer, Zombieland, WALL-E, 28 Days Later, After Earth, The
Book of Eli and Oblivion were released. TV networks aired series like Falling
Skies, The Walking Dead, Jericho, The Last Man on Earth, The 100, Z Nation and
Revolution. Books like The Road, Wool and Survivors: A Novel of the Coming
Collapse were published. There were even post-apocalyptic games, like The Last
of Us, Ace Combat Infinity, The Walking Dead, Brink and Rage. For many people,
the terrorist attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001 felt like an
apocalyptic event. In the aftermath, the Western world has changed completely.
Witnessing apocalyptic images on a smaller scale in real life, surprisingly,
sparked a new interest in the post-apocalyptic genre.
The apocalyptic feeling surrounding the attacks also fueled another,
entirely new genre: the 9/11 novel. At first, there was some hesitation among
writers. “Can I bear to narrate this into normality?”, novelist Jonathan Lethem
wondered publicly in The New York Times Magazine nearly two weeks after
watching the Twin Towers collapse from his “helpless window” in Brooklyn. His
bewilderment was familiar, says Ruth Franklin (2011), as it appears in all
literatures of disaster.
Writers who survived various kinds of catastrophes—the
Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Vietnam war—have been stymied by
the tension between their desire to communicate accurately what
they saw and their fear of obscuring the horror with phrases too
nicely turned. (...) If the very nature of narrative imposes a false
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coherence upon events that by definition resist understanding, the
novelist is caught in a terrible bind.
It reminds us of the famous words uttered by philosopher Theodor Adorno, that
“writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” Also regarding the Holocaust, the
theologian Michael Wyschogrod remarked that “art takes the sting out of
suffering” (Franklin). In the same sense, in the weeks that followed 9/11, writers
asked themselves and the world what the future of fiction could be after such a
rupture. Yet nearly fifteen years later, so many 9/11 novels have been published
that they easily constitute a distinct genre, despite their diversity. It is striking
that stories within the genre of the 9/11 novel are often very resonant of
apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, even if they do not strictly fit the
definition of those genres. They do bear, however, certain family resemblances.
The genre of the 9/11 novel embraces every work of fiction that, directly
or indirectly, touches upon the events, its aftermath, its discourse and/or its
consequences. Initially, Ruth Franklin divided the genre into three broad
segments, based on their temporal focal point: novels that focus on the day itself,
novels that focus on the lives of New Yorkers in the days before the attacks and
the novels that focus on its aftermath. Then she added a subgenre of novels in
which the terrorist attacks appear but do not play a central role, as well as those
that merely allude to the day itself but are dominated by its shadow. These are
the so-called post-9/11 novels. So some novelists have tackled the events head
on, others have used the attacks as a backdrop for smaller and more intimate
stories, and after a few years the authors emerged who have used 9/11 as a spur
to look at the Western world shaken out of its complacency (The Economist). It
seems as though the time that passed allowed for healing and a much needed
distance to contemplate what happened. In Out of the Blue: September 11 and the
Novel (2009) Kristiaan Versluys commented on the “discursivization” of 9/11
and how this changed over time, drifting from the dramatic facts and emotional
data, such as the publication of the telephone messages left by the victims in the
towers on the answering machines of their loved ones, to more reflective
responses.
29
It is obvious that the purpose of the 9/11 novel and the post-9/11 novel is
not to tell us what happened on that day, as the vast majority of the Western
world has already seen everything for themselves on television. The purpose of
this newfound genre is, or rather, ought to be, to tell us what 9/11 means
(Franklin). The world, and especially the Western and Middle-Eastern part of it,
has changed since then, but we don’t quite know how. This unresolved question,
Franklin says, nags at the post-9/11 novelists, “whose characters are often in
thrall to forces they don’t understand.” In Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel
Freedom, the main characters Walter and Patty Berglund are tormented by the
fear that they might not be as free as they think they are, what Franklin calls “a
quintessential post-9/11 confusion.” This is a completely contradictory
sentiment to that of the characters in Franzen’s earlier novel The Corrections –
which was coincidentally published on September 1, 2001. There, both the
younger and older generations are overwhelmed by having (had) too much
freedom, too many choices and too much possibility. The problems faced by the
characters in Freedom are often summarized in the novel’s catchphrase
“mistakes were made.”
According to Franklin, one of the most urgent questions on the aftermath
of 9/11 is if we in the Western world still, after nearly fifteen years, helplessly
see the events as an unimaginable fact (dixit Jonathan Lethem), so overpowering
and enormous that they often overshadow and dominate the fictional elements
of a novel. The kind that literary novelists usually shy away from as the backdrop
to a story (The Economist). Or, do we regard the attacks as a result of a toxic
tangle of historical, religious and political forces? It is in 9/11 novels that we
might seek the answer, according to Kristiaan Versluys.
The novelistic practice of viewing a situation in its full complexity
entails the denial of the reductive logic of terrorism, the blackand-white ideological view that legitimates indiscriminate
violence. It equally goes against the simplifications of patriotic
rodomontade and revanchist rhetoric. (24)
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RHETORIC OF 9/11
Kathryn Lee has tried to demonstrate in Fiction as Resistance: The post-9/11
novel as an alternative to the dominant narrative (2012) how certain 9/11 novels
create spaces for the reader to re-examine and re-imagine the causes for,
consequences of and responses to 9/11. They accomplish this through their
resistance to the dominant narrative that was constructed and maintained by
both the media and the Bush administration during the aftermath of 9/11. She
has identified three aspects of this dominant narrative. The first aspect is that of
“America the Brave.” Americans suffered enormous loss of life and significant
trauma after the attacks, but both the media and the government deliberately
chose to focus firmly on the heroics surrounding the events, rather than the
more uncomfortable and tragic elements. In an attempt to avoid having the
wound inflicted on the nation being seen as irreparable damage, those in power
sought out to manipulate (inter)national sentiment to believe that America the
Brave was so strong that, although she was badly wounded, she would not be
defeated. According to Lee, it was “under this edict that the Falling Man
photograph taken by Richard Drew and other images and footage of the people
who fell from the towers before their collapse were removed from view and
replaced with triumphant images of fire fighters and American flags across New
York City” (8). In the same spirit, the fire fighters that attended the scene were
elevated to the status of national heroes. Though nobody will argue that these
brave men and women did an excellent job trying to save lives that day, the
narrative surrounding their deaths was manipulated in line with the idea of
America the Brave as well. Many fire fighters died because malfunctioning
communication equipment made them unable to hear the evacuation orders.
Instead of addressing this failure of equipment, the story told to the public was
that they did hear the orders but had chosen to stay in the building anyway, thus
dying an even more heroic death (Dwyer & O’Donnell). It is interesting, Lee
argues, that this kind of suicidal behavior was glorified and “held up as a shining
example of heroism, [while] the people who leapt from the upper floors of the
towers to escape the fires were ignored and marginalized,” as their acts did not
fit the fantasy of triumphalism (11).
31
Far better to hold up New York’s finest as heroes rather than
admit to the shameful truth that they were doing a dangerous job
ill-equipped and under-resourced and were let down by those in
power. (Lee 10-11)
Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007) is an example of a 9/11 novel that disrupts the
dominant narrative on this point, by reinstating Drew’s censored photograph by
the same name and “thereby rectifying the undemocratic editing of what was to
be included in the photographic history of 9/11” (Lee iii).
The second aspect Lee points out was clearly stated by then President
Bush, when he addressed the nation in a joint session of Congress on September
20, 2001, as he said “You are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” This ethos
effectively ruled out other ways of dealing with the terrorist threat than those he
had just described. It not only forced Congress, but the American people and the
rest of the world as well, to approach the War On Terror from a single
perspective. With this single famous sentence President Bush denied the
possibility of dissenting voices or questioning the actions of the government, as
those were accused of being un-American and unpatriotic. Moreover, there was
an exuberant usage of words such as ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’ and ‘them’ in his speech. ‘We’
was actually the most used word in the entire speech. This is an example of a
persuasive technique that is commonly used in political speeches to generate
public sentiment for a specific platform (Ajitsingh). With this technique,
President Bush had skillfully put the tragedy of 9/11 in a ‘us versus them’
narrative, stressed by statements such as: “Our grief has turned to anger, and
anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or justice to
our enemies, justice will be done.” Bush stated that Americans were asking,
“Why do they hate us?” They undoubtedly did ask themselves this question after
the suggestive statement. He proceeded to answer it himself, with several
examples of ‘our way of life’, which involves democracy and freedom that ‘we’
have and ‘they’ do not. It is ironic then that during the same speech, Bush also
claimed that America was a “country called to defend freedom,” when his own
words created an oppressive atmosphere of conformation that went against the
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very ideal of freedom of speech and democracy (Lee 8). An example of a 9/11
novel that resisted this aspect of the dominant narrative is The Reluctant
Fundamentalist (2007) by Mohsin Hamid, which tells the story of a Pakistani
man who represents those of Middle Eastern descent whose voices were elided
from the dominant narrative (Lee iii).
The third aspect Lee describes is that of the United States as an innocent
victim and the terrorists as evil perpetrators. The dominant narrative refuses to
acknowledge the idea that the United States might be, in a way, culpable for the
attacks because of, for example, their foreign policy and interference with the
issues of other nations. Instead, the dominant narrative claims that the terrorists
attacked because of a blind and irrational hate for the country (Lee 9). President
Bush stated in his speech that “They hate what they see right here in this
chamber: a democratically elected government. (…) They hate our freedoms: our
freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble
and disagree with each other. (…) They stand against us, because we stand in
their way.” The narrative dictates that the terrorists were motivated by hate and
evil, so there is no need to look inwards and question in what way the United
Stated may be partially culpable themselves. Lee gives Ian McEwan’s Saturday as
an example of a resisting 9/11 novel. The book troubles the conceptualization of
invasion by questioning who is at fault for the invasion of the household of
protagonist Perowne, who represents Western privilege, by Baxter, who
represents the evil outsider (Lee iii).
Dan Hassler-Forest argues that Bush’ speech on the matters was
significant in that it defined, framed and narrativized the historical events of
9/11 on the basis of narrative tropes and simple dichotomies of good versus evil
you usually only see in movies, instead of the other way around. American
victims and survivors were consistently described in terms of absolute goodness,
while the perpetrators were presented as the embodiment of true evil. After so
many years of exposure to eerily similar scenarios in innumerable Hollywood
action films, it was easy to think that America had “suddenly encountered an Evil
which fits the most naive Hollywood image: a secret organization of fanatics who
fully intend, and plan in detail, a terrorist attack whose aim is to kill thousands of
random civilians” (Žižek 75). As Žižek’s words illustrate, reality was thus defined
33
on the basis of fictional tropes, rather than the other way around (Hassler-Forest
33).
Another persuasive device used by the President is the so-called Transfer
Device, which he used to create an association between his position and the
ideals of America’s religious right (Ajitsingh). He did this by saying:
The course of this conflict isn’t known, yet its outcome is certain.
Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war,
and we know that God is not neutral between them.
The President associated his own position with the religious ideals held by the
majority of Americans by mentioning God in his speech. Moreover, he was
insinuating that ‘our’ side was good, because ‘we’ had God on ours.
Unfortunately, a tragic consequence of this remark has since been that Muslim
terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida have used it for their own propaganda, trying
to convince other Muslims that this is indeed a Holy War: Christians fighting
Muslims. Bush referred to “our enemies” as plotting “evil and destruction” and
following in “the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism.” As “the civilized
world is rallying to America’s side”, everyone who did not do this was considered
uncivilized. Moreover, both the media and the Bush administration emphasized
the fact that the attacks had been carried out by non-American terrorists. In this
way, Lee argues, “they succeeded in not only making people fearful and therefore
compliant, but also getting Americans to see themselves as a unified group who
must strike back at this external enemy who had caused them all so much pain”
(11). This external enemy, or the ‘Other’, was clearly marked. “Muslim men with
beards became synonymous with the concept of terrorist” (Lee 11).
The controversial use of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ in Bush’ speech has been
widely interpreted as meaning ‘the West’ versus ‘Islam’, a discursive change
derived from Samuel P. Huntington’s theory of a clash of civilizations. Instead of
viewing geopolitical conflicts in terms of ideology, he posed to see them in terms
of a clash of civilizations. The Bush doctrine of ‘good versus evil’ can be seen as a
subtler version of this narrative. In Huntington’s 1996 book The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, he stated that “of all objective
34
elements which define civilizations, the most important usually is religion” (42).
Religion, according to Huntington, “has taken over from ideology, and religious
nationalism replaces secular nationalism.” In summary, he theorized that the
contemporary global political landscape is characterized by the volatile
relationships between seven different civilizations, among which the Western,
Orthodox, Islamic, African, etc. (Keeble 97). He stated that people’s cultural and
religious identities are destined to be the primary source of conflict in the
twenty-first century and beyond. Most prominently, the central axis of global
politics after the Cold War would be the interaction between the culture and
power of both “The West and the Rest” (Huntington 29). He argued that the West
needs to be aggressive in this and create strategic alliances with other
civilizations to maintain its stability against the Islamic and Confucian
civilizations in particular (basically the Middle East and China). His theory leaves
no possibility of reconciliation between these parties:
The
underlying
problem
for
the
West
is
not
Islamic
fundamentalism. It is Islam itself, a different civilization whose
people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are
obsessed with the inferiority of their power. (Huntington 209)
In the same way, the Bush administration launched a project of trying to reestablish grand narratives (such as ‘good guys versus bad guys’) in the aftermath
of the terrorist attacks, even though postmodernism had allegedly already
disrupted those (Keeble 108).
35
And they could be carrying the fire too?
They could be. Yes.
But we don’t know.
We don’t know.
So we have to be vigilant.
We have to be vigilant. Yes. (McCarthy 182)
CHAPTER 3: THE ROAD AS A POST-APOCALYPTIC 9/11 NOVEL
Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road is often seen by scholars and critics as a
product of the troubled post-9/11 times. It is widely regarded as a post-9/11
novel (Gray; Keeble), with an allegorical anchorage to the attacks and their
aftermath. The post-apocalyptic world of The Road, which is commonly
presumed to be the United States, in certain ways evokes images of the direct
aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York City. For example, the scene of the
novel is set in gray because everything is covered in dust and ashes, which is
reminiscent of the scene of the disaster we have seen repeatedly on television.
The air in The Road is poisonous, which drives the survivors to improvise
facemasks to cover their nose and mouth. This evokes familiar images of the
survivors of 9/11. But besides this imagery, the disaster narrative of the novel
evokes and addresses even more the social and political climate in the aftermath
of the attacks in more intricate ways.
It is surely right to see The Road as a post-9/11 novel, not just in
the obvious, literal sense, but to the extent that it takes the
measure of that sense of crisis that has seemed to haunt the West,
and the United States in particular, ever since the destruction of
the World Trade Center. (Gray 25)
Part of this haunting sense of crisis throughout the United States after 9/11 can
be explained through the concept of singularity. This recurring phenomenon in
American history is also known as exceptionalism, or “the idea that the United
States is a chosen nation, a country whose history and unique mission in the
36
world defy comparison” (Vågnes 62). It is quite ironic then that exceptionalism
actually forms a well-documented tradition in American cultural history
(Hassler-Forest 32). According to Vågnes, it can be found in “the collective
response of almost every generation, to almost every major event, in American
history” (63). According to Dan Hassler-Forest, this paradigm explains the ways
in which the attacks were presented as a narrative without precedent, especially
in initial responses (32). American media commentators continuously repeated
the notion that 9/11 was a historically singular event, “arguing that the attacks
had hurled Americans into a new world, a new era. The mantra was ‘this changes
everything’” (Rozario 180). In this context, The Road can be seen as a post-9/11
novel in that it quite literally allegorized the events of September 11 as a nearapocalypse.
Technically, The Road belongs more to the subgenre of the post-9/11
novel rather than the general 9/11 novel, because it does not directly engage
with the attacks. Richard Gray argues that, instead, “whereas [other writers] try
to domesticate, to shepherd that sense of crisis into the realms of the familiar,
McCarthy’s alternative strategy in The Road is not to domesticate but to
defamiliarize (25). The sense of crisis in the United States that followed the
attacks is not directly dealt with in predictable ways but, paradoxically,
channeled through a more unexpected yet very familiar narrative. There exists a
clear pattern in the body of 9/11 Anglo-American fiction of focusing on the
relationship between a parent and a child, in the same way McCarthy has done.
The attacks then function as a backdrop to the more familiar genre narratives.
The traumas of the attacks are built into tried and safe narrative formulas, such
as relationship narratives (Keeble 111). David Holloway agrees with the
existence of such a pattern, with 9/11 novels focusing on parents struggling to
care for their children in confusing and dangerous times. Moreover, he states
that in a wider allegorical sense this can be identified as both a symbolical and
literal story of a government struggling to care for its citizens (110).
In this chapter, I will tie together the way in which McCarthy has played
with and deviated from conventions in The Road with its response to the
dominant 9/11 rhetoric as discussed in the previous chapter. First, I will analyze
the novel using the list of conventions that I have laid out in the first chapter.
37
Then I will proceed to explore the way in which The Road responds to the
dominant 9/11 narrative that has been discussed in the previous chapter.
POST-APOCALYPTIC CONVENTIONS IN THE ROAD
In The Road, an apocalypse has ravaged a country that is most likely the United
States of America, and presumably the rest of the world as well. The nature of the
apocalypse is not clear; we only know that at 1:17 all the clocks stopped, after a
long shear of light and a series of low concussions (McCarthy 54). The result is
something that can be described as a nuclear winter, as everything is covered in
ashes. The sky is perpetually gray and the temperature low. Every bit of green
has either been scorched or covered in a thick layer of black ashes, leaving it
poisonous. The air cannot be breathed in, so nose and mouth must be covered at
all times. The water has turned black and there are fires all the time. Not
surprisingly, very few people have survived. The story in this novel takes place
about a decade after the apocalypse and follows a father and his son, whose
names are never mentioned, travelling the roads of this ruined world. They are
looking for anything left that can be eaten, as hardly anything can grow in the
sickened soil anymore. Most of the ravaged world has long been plundered, so
survival is hard. Canned food, blankets and good shoes are the only things worth
anything. Most survivors have turned to cannibalism. They roam the roads
looking for food or women and children to serve as (sex) slaves. The father and
his son try to survive and “carry the fire,” as the father repeatedly tells his son.
BORROWED TIME
What sets The Road apart the most from other works of post-apocalyptic fiction
is the complete lack of an ultimate goal. Having such a goal in a post-apocalyptic
story means there is hope. Without it, as is the case in The Road, the situation is
utterly hopeless. The lack of a goal that the protagonists can reach or a cause that
they can fix automatically makes the story darker. This entire book is the story of
a journey, but it does not seem to lead anywhere. The father and son are
38
travelling towards the south because winter is coming, but that is the only
reason. There is no real hope that this destination will be much better than the
places they stayed at before. Moreover, there is absolutely no hope for a solution
or ultimate destination. Both the earth and the air are scorched and poisonous:
life is no longer sustainable on this planet. There is no way of fixing this and no
place where the situation is different. Whatever caused this desolation has done
its damage everywhere (or at least everywhere within travelling reach of the
main characters – they cannot cross the oceans so theoretically the situation
might be better on other continents), so there is no way to escape it. Because of
this lack of hope for a better place, for a possible solution or for a worthy goal,
the story seems to have no real beginning or ending. It just goes on and on. There
is no rising action that leads up to a climax, for example. There are small-scale
events throughout the book with climaxes but there is no real turning point. At
the end of the book, the father dies, but that does not really function as a turning
point either. The boy mourns him, but eventually he goes along with a group of
other survivors. This might be seen as a resolution. But although whatever
happens next is not included in the book, it can also be assumed that the same
story continues: they travel from one place to another, over and over again,
trying to survive with what little is left.
The horrible pilgrimage of the father and son does not have an exact
climax, yet it is extremely suspenseful. Readers are conditioned to expect at least
one climactic turning point, especially within this genre. The post-apocalyptic
world is always dangerous, so you expect the villains to show up at every turn.
The longer nothing special seems to happen, the more tension is created for the
reader because they expect something to happen soon– or so they think. Even
when the narrative does not seem to have an ultimate goal there are certain
expectations at play that a climactic event is bound to happen. When the arrival
of this event is postponed, the tension increases, exactly because of these
conditioned expectations.
McCarthy draws a portrait of an extremely gloomy and gray world.
Everything is poisonous: the air, the water, the soil and every plant left in it.
There is nowhere to go and nothing to be done about the situation. The whole
book is a continuous tale of looming danger and survival. The man does not hold
39
hope anymore: he believes the world is finished and that he and the boy are “two
hunted animals trembling like groundfoxes in their cover. Borrowed time and
borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” (McCarthy 138)
They just travel and try to survive. They are cold and hungry all the time and this
is documented throughout the book. Mentioning every little detail of their
repetitive life is exactly what sets the dark and depressing tone so dramatically,
without it even needing actual dramatic game-changing events.
The cause of the apocalypse in The Road remains unknown. All we know
about it are some details, which are presented through some flashbacks, and
what the aftermath looks like about a decade later. Not knowing what caused it
adds to the mystery and suspense of the plot. The audience is thrown into the
story, right in the middle of it without a clear sense of what happened in the
beginning or how it actually ends. The cause of the apocalypse is depicted in the
story. It is brushed aside, as if it were a mere detail. And in the case of the man
and the boy, it actually is. Whatever caused the apocalypse does not matter to
them anymore. What we know is that the aftermath is horrible.
McCarthy’s choice not to disclose the cause of the disaster sets this novel
apart from earlier works of post-apocalyptic fiction in that it offers no overt
social criticism or political commentary, because there is no direct threat to
warn the public about. However, post-apocalyptic narratives are always haunted
by the historical moment of their appearance. So the audience is likely to fill in
the blanks anyway, with whatever (man-made) doomsday device or calamity
happens to be currently threatening us (5). In their writings on the novel, most
critics (Woodson 87; Cooper 218; Hunt & Jacobsen 157) assume that the earth is
in a state of nuclear winter, which would mean that the apocalypse was very
likely caused by man. The novel's most profound function, according to Alan
Warner, is warning:
The Road affirms belief in the tender pricelessness of the here and
now. In creating an exquisite nightmare, it does not add to the
cruelty and ugliness of our times; it warns us now how much we
have to lose.
40
“EACH THE OTHER’S WORLD ENTIRE”
In post-apocalyptic fiction, survivors usually tend to form groups. This has many
advantages for their survival and it serves certain purposes concerning plot and
narrative, as explained in the previous chapter. The man and the boy in The
Road, however, deliberately choose to travel by themselves. This is rather tricky,
as the child is very much dependent on the man. The man has to take care of him
and protect him, because he is much weaker and gets sick often throughout the
book. The father pushes himself to extremes, even though he is terminally ill, to
provide and care for the boy. This is made possible by his natural capabilities in
the hostile and uncivilized environment of the novel. He is not only
advantageously skilled with both tools and weapons but also very persevering
and possesses an all-round resourcefulness (Keeble 101). At the time the novel
takes place, the boy is around ten years old. He was, however, born after the
apocalypse. This means that it has probably been even more difficult on the
father before, having to take care of a baby and later a toddler all on his own.
They used to travel with the boy’s mother, but she committed suicide. There is
no further mention of any other travel companion besides her. During the
immediate aftermath of the apocalypse there was a panic-fueled series of
plundering everywhere, which was probably very violent and rather ruthless.
The father then chose to retreat into his own little nuclear family (alas, no pun
intended) and to only trust and protect them. Due to this, their isolation at the
time of the book, ten years later, has grown to extreme proportions. When at a
certain point in the story a thug threatens them, this is actually the first spoken
contact with another human being they have had in a year.
Because of the lack of a group, the dialogues in this book are scarce. When
they do happen, they tend to be very short. The boy and his father usually only
speak in staccato sentences. They also often repeat themselves. For example:
they talk a lot about carrying the fire, an intimate expression used between them
to refer to the goodness of the boy. There is not much to say, after all, because of
the repetitive life and the fact that they are always together 24/7. Because of the
adult-child relationship, there is not much debate over which way to go or
whether to stay in a certain place either. The father makes most of the decisions.
41
A lot of the usual tensions and power plays that are often seen in other postapocalyptic fiction are therefore entirely absent. Instead, the story centers on the
very intimate and tender relationship between a father and his son, who are
“each the other’s world entire.” (McCarthy 4) This deviation from the postapocalyptic convention of... is one of the most important features that set this
book apart in the genre. It is quite remarkable, and often stated as the most
appealing aspect of this novel, The fact that McCarthy has succeeded in
combining this touching father-son love story with a gruesome horror tale of a
ravaged world and cannibalism, is often stated as the most appealing and
remarkable aspect of this novel (Metacritic).
IS THIS COFFEE?
The boy, born “after the sky opened” (Kennedy) has no memory of the world
before the apocalypse. The man tried to teach him about it through stories but
eventually gave up, as “he could not enkindle in the heart of the child what was
ashes in his own.” (McCarthy 163) In The Road, the man and his son are
systematically stripped of the domestic referents of the old society (Smith 28).
On several occasions, when they stumble upon a wrecked symbol of the old
world, the man is shown to be nostalgic for what used to be.
Therefore, remains of the world that was are particularly prominent in
The Road. Where they usually function as emotionally invested, even nostalgic,
reminders of the past for the characters in post-apocalyptic fiction, for the boy in
The Road they are unknown artifacts. The fact that this boy finds ordinary items
that we use today and treats them exactly like we would if we would dig up
archeological remains of pottery from the Renaissance or the Roman Empire
causes a definite dislocating feeling with the readers. A very striking example of
this can be found in the part of the story where the man and the boy find a
supermarket on the outskirts of (whatever is left of) a city. There, the father tries
to extract a soda can from one of the vending machines:
42
He sat and ran his hand around in the works of the gutted
machines and in the second one it closed over a cold metal
cylinder. He withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a Coca
Cola.
BOY: What is it, Papa?
MAN: It’s a treat. For you. (22)
What makes this so compelling is the fact that this ten-year-old (probably
American) boy does not have the faintest clue what a can of Coca-Cola is. This
completely ordinary and daily used product, the most famous symbol of
globalization and capitalism today, has become a sort of historical rarity to this
post-apocalyptic boy, merely a decade after the end of a world in which it was
anything but a remarkable object. To the father, it is not only a very strong
reminder of what used to be, but also, instead of something you easily pull out of
the fridge whenever you feel like it, a very rare treat for his son. Drinking it for
the first time is a truly special experience for him. Though this can and similar
items are very common items to us, in the world of The Road these items are
placed in a completely different context (http://quarterlyconversation.com).
Something as simple as picking up a phone and dialing a number, which the
father does out of sheer nostalgia, means absolutely nothing to the boy. When
they find a fall-out shelter in the backyard of an abandoned house, they are
finally able to have a decent meal: scrambled eggs, ham, baked beans and a cup
of coffee. The boy, however, does not know any of these products.
The boy looked up at him.
Go ahead, he said. Dont let it get cold.
BOY: What do I eat first?
MAN: Whatever you like.
BOY: Is this coffee?
MAN: Yes. Here. You put the butter on your biscuits. Like this.
(153)
43
These remains work to establish powerful emotional connections with the
audience. They allow McCarthy to “foreground only the very basics of physical
human survival and the intimate evocation of a destroyed landscape drawn with
such precision and beauty. He makes us ache with nostalgia for restored
normality” (Warner). With this, the novel complies with the conventional
functions of remains, as laid out earlier.
Apart from material items, The Road features other sorts of remains from
before the apocalypse as well. The boy’s strong sense of morality and the polite
manners taught by his father are the most prominent forms of cultural
knowledge left from the old society. Some rituals, however, have also survived:
the father tells his son stories before he goes to sleep, leaving the light on when
the boy asks him to. Their rather domestic routines have a very familiar, almost
reassuring feeling about them (Smith 31). When they find the shelter full of food,
the boy wants to say thanks before dinner. This reminds us of before-meal
rituals such as saying grace, except in this case the boy insists on saying thanks
to the people who owned the shelter and bought the food. Beforehand, he had
also asked his father if it was okay for them to eat it, since it wasn’t theirs. This is
a strong remain of the morality and ways of the past, especially when you are
almost dying of starvation.
Mostly, the father is afraid of forgetting the old society: “You forget what
you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” (McCarthy
11) He is experiencing trouble with remembering:
He’d had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull
despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible
entities. The names of things slowly following those things into
oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the
names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he
would have thought. How much was gone already? (93)
He cannot jolt his memory by talking to the boy either. The fact that they were
born pre- and post-apocalypse has created a distance between them. In his
attempts to bring those memories to life for his son he only cements their
44
distance from the past (Smith 28). The father realizes that to the boy he is
actually an alien: “a being from a planet that no longer existed.” (McCarthy 163)
Moreover, he cannot construct the pleasures of the world he’s lost for his son
without also burdening them both with the loss as well. So he mostly just keeps
silent about it and keeps forgetting.
CARRYING THE FIRE
The struggle of both the man and the boy with the survival versus humanity
issue is one of the main themes of The Road. The boy seems to be a naturally
altruistic, caring, extremely empathetic person. The way his father has raised
him undoubtedly contributed to this as well. The man tries very hard to preserve
his son’s goodness and innocence, as he values it greatly. He often calls his son a
god and tries to shield him from horrors such as cannibalism or dead bodies
scattered along the road, even when they are surrounded by them every day. He
is terrified that the boy will lose his good-natured innocence: “But when he bent
to see into the boy’s face under the hood of the blanket he very much feared that
something was gone that could not be put right again.” (McCarthy 144) As Alan
Warner put it in his review of the book for The Guardian: “Despite this soul
desert, the end of God and ethics, the father still defines and endangers himself
by trying to instill moral values in his son, by refusing to abandon all belief.” Yet
the man is also annoyed by his infinite good nature, because it makes their
survival much harder. When they encounter an old, weak and nearly blind man
on the road, the father wants to ignore him and keep moving to the south, as
their time to shelter for winter is already running out by that point. The boy,
however, cannot simply leave the old man behind. He desperately wants to give
him some of their food. The father, who is either feeling guilty or does not want
to disappoint his son (or perhaps even both), sighs and reluctantly gives the man
a tin of fruit cocktail:
BOY: He’s scared, Papa.
MAN: I dont think you should touch him. (…)
45
BOY: What about a spoon?
MAN: He’s not getting a spoon. (…)
BOY: Can we give him something else?
MAN: Let’s see how he does with this.
They watched him eat. When he was done he sat holding the
empty tin and looking down into it as if more might appear.
MAN: What do you want to give him?
BOY: What do you think he should have?
MAN: I dont think he should have anything. (174-175)
The boy constantly tries to bargain with his father over helping someone: to look
for a little boy he has seen along the road, to care for a stray dog or to give the
old man more food. The father constantly tries to explain to his son that they
already have very little to share and that most of the creatures they encounter
are too weak already to waste their valuable resources on.
When they finally reach the coast, distracted by their desire to swim in
the ocean (because the boy has actually never seen it before), they immediately
pay for their short-lived carelessness. They return to the beach just to find that
someone has stolen all their food and clothing. The man and the boy eventually
catch up with the thug. By holding him at gunpoint they are able to make the
thief surrender and drop the knife he was already violently swinging around. The
man forces the thug to strip naked and leave his clothes and shoes on their cart,
so they can leave him behind exactly the way he intended to leave them. The boy
keeps crying and pleading to his father on the man’s behalf, but the father tells
him to be quiet and so they leave.
And they set out along the road south, with the boy crying and
looking back at the nude and slatlike creature standing there in
the road shivering and hugging himself. Oh Papa, he sobbed.
MAN: Stop it.
BOY: I cant stop it.
MAN: What do you think would have happened to us if we hadnt
caught him? Just stop it.
46
BOY: I’m trying. (…)
MAN: What do you want to do?
BOY: Just help him, Papa. Just help him.
The man looked back up the road.
BOY: He was just hungry, Papa. He’s going to die.
MAN: He’s going to die anyway. (274-276)
Eventually, they turn back and leave the man’s clothes and shoes on the road for
him. Later on, the father asks his awfully quiet and upset son if he wants him to
tell him a story, as the boy usually enjoys this. When he refuses, the father keeps
pushing to know why not. “Those stories are not true,” the boy eventually says.
Of course they are not, his father replies, stories do not have to be. “Yes,” his son
says, “but in the stories we’re always helping people and we dont help people.”
(McCarthy 287)
A very painful example of this statement can be found in the book when
the man and the son find a seemingly abandoned house. They go rummaging
through the rooms and cupboards, until finally they go to explore the basement.
There they find several naked men, women and children locked away to be eaten
by cannibals later. One man has lost his legs to the hips, with the stumps burned
to preserve the rest of the flesh. The father is shocked:
MAN: Jesus, he whispered.
Then one by one they turned and blinked in the pitiful light. Help
us, they whispered. Please help us.
MAN: Christ, he said. Oh Christ.
He turned and grabbed the boy. Hurry, he said. Hurry. He’d
dropped the lighter. No time to look. He pushed the boy up the
stairs. Help us, they called.
MAN: Hurry.
A bearded face appeared blinking at the foot of the stairs. Please,
he called. Please. (116-117)
47
The father grabs his son and flees. He spends the rest of the day hiding from the
cannibals, all the while trying to convince his son that there was nothing they
could have done.
The boy constantly seeks to reinforce what he sees as the purpose of their
existence: finding the good guys and carrying the fire (Keeble 103). When he
sees another little boy all alone on the road, he keeps crying afterwards because
he is afraid for him. He talks to his father about going back to look for him,
because he didn’t seem to have anyone to care for him. He even suggests sharing
his food, if they would only take him with them (McCarthy 90). At one point, his
father tells him that the boy is not the one who has to worry about everything, to
which the boy replies: “Yes I am. I am the one” (McCarthy 277). This implies that
the boy is very much aware of his unique sense of empathy and that if he would
not worry about all these people, nobody would. His father believes in the
existence of other ‘good guys’, like them. The classification of someone as
belonging to the ‘good guys’, however, is entirely based on his own perspective
and criteria instead of existing societal norms. There is no society left to frown
upon his actions. He rationally explains to both himself and his son, again and
again, that his actions are justified because he needs to protect his child and they
are the good guys, so his actions are righteous. He does try to be a good person,
based on his own understanding of goodness, but his main priority is keeping his
son and himself alive. Unfortunately, in these circumstances that often means
that you have to resort to violence. The man has set some clear boundaries for
this:
BOY: We wouldnt ever eat anybody, would we?
MAN: No. Of course not.
BOY: Even if we were starving?
MAN: We’re starving now.
BOY: You said we werent.
MAN: I said we werent dying. I didnt say we werent starving.
BOY: But we wouldnt.
MAN: No. We wouldnt.
BOY: No matter what.
48
MAN: No. No matter what.
BOY: Because we’re the good guys.
MAN: Yes.
BOY: And we’re carrying the fire. (136)
In ‘What Disappears and What Remains: Representations of Social Fluidity in the
Post-Apocalypse’ (2007), Christina Jean Smith comments on the humanity versus
survival struggle in the book: “Though it imagines a world defined by barbarism
and violence, The Road maintains the hope that civilized values and actions can
endure, despite humanity's capacity for savagery.” (26) The theme of good
versus bad guys is a recurring one in the novel. In the universe of this novel the
conditions have grown so bleak and terrible that even basic acts, like not eating
other human beings and not preying on those weaker than you, seem like
heroism (Shmoop). The boy keeps asking his father about the good guys and
whether they still exist, as they never seem to be amongst the other survivors
they encounter on the road. The father assures him that they do but are simply
hard to find because they are constantly hiding, just like they are. To the boy, it is
very important that they too are good guys and “carry the fire.”
The man and the boy only have each other. After the child’s mother
committed suicide, they deliberately chose to be by themselves rather than form
a group with other survivors. They have developed a symbiotic relationship in
which there is not a lot of room for other people. To the father, this means he
holds no trust for anyone but his son. Every other human being he encounters is
therefore immediately perceived as dangerous: all of them are seen as potential
rapists and/or cannibals. Of course, it does not help much that by the time the
story of The Road takes place, most of them actually are. As Alan Warner put it in
his review: “In this damnation, rightly so, everyone, finally, is the enemy.” Still,
the man believes there are other good guys out there and keeps reassuring his
son of this. The boy in return expects to see them in every stranger they meet,
immediately giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. After a very tense scene in
the book, in which such a stranger tried to murder the boy, the father tells him:
49
MAN: You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now
you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was
appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do
you understand? (80)
In this passage, the man puts into words the great contradiction that is ever
present throughout The Road: that love and caring can spring forth from the
same well as violence and murder (Scott). The man is often forced to be
aggressive and violent in order to protect his son. He sees this as the duty he was
appointed to by God. The boy, however, wholly embodies love and nothing but it:
Yet the boy never does and appears better for it, in so many ways,
even in that terrible place. He is the embodiment of pure
goodness, and sets up the other, better side of love, the side that is
unsullied by the world, that never resorts to baseness and
violence, that finds beauty in even to most unlikely of places.
(Scott)
According to Arin Keeble, the central grand narrative of The Road, of “us versus
them” and “the good guys versus the bad guys” falls into alignment with the
grand narratives that the Bush administration was trying to re-establish in the
aftermath of 9/11 (106). In my opinion, the novel as a whole does not employ an
unproblematic narrative of good versus bad guys. As I have demonstrated
earlier, it is unavoidably intertwined with the struggle of humanity versus
survival. It is then anything but unproblematic, hence the ‘struggle’. From the
viewpoint of the man, however, there is a clear-cut distinction between the good
and the bad guys in this post-apocalyptic universe. His son and him belong to the
good guys. Everyone else belongs to the bad guys. Other people who fit into his
own definition of ‘good’ fall into the category of good guys as well, even though
he has never met any of them. The problem with that logic is that he probably
never will, as his own definition includes doing everything you can to protect
your child and keep it alive. If he were to meet another survivor with a child,
their interests might interfere and they might be forced to do things that
50
automatically make them switch categories. Hence, the likelihood of the man
meeting another one of his self-proclaimed good guys is small.
RHETORIC OF 9/11 IN THE ROAD
As discussed earlier, Kathryn Lee has identified the dominant narrative of 9/11
as consisting of three main aspects. The first one is the triumphalist image of
America the Brave, firmly held high by both the American media and the Bush
administration as to not look weak. With vigorous language President Bush
made clear that the United States and its allies would strike back, after which he
launched the War on Terror. Susan Faludi analyzed this flexing of muscles as
following:
The attack on home soil triggered a search for a guardian of the
homestead, a manly man, to be sure, but one particularly suited to
protecting and providing for the isolated American family in
perilous situations… a frontiersman whose proofs of eligibility
were the hatchet and the gun.
The image of frontier masculinity was actively advocated by the Bush
administration after the terrorist attacks, stressing the concept of ‘protector’.
This image seemed to permeate Anglo-American society, as a clear resurgence of
the frontier myth took place after 9/11 (Keeble 102). It is no coincidence that
both 2004 presidential candidates, George W. Bush as well as John Kerry,
dressed as cowboys and hunters for several of their campaign’s promotional
events (Faludi; Carey et al.; Baard). Arin Keeble draws the connection with The
Road’s vision of American masculinity through the unnamed male protagonist:
the novel goes to great lengths to reinforce this dominant image of early post9/11 masculinity (103). In his book The 9/11 Novel: Trauma, Politics and Identity
(2014), he argues that “through a messianic allegory and portrayal of a
retrograde, frontier masculinity, The Road endorses the Bush administration’s
rhetoric of heroism, its focus on “American values,” and its Manichean vision of
“good versus evil”.” (100) He reads the novel as an allegory of 9/11, with the
51
masculinity of the mythological American West. Like the early pioneers, the two
protagonists face an inhospitable land and all kinds of cruel enemies (IbarrolaArmendiariz 2).
[The man] is characterized by the classical frontier masculinity of
cowboys, trail-blazing pilgrims, and even adventurers. He
navigates the open road with a pistol and a map, he is a protector
and a provider, and actually resembles a kind of post-apocalyptic
cowboy, the decrepit shopping cart replacing the horse. (Keeble
100)
This characterization of the man as a Western hero resonates with the post-9/11
resurgence of the frontier masculinity narrative.
The second aspect of the dominant narrative, which concerns the “you are
either with us or with the terrorists”-part of President Bush’ speech, is clearly
apparent in The Road as well. The man makes a very clear distinction between
the good guys and the bad guys. If you do not belong to his own category, the
good guys, you are automatically one of the bad guys. To him, there is no gray
area. Because of this, he also does not see where his own faults lie. He sees
everyone as a possible threat and thinks his actions are justified, because he is a
victim. In the post-apocalyptic world of The Road, everyone is a victim, but this is
not how the man sees it. During the confrontation with the hungry thief who had
stolen their belongings on the beach, the man sees the boy and himself as the
only victims, even though he realizes that the thief “was an outcast from one of
the communes and the fingers of his right hand had been cut away” (215). He
makes the thief strip down until he is naked, takes all of his belongings and then
leaves. Leaving the thief like that means he will certainly die. In his view, the man
is allowed to punish the thief with a death sentence, because he stole from them.
He sees the thief as evil, while they are victims. This resonates with the third
aspect of the dominant narrative, in which the United States is seen as the
innocent victim of evil terrorists.
52
DISCUSSION
The Road is a post-apocalyptic novel that plays with generic conventions. By
doing this and thus also partially deviating from the conventions, it responds
critically to the dominant rhetoric of the Bush administration after 9/11. In this
way, the use of (and deviation from) generic conventions in The Road is linked to
the manner in which it responds to the dominant 9/11 narrative.
In some aspects The Road can be considered a conventional work of postapocalyptic fiction. The title itself already explains part of this: the story is set on
the road, along a journey towards a better place. In this case, that just means a
less horrible place. As we now know, the journey is a typical convention of the
genre. However, this one does not provide the protagonists with a lot of actionpacked events that lead to a climax, as is usually its primary function. McCarthy
uses the journey in this novel to stress the repetitive dullness of their survival.
The journey is a recurring element in most post-apocalyptic stories, but in The
Road it is not a hopeful undertaking towards an ultimate goal. On the contrary: it
actually illustrates the hopelessness of the aftermath! This defines the use of
conventions in this book: even when they are present, McCarthy still somehow
diverges from them. The lack of an ultimate goal in The Road can be seen as a
critique of the self-evidence of the ‘good versus bad guys’-rhetoric: if there seems
to be no future or no goal, then the narrative may raise questions as to whether
this popular post-9/11 rhetoric is still convincing. In this desolate postapocalyptic world, there seems to be no actual or metaphysical road anymore
that can actually lead to a better life and guarantee happiness if you are a good
person. This causes an implicit clash with the Christian doctrine that is
underlying the Bush-rhetoric.
The Road repeats and at the same time deviates from the conventions in
the same way as it repeats but also deviates from the rhetoric. This novel
certainly evokes the dominant political narrative in some ways. The protagonists
feels the need to identify good and bad guys in the same way the media and the
Bush administration did. He sees no fault in his own actions, as his son and he
are mere victims of the apocalypse and everybody else is evil. The man himself is
53
a clear representation of the narrative of the frontier masculinity that was so
actively advocated by the Bush administration after the attacks. At the same
time, however, The Road also problematizes the rhetoric, mainly in the form of
the boy. The boy constantly questions his father’s unequivocal ‘goodness’ and
their role as the good guys. He does not see them as the only victims, but
understands that, for example, the thief at the beach was at least as hungry as
they are. The boy does not agree with his father’s clear-cut distinction between
good and bad people, which is why he is the main catalyst for their struggle
between humanity and survival. He is just a child himself, a disadvantaged
character enabling his father’s masculine role of protector and provider, but at
the same time also laying bare his weakness: the unconditional love the man
holds for his son.
54
There is a hand-in-glove relationship between fiction and current events but it is not like ping-pong
- fiction doesn't necessarily provide a direct response. It is possible that the defining novel for the
post-9/11 era may have nothing to do with the event itself, at least in terms of plot. (John
Sutherland, in Kohair)
CONCLUSION
In this thesis, I have shown how The Road can be seen as a notable example of a
post-9/11 post-apocalyptic work of fiction which plays with generic conventions.
Through my research I have compiled a list of conventions that can be
considered characteristic for the post-apocalyptic genre: the journey towards
hope, the struggle of survival versus keeping your humanity, an ultimate goal
and/or a fixable cause, remains, the forming of groups, the distinction between
good and bad guys, the cause of the apocalypse and the presence of both skilled
and disadvantaged characters. I have thoroughly discussed the genre and its
conventions in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 was dedicated to the historical and sociopolitical origins of the post-apocalyptic genre. I presented a historical overview
of the genre and explored its remarkable popularity during times of crisis. From
there on, I moved to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an event that
many still see as apocalypse-like. The apocalyptic tragedy of 9/11 inspired an
entire new genre, that of the 9/11 novel, to which The Road also belongs. I have
discussed the dominant 9/11 rhetoric of the American media and the Bush
administration. Finally, in Chapter 3 I have analyzed Cormac McCarthy’s The
Road using the aforementioned list of conventions, which has shown that the
novel repeats and at the same time deviates from the conventions, much in the
same way as it repeats but also deviates from the dominant 9/11 rhetoric. I have
discussed the ways in which The Road clearly evokes that rhetoric but at the
same time, however, also problematizes it. In this way, the novel can be seen as a
critical response to the dominant rhetoric.
55
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