Keep Calm and Carry On Reading

Lillian Hingley
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Congratulations if you’re reading this now, you probably survived the end of the world! I say probably, in case for some, the aftermath of one mince pie too many and piled up essay deadlines make it seem like the Earth might as well have imploded anyway. Even as we bid farewell to the possibility of the 2012 apocalypse and resolve to deal with the New Year, I can’t help but wonder what could’ve happened if the world had actually seen its end. Or perhaps, for the sake of being pedantic, if it wasn’t to be a complete obliteration of all that is physical but just an end to the world as we know it. The following illustrates how certain characters have dealt with such situations, something that might give us a glimpse of how we might have dealt with the destruction of just about everything.

**_The Passion of New Eve_ by Angela Carter – The End of Society and Culture**

Carter construes a world in which one paternalistic culture is replaced by a degenerative society that is distinctly different and yet somehow the same, leaving the reader wondering whether either world is preferable.

The Passion of New Eve is truly a novel that challenges gender distinctions through confusion, for when I leant my copy to my sister I found that she summed up my feelings entirely: “It’s a wonderful book but I’m not always entirely sure what’s going on”. This is perhaps a testament to Carter’s writing, especially when we see that the protagonist Evelyn, a victim of forced gender conversion, appears to have a characterisation based upon having no idea what has occurred to society. Despite the fact that he is punished for the misogynistic antics of his past life, the story also reveals a focus beyond gender issues when it explores the destruction of popular culture as a whole.

There is a wonderful scene where Evelyn explores the house of Hollywood star Tristessa and finds a room in which there are coffins filled with the mannequins of pop culture figures. This symbolic view of the death of popular culture suddenly reminded me of the Marilyn Monroe church scene in the musical of Tommy, a film in which celebrity idolisation is reduced to the ridiculous.

Indeed, whilst the matriarchal dominance within the hypothetical World War Three may make some critics erroneously conclude that Carter is promoting a utopia where women avenge previous oppression, I think that this is written to reveal the ridiculousness of merely reversing a situation. This reversal produces a situation where nobody wins and presents the idea that subjects such as war, rape and torture remain as repulsive and unjustifiable as ever. If you thought that no other Carter work could make you more shocked than the infamous words in _The Snow Child_, think again.

**_The Crysalids_ by John Wyndham – The end of the world as we know it **

Two of the most popular works of John Wyndham includes the plants-taking-over-humans novel of The Day of the Triffids (take that food chain) and the unsettling Midwich Cuckoos (the film adaptation of which was renamed the Village of the Damned). However, _The Crysalids_ is an excellent post-apocalyptic story worthy of the same attention because, rather than being about an invasion of alien beings, it is about becoming the invader to one’s own community.

Whilst the book is set in a time that precedes an age of technology, it focuses on a regressive community that makes it its mission to reject reproductive abnormalities, creating an interesting dynamic between what is sacred and what is an abomination. At first, one could forgive the idea of batch of crop “deviations” being destroyed (as I’m sure you could probably pass on a slice of Hovis). However, once the desire to purge a village population of human “abominations” is made evident, the protagonist David develops telepathic powers, a fact that soon results in disastrous consequences. Before December the 21st, your friends and parents might have said: “You’re perfect just the way you are, Gerald!”*. Post 21st of December; your parents and chums could have been persecuting you to the “Fringes” of civilisation (or perhaps your local park) for possessing a funny beauty spot or slightly webbed feet. Society changing is all very well, but what if you were the end of its world?

*Just for the record, I do not know anyone called Gerald. If you are called Gerald, my hypothetical example just honoured you.

**_The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy_ by Douglas Adams – The Literal End of the World**

This is the literal end of the world. Not just the metaphorical. The literal end of the world. And it’s hilarious. Before you accuse me of being sadistic, you just need to read a few pages of Douglas Adams’ work to understand why perhaps the end of the world would tickle its audience.

As a character, Arthur Dent probably acts as a more-than-average irritable human being and yet, compared to most of the literature I have read, he comes pretty close to how I imagine most people would react to the destruction of the Earth. In fact, I’d probably react in a similar manner if a man name Ford Prefect told me to get a towel whilst all that I love and despise is needlessly destroyed by Vogons.

I know a fair amount of people who don’t take this book or such genres seriously, a point that I contest greatly, for Adam’s writing has layer upon layer of philosophical and ethical issues that are tied up with a great dosage of dry and often dark humour. What’s the difference between knocking down a house to make way for a bypass route and aliens destroying the earth for a hyper-spatial express route?

I’m really surprised that more people in 2012 didn’t choose to have DON’T PANIC emblazoned on their stationary and such as opposed to the Keep Calm frenzy of the year.