Lit Of Apoc Final

Clayton D Colmon Literature of the Apocalypse Prof. Collins December 18, 2006 Topic # 1 Postmodernism and Apocalypse

The “incredulity toward metanarratives” that Lyotard addresses refers to the postmodern disregard for “… classic text[s] or other archetypal stories [that] provide a schematic world view upon which an individual's experience and perception may be ordered.” (Metanarratives, OED) This incredulity essentially speaks to the denial of the plausibility of all that constitutes modernity and its reliance on a foundation built upon allusory methods of progression. It is an affront to the modernist method of collective reliance on the consistent historical cognizance in every creation. This concept is what ties post-modernist thinking to apocalyptic thinking. Apocalypticism, similar to post-modernism, involves the consummate end of an established (intellectual, societal, and/or relational) system. They both essentially invalidate the legitimacy of those things that are based on a previously established structure. As Lyotard explains, “a postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philosopher: the text he writes, the work he produces are not in principle governed by preestablished rules, and they cannot be judged according to a determining judgment, by applying familiar categories to the text or to the work” (Lyotard) Fundamentally, the very base on which the modernist reality is built is what the post modernist questions. Post modernism, in attempt to “be witness to the un-presentable” (Lyotard), seeks to transcend the categorization and historicizing that has beset the representative

Clayton D Colmon

1

authority of modernism. In this it parallels, and invariably becomes a precursor to, apocalypticism. The transformation required for the realization of apocalypse all but necessitates the relatively radical methodology that is inherent in Post modernism, because the utter negation and complete reworking of all that constitutes reality is exactly what is needed for apocalypse to be achieved. This is what Lyotard means when he says that “postmodernism is that which…denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable.” (Lyotard) All that would be familiar connections are denied in favor of a reinterpretation that does not base itself on the prior established (pre-apocalyptic) reality. In this it paves the way for the manifestation of the apocalypse which, by its very nature, insinuates a detachment from the prior reality. This detachment from prior reality is what Lauren, in Parable of the Sower had to learn to master. In the apocalypse that had befallen the earth in that time, all had regressed into a recession of humanistic ideals and civilized progress. Like Lyotard’s vision of postmodernism, all prior systems of coping had evaporated and been replaced with a method of thinking that relied upon individual adaptation more so than reliance on/clinging to past experiences. In this, the acknowledgement of history was detrimentally determined as more of a hindrance than a help in a world that had ceased to operate under the principles that had governed it for the past couple centuries. This makes Parable of the Sower a perfect example text for Lyotard’s postmodernism idea. The metanarratives or texts that, under normal circumstances, would have been alluded to were invalid in that they did and could not testify to the situation that presented itself in the novel. An archetypical illustration of this is found in the

Clayton D Colmon

2

correlation between the recession of Christian ideals and the increased proliferation of a “faith” that centered on the preservation of property and self. In this case the incredulity manifested itself in a violent disregard for the metanarratives of delayed gratification and idealist behavior/expectations. This incredulity was essentially a reaction to the way in which the metanarration, that had so stoically relied on the preponderance of a justifiable belief in the inherent authority of past experiences, ceased to be a viable way in which progress, which was relegated to survival because of the events that had taken place in the novel, could realistically be achieved. This was the case because of the total reformation of societal expectations. This reformation was apparent in Lauren’s travels with her group. At the point in which her motives for stealing were questioned she steadfastly maintained that she “Mean[t] to survive”. (Butler) This was significant in that it was juxtaposed against “years and years—a lifetime of ‘thou shall not steal.’” (Butler) In their introduction to the possibility of death they were all but required to dump the (dead) ideologies of the world that once existed and embrace the ones that operated in the world that did exist. In order to ensure their survival they need to “kill [trouble] and keep moving.” (Butler) The reliance on group survival that was of such importance in Parable of the Sower was something that Lyotard observed in The Postmodern Condition. As he explains, “the society of the future falls less within the province of a Newtonian anthropology (such as structuralism or systems theory) than a pragmatics of language particles…[that] only give rise to institutions in patches—local determinism.” (Lyotard) This explained the splintered nature in which society was forming in Parable of the Sower. As Lauren learned in the very beginning of her group travel and journey, her

Clayton D Colmon

3

group was “a pack, the three of [them], and all the other people out there [weren’t] in it.” She realized that if they were “a good pack, and [worked] together, [they] would have a chance” because they “could be sure that [they] weren’t the only pack out there.”(Butler) This is representative of a trend that is an understandable reaction to a postapocalyptic world. In a place in which every aspect of life is changed in a way in which society is only as valid as far as an individual has the ability to convince others that it is, a group is ideal. What better way to perpetuate a belief system than to preserve it in such a fashion that seems appealing to others. Because of this concept, civilization ceased to be a macro rule and became a micro exception in that society on the whole ended its generalized mass cohesiveness and became more of a relatively individualized cacophony of member specific groups. Each group was centered on the preservation of its specific ideals which, because of the nature of the post-apocalyptic world, centered on the preservation of the group through the protection of individual lives. Lauren sums up the essence of this dynamic when she exclaims to one of her group members “give me away and you weaken yourself.” (Butler) The luxuries that that past afforded individuals were not even afforded to groups any longer. As far as the novel’s present was concerned, the past was, in virtue of its post apocalyptic alienation from the present, a disjointed and anomalous invalidated collection of experiences removed from inclusion in any future attempts/successes in progression. This concept was the one which Lauren’s Earthseed was built upon. With the rejection of the idea that common forms of religious beliefs were all but voided, the metanarratives of religion was molded into a workable, relevant adaptation to the specific needs of that time. It’s with this that she explained her Earthseed as something that was “as mysterious

Clayton D Colmon

4

and obvious as any other explanation of God or the universe that [she’d] ever read” with the main difference being that “to [her] the others felt inadequate, at best.” (Butler) And, in fact, because of their reliance on and base in a history that ceased to mean anything to the present and future, they were indeed inadequate. This Earthseed was essentially meant to begin and flourish where the other religious metanarratives had failed. The fact that this new “religion” was focused on the prevailing concept of change solidified its legitimacy, because that world was the epitome of change and its possible outcomes. In Earthseed basing itself not on the ideas of the past but in the realities of the present, it became one of the first and most vocal of this book’s examples of the PostModern/apocalyptic idea of “being witnesses to the unpresentable [by]…waging a war on totality” (Lyotard). It, through an adamant insistence upon the idea that every moment is a privatized manifestation of a specific circumstance unbound by the shackles of history’s influence, served as the epitomized outcome of world that has changed (and may continue to change) in ways that had shaken the very foundation of society and caused the end of civilization as it had previously been known. The foundation shaking that took place in Parable of the Sower was a sort of dramatized, wide scale version of what befell those individuals in The Memoirs of a Survivor. In both cases, society had broken down into a dichotomy of those who had and those who had not. It just seemed that there was more of a sense of hope inherent in the narrative of The Memoirs of a Survivor than there was in Parable of the Sower. This may have had to do with the fact that Lauren was a character who was more attached to the struggle with the anarchic situation than the woman in The Memoirs of a Survivor. Either

Clayton D Colmon

5

way, they were both individuals who served as a personal, individual representative to a large problem. The events that take place in The Memoirs of a Survivor seem to be a possible precursor to those that happen in Parable of the Sower, because, as the narrator explains, they “slowly…came to understand that it was [their] periods of peace, of normality, and not the days of looting and fighting, which were going to be unusual [then].” (Butler) The apocalypse that befell these individuals was the slow kind, in which the governmental and societal normalcy was gradually eroded by the denizens (in this case children and young adults) of change. Individuals in this narrative still wished to cling on to an outdated fiction of what was now the reality of civilization. This was reminiscent of mentality that the enclave of individuals who sought to sustain their way of life inside the walls of Robledo held in Parable of the Sower. Like the façade of protection and of encapsulated normalcy that pervaded the minds of those individuals who resided behind the walls in Parable of the Sower, the attempts at preserving the civilization of the past in The Memoirs of a Survivor would ultimately be a futile endeavor. But this reality, like that which resided outside the walls of Robledo, was one that was too horrible to own up to, and so, in “the newscast and in the papers a single kidnapped child, taken from its pram perhaps by some poor unhappy woman” garnered the attention of “the police [who] would be combing the suburbs and the countryside in hundreds, looking for the child, and for the woman to punish her” while “…the next news flash would be about the mass deaths of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.” (Lessing, 19) They needed to focus attention on something that could easily situate itself in their archaic perception of what the world was.

Clayton D Colmon

6

[They] still believed, wanted to believe, that the first—the concern about a single child, the need to punish the individual criminal, even if it took days and weeks and hundreds of [their] hard worked police force to do it—was what really represented [them]; the second, about the catastrophe, was as such items of news had always been for people not actually in the threatened area, an unfortunate and minor—or at least not crucial—accident, which interrupted the even flow, the development, of civilization. (Lessing, 19) They were fruitlessly fighting the post-apocalyptic world with a pre-apocalyptic mindset. In this, these individuals were “spitting into a hurricane; standing in front of a mirror to touch up [their] face or straiten a tie as the house crashed around [them]” they were “extending the relaxed accommodating and of the Royal handshake to a barbarian who [would] certainly bend and take a good bite out of it.” Their need “for the nostalgia of the whole and the one [and] for the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible” was jeopardizing their very lives. (Lessing, 21) They could no longer put the cylindrical peg of their experiences into the square hole that was now reality; neither accommodated the other any longer. In trying they were only ignoring the actuality of the situation at hand. Life was now relegated to that of individualized factions. Like the situation that faced Lauren and the rest of society in Parable of the Sower, individuals “…could not stand being alone for long; the mass was their home, their place of self recognition.”(Lessing, 34) Outside of this pack was an inherent danger in the vulnerability of individuality not backed by a group. This was the deadly irony that reality had become. There was no longer room for the individual uniqueness of personalized beliefs, ideas, and/or desires unless it coincided with that of the group. The fact that this mentality was first manifested in the children was appropriate in that it both literally and figuratively signified the path of the future.

Clayton D Colmon

7

The narrator confessed this in her observation of the relationship between these children/young adults and people such of herself. She explains that “every one of [her peers], the hundreds of people at [their] windows, knew that, in watching [the children], [she and her peers] were examining their own possibilities, their future.” (Lessing, 37) In this the children served as the harbingers of the gruesome reality in which they lived. It was with this acceptance that “it had dawned on the [narrator’s] neighborhood that a phenomenon [they] had believed could belong only to the regions ‘out there’ was being born before [their] very eyes, in their own streets…” (Lessing, 60) In essence, as in Parable of the Sower, the wall had fallen. They were unextricably tied to those children, who were a manifested representation of the inherent change in apocalypse. Just as Lauren created Earthseed as a means through which a certain acceptance of change could be gained, the narrator had the room(s)/places that she would visit on the other side of her wall. Both served as a sort of release valve for the unfamliarities of the post-apocalyptic, anarchic worlds in which they lived. By creating such devices they essentially reserved themselves stability in something that they more or less had the power to shape and interpret for themselves. It just so happened that the places behind the wall was more of an actual, physical means of escaping the harshness of reality than was Lauren’s earthseed. When the narrator “was in [that] world—the region behind the flowery wall of the living room—the ordinary logical time-dominated world of every day did not exist.” (Lessing, 145) In essence, the only way in which the narrator could adequately reconcile the harshness of reality with her internal perception of what it should be was to forsake it in favor of one that did not require the same inherently

Clayton D Colmon

8

negative acceptances. This was her way forward in a world in which metanarratives, in ceasing to exist, invalidated the stability of her existence. Ultimately both texts coincide with Lyotard’s theories because they are both apocalyptic texts, and post-modernist thinking is required in the realization of apocalypse. Each work tackled the problem of a humanity disconnected from the certainty of metanarratives, and shows an (at least semi-) overcoming of the discrepancies between the old and new reality through the creation of a narrative that does not rely on historical precedents. These new narratives serve as examples of the result of the necessary adaptation from an outdated idealistic modernist mindset to that of a post-modernist one. Apocalypse by nature of being the complete change/destruction of something leaves no room for interpretations that are rooted in the system in which the apocalypse has already spelled the end.

Clayton D Colmon

9

Clayton D Colmon

10