Post-Apocalyptic Fiction As Trauma Narrative

WHEN APOCALYPSE STRIKES:

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction as Trauma Narrative

An Examination of Trauma in Post-9/11 Short Fiction

MASTERARBEIT zur Erlangung des Mastergrades an der Kultur- und Gesellschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Salzburg

Fachbereich Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Gutachterin: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Hanna Wallinger

eingereicht von:

TANJA GALLEY

Salzburg 2018

Eidesstattliche Erklärung

Ich erkläre hiermit eidesstattlich [durch meine eigenhändige Unterschrift], dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel verwendet habe. Alle Stellen, die wörtlich oder inhaltlich den angegebenen Quellen entnommen wurden, sind als solche kenntlich gemacht. Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde bisher in gleicher oder ähnlicher Form noch nicht als Bachelor-/ Master-/ Diplomarbeit/ Dissertation eingereicht.

20. April 2018,

CONTENTS

1. Imagining the End: The Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic Interest ….……………. 1 2. When the World Goes Quiet: Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic Fiction.….………. 4 2.1. Defining Genre .………………………………………….……...…………… 4 2.2. Science Fiction & Speculative Fiction ………………………………………. 6 2.3. Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic Fiction ……………………………………. 8 2.4. History & Functions .………….………………………………………...…… 10 2.5. Post-Apocalyptic Genre Conventions .……………………….………...……. 20 3. Small but Effective: The (Post-Apocalyptic) Short Story ………………………… 24 4. What It Means to Survive: Trauma & the End of the World ……...……………… 32 4.1. The Post-Apocalypse as Trauma Narrative .…………………………….…… 33 4.2. History of Trauma Studies …….…………………………….………………. 36 4.3. Types of Trauma ……….……………………………………………………. 40 4.3.1. Psychological Trauma ………………………………………………… 40 4.3.2. Collective Trauma ……….……………………………………………. 45 4.4. The Trauma of 9/11 …………………………………….……………………. 48 5. Analyzing the Post-Apocalypse: Trauma & Survival in Post-9/11 Short Fiction … 52 5.1. James Van Pelt’s “A Flock of Birds” ………….…….…….………………… 53 5.2. Richard Kadrey’s “Still Life with Apocalypse” …….………………………. 62 5.3. Gene Wolfe’s “Mute” ……………….………....……………………………. 69 5.4. Carol Emshwiller’s “Killers” …….………………………………….………. 77 5.5. Mary Rickert’s “Bread and Bombs” ………………………………………… 87 6. Conclusion ………………………………………………………...……………… 97 Works Cited …………………………………………………………………………. 99

Apocalypse has come and gone. We’re just grubbing in the ashes. —Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

INTRODUCTION

Destructive natural disasters, unforeseen terror attacks, senseless wars, and the loss of loved ones—these are all events that have happened to individual human beings as well as collectives throughout history. Due to their impact on the lives of those affected, catastrophes as such resemble small apocalypses, for they always bring an end to something and cause traumas in their survivors. What they also do is make modern civilization aware of its own fragility and the consequences of its ignorance, while providing a frightening outlook on how life on earth could end one day. Yet, it is not just the uncertainty about how the world might fall into pieces which evokes unease, but rather what will become of humanity after the apocalypse when everything has gone quiet and social structures have disappeared. Hence, what is feared most is not dying but surviving the end of the world and coping with its (psychological) aftermaths in the post-apocalypse that follows. Imagining how such after-the-end scenarios could look like is the concern of post- apocalyptic authors, who create fictional post-apocalypses to work through their individual or collective (historical) traumas. In this regard, post-apocalyptic writings can be regarded both as symptoms of trauma as well as means of recovery, which is what eventually makes them trauma narratives. In fact, it is often the narrators or main characters of such fictional post-apocalyptic stories who suffer trauma and must cope with its psychological effects and, like that, reflect the author’s own emotional state or that of a collective or population after being struck by an apocalyptic event. One such life-changing cataclysm took place on 11th September 2001, when the United States fell victim to terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the wake of this disaster, many American writers were concerned with the psychological and collective aftermaths of the catastrophe and reacted to it by imagining (alternative) post-apocalyptic scenarios. Fears and anxiety in the U.S. population were further fueled by the subsequent war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose horrors also made authors reflect on its impact on individuals as well as the collective American psyche. Based on psychological and collective trauma theory, the aim of this master’s thesis is thus to investigate how the traumatic aftermaths of 9/11 are addressed and portrayed by authors of post-9/11 short fiction. For the analysis, five post-apocalyptic stories have been chosen, which either represent reactions to the events of that day or the subsequent war on

terror, and include James Van Pelt’s “A Flock of Birds” (2002), Richard Kadrey’s “Still Life with Apocalypse” (2002), Gene Wolfe’s “Mute” (2002), Mary Emshwiller’s “Killers” (2006), and Mary Rickert’s “Bread and Bombs” (2003). The stories have been analyzed regarding their post-apocalyptic setting and plot as well as their depiction of traumatic experiences, trauma symptoms, and coping behavior of the (main) characters and narrators. Considering James Berger’s study on representations of post-apocalypse, the first chapter of this thesis represents a short introductory chapter on the apocalyptic and post- apocalyptic interest (in modern society and literature) and its enduring popularity throughout the centuries. Subsequently, the second chapter comprises a discussion of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, its history and functions, as well as an outline of the most common post-apocalyptic genre conventions. As the focus of this thesis lies on post-9/11 short fiction, the third chapter provides information on the literary form of the short story, its history, as well as its predestination for the representation of trauma. In the subsequent fourth chapter on trauma, the theoretical framework for the analysis of the selected short stories will be outlined, including subchapters on the post-apocalypse as trauma narrative, the history of trauma studies, and the specific types of psychological and collective trauma that have been identified in the analyzed stories. As transition to the practical part of this thesis, the last part of the fourth chapter deals with the trauma of 9/11. Thus, what the fifth chapter comprises are the analyses of the five post-9/11 short stories in terms of their use of post-apocalyptic genre conventions as well as their thematization and depiction of collective and psychological trauma. In the concluding sixth chapter, the outcome of the analysis will be discussed, which is followed by a final statement on the future of post-apocalyptic fiction as trauma narrative.

1. Imagining the End: THE APOCALYPTIC & POST-APOCALYPTIC INTEREST

The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse. —Terence McKenna

Since the beginning of civilization, the notion of a cataclysm leading to the extinction of life on earth has been a primordial fear of mankind. What causes discomfort about such an event is the uncertainty about when and how the world could end as well as the inability to predict the future and see if something would remain. Yet, history has shown that apocalyptic events have already taken place and eventually stirred interest in imagining the actual end of civilization and its aftermath. In literature, it is authors of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction who dare to think the unthinkable, and the various endings and future worlds they create are just as diverse as their traumatized survivors. In fact, throughout history, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction has been written to level criticism against existing social orders and reflect people’s fears and anxieties about the effects of contemporary events on the future. Because of the fact that this kind of literature often succeeds traumatic events and times of hardship, James Berger considers (post-) apocalyptic writing itself as “a remainder, a symptom, an aftermath of some disorienting catastrophe” (7). Originating from the ancient Greek word “apokálypsis”, which denotes revelation or uncovering, the meaning of the term apocalypse has been extended to other disciplines throughout history, including the social sciences. Berger defines apocalypse in three ways, namely that it either refers to The End (the eschaton as depicted in the New Testament), resembles the end (catastrophes such as the Holocaust or 9/11) or explains the end, for “the apocalyptic event must in its destructive moment clarify and illuminate the true nature of what has been brought to an end” (5). In this regard, Berger implies that the world that follows is concerned with what was before in order not to make the same mistakes and, like that, establish a new order. Concerning such representations, he furthermore highlights that even though notions of the apocalypse denote the end, there never is the actual end, for “the apocalyptic text announces and describes the end of the world, but then the text does not 2

end, nor does the world represented in the text, and neither does the word itself” (5). Hence, what is left after the end is a post-apocalyptic world with people who have survived and who must cope with traumatic aftermaths. According to Berger, it is only possible to imagine apocalypses and post-apocalyptic worlds because the end of the world has already occurred several times (XIII). It is disastrous pictures of the atomic explosions in 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as video footage of the burning and collapsing World Trade Center on 11th September 2001 that have lingered in people’s memories ever since and offered a glimpse into how the future on earth could look like. In this regard, Berger highlights:

The most dystopic visions of science fiction can do no more than replicate the actual historical catastrophes of the twentieth century. Modernity is often said to be preoccupied by a sense of crisis, viewing as imminent, perhaps even longing for, some conclusive catastrophe. This sense of crisis has not disappeared, but … [nowadays] it exists together with another sense, that the conclusive catastrophe has already occurred, the crisis is over … and the ceaseless activity of our time—the news with its procession of almost indistinguishable disasters—is only a complex form of stasis. (XIII)

Hence, living in the 21st century means living in a post-apocalyptic world in which terrifying events, like the recent terror attacks or natural disasters, keep happening. Yet, even though such cataclysms occur rather frequently, there has been a strong interest in imagining fictional apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios in the last decades. According to Berger, this interest stems from the fact that even though apocalypses have happened, are happening and will happen, the world seems to be indestructible and never actually ends even though it should have (32). The interest in imagining the actual end of the world, or what Berger calls “apocalyptic desire”, is hence both “a longing for the end … [that] coincides with a total critique of the world, a critique that annuls any chance of reform [and] ... a longing also for the aftermath, for the New Jerusalem …” (34). Thus, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic representations respond to social crisis and combine “violent hatred for the world as it is and violent desire for the world as it should be” (34). Nevertheless, the post-apocalyptic paradise might as well be a post-apocalyptic wasteland, in which humanity is confronted with its greatest fears (death, loss of control, etc.). It is this reality that makes writers create apocalypses that are then indeed final, leading to an actual imagined end of the world and giving the real historical apocalypses “retrospective apocalyptic status” (7). Berger further 3

highlights that this entails that “the writer and the reader must be both places at once, imagining the post-apocalyptic world and then paradoxically ‘remembering’ the world as it was, as it is” (6). In fact, what seems to make apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic writings so appealing to readers is the chance humanity gets to go back to the basics and start from scratch:

The apocalypse would be the definite catastrophe—not only final and complete but absolutely clarifying. It would unmistakably separate good from evil, true from false. The apocalypse would replace the moral and epistemological murkiness of life as it is with a post-apocalyptic world in which all identities and values are clear. (Berger 8)

Thus, what an apocalypse unveils is the essence of humanity, which is why Berger considers post-apocalyptic representations as “a study of what disappears and what remains, and … how the remainder has been transformed” (7). Hence, in a post-apocalyptic world in which survival is all that matters, preserving one’s humanity seems to be secondary (even though it should not be). In this regard, Berger highlights that the social chaos following an apocalypse “causes a reversion to a kind of natural aristocracy, in which such decadent luxuries as feminism, democracy, and social justice must be jettonised in favor of more natural values more suited to survival” (8). Yet, it can be argued that it is exactly such ethical and moral dilemmas which make the genre so appealing to a modern audience. Hence, post-apocalyptic discourse tries to say the unthinkable – “what cannot be said” (how the future looks like) and “what must not be said” (due to ethical, religious, or social reasons) (14). However, with nuclear catastrophes, natural disasters, and terror attacks having taken place throughout history, the unthinkable has already occurred, which is why according to Berger, “… the direction of contemporary post-apocalyptic impulses is toward a definite end—a real end of the world, an end of history, an end of intelligence, and perhaps, in summing up all of these, an end of representation” (42). However, so long as the world does not end, and humanity becomes extinct, people will imagine and write about apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios that are both desired and feared. In this regard, what follows this introductory chapter is a discussion of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, its history and functions, as well as post-apocalyptic genre conventions.

2. When the World Goes Quiet: APOCALYPTIC & POST-APOCALYPTIC FICTION

They were sad, but not hopeless. Each thought that someone would be saved; each, with that pertinacious optimism, which to the last characterized our human nature, trusted that their beloved family would be the one preserved. —Mary Shelley, The Last Man

As the focus of this thesis lies on the analysis of trauma in post 9/11 short stories, which, at the same time, represent post-apocalyptic texts, the function of this second chapter is to define and determine post-apocalyptic fiction by means of discussing its relation to other similar genres and sub-genres, such as science fiction and speculative fiction, as well as apocalyptic and dystopian fiction. In addition, what will further be discussed is the genre’s historical development as mirror of contemporary social fears, which includes examples of important post-apocalyptic works from the 19th to the 21st century. In the last part of the chapter, the most common characteristics and conventions of the post- apocalyptic genre will be outlined.

2.1. Defining Genre

The classification of texts into genres has a long and complex history, which is by no means an unproblematic procedure, but rather resembles a “theoretical minefield” (Chandler 2). Generally speaking, “genre means a type of art, literature, or music characterized by a specific form, content, and style” (“Genre”). As this is a rather broad definition of the concept, a more detailed explanation is needed in order to understand the complex nature of classifying texts into genres. In literature, the basic genre distinction is made between poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction. Within these genres, there are many narrower genres, so called sub- genres, which can themselves also be narrowed down. For instance, the broad genre of fiction consists of a great number of sub-genres, such as fantasy, horror, and science fiction, while all three of them can be divided into further sub-genres (e.g. an alien invasion in a science fiction story). However, Daniel Chandler points out that the classification of texts into genres is far from objective and neutral and that there are specific genres that are not so easy to define (1). Furthermore, he highlights that “one 5

theorist's genre may be another's sub-genre or even super-genre (and indeed what is technique, style, mode, formula or thematic grouping to one may be treated as a genre by another)” (1). In fact, it can be quite difficult to distinguish one genre from another as they often mix, overlap, and become hybrids. In this regard, Chandler remarks that “the issue of difference also highlights the fact that some genres are 'looser'—more open-ended in their conventions or more permeable in their boundaries—than others. Texts often exhibit the conventions of more than one genre” (2). Thus, definitional approaches, which use shared conventions of content and form as basis for the classification of texts, are nowadays considered too narrow and rigid as “genres … are not discrete systems, consisting of a fixed number of listable items” (Gledhill 64 qtd. in Chandler 2). According to Chandler, there are thus contemporary approaches to genre definition that are less problematic than the definitional one. One of these contemporary approaches is based on Wittgenstein’s family resemblance and has been extended to genre theory by Alastair Fowler, who argues that “representatives of a genre may … be regarded as making up a possible class whose … individual members are related in various ways, without necessarily having any single feature shared in common by all” (41). Thus, texts within a genre may share similarities, but not specific conventions as a rule. However, this approach has often been criticized for its vagueness and weakness in that “a family resemblance theory can make anything resemble anything” (Swales 51). Another contemporary approach is a refinement of the first and represents a prototype-based account of text classification, which considers texts as more or less typical members of a genre (based on a prototype) (52). Thus, texts whose features are closer to the prototypical genre image are considered a more typical member than those texts that deviate to a greater degree. Nevertheless, all texts would be considered members of the same genre. Hence, while texts may make use of conventions of different genres, genres themselves can have similar conventions in common, but still represent separate genres. In fact, it can be argued that this also applies to apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, which are, on the one hand, mainly referred to as sub-genres of science fiction and, on the other hand, wrongly studied together as one genre even though they use different conventions. In the following, a more detailed look at the differences between the science fiction and speculative fiction genres as well as apocalyptic and post- apocalyptic fiction will be provided. 6

2.2. Science Fiction & Speculative Fiction

Looking up the term science fiction, one can find as many different definitions as there are stories that are considered science fiction. The diffuse nature of the genre can be explained by the many different subgenres and themes, which among others include travel to the stars, time travel and the potential dangers of technology. What these stories all have in common, though, is the idea of change and how the human race deals with it. In this regard, James Gunn’s definition of science fiction seems most appropriate:

Science Fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger. (“Introduction”)

In addition, what science fiction literature does is use and explore possibilities and hypotheses about an alternative past, altered present or imagined future, especially when authors think critically about situations that might affect the development of humanity. In this regard, Christopher McKitterick points to the many themes and approaches science fiction takes to address and answer questions about change:

It might provide a view from a distance: On Mars, Earth with all its personal dramas is but a blue dot among other stars in the blackness of vacuum. Or time might shift perspective: Alternate history asks ‘what if?’ about potential changes to historical events, as do many time-travel stories. Future settings allow us to test how current events might play out, how scientific discovery and resultant technological change could affect us and our universe. Alien planets help us better see our world through contrast. Stories about aliens allow us to examine what it means to be human, free of racial blinders or cultural expectations ... SF is the literature not just of humans but of the human species as a whole, about how we have changed and will continue to change over time. (19)

Hence, science fiction tells stories about worlds that have either never existed or are not (yet) known. According to Orson Scott Card, there are thus five different kinds of stories that can be considered science fiction (para. 1-5). The first kind are stories that are set in the unknown future and speculate about future technologies. Second, Card lists stories that take place in the (false) past and contradict historical facts. These are also known as “alternate world” stories. The third kind includes all stories that are set in worlds that are 7

not earth; in fact, such stories are considered science fiction because no human has ever visited them. The fourth type on Card’s list comprises stories that are set on Earth before history was recorded, or stories that possibly interfere with archeological findings, for instance visits from ancient aliens. The fifth and last kind of science fiction stories contradicts laws of nature, such as magic and time travel narratives. Hence, science fiction is a broad genre that builds upon different ideas and, as Tom Shippey ironically remarks, it “is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it” (258). Considering the “What If?” aspect of many such stories, science fiction is oftentimes also associated with speculative fiction, which is “a genre of fiction that includes works in which the setting is not the real world, often including supernatural or science fiction elements” (“Speculative Fiction”). This umbrella term thus includes science fiction and fantasy, but also all the genres that overlap with them, such as history, dystopia, utopia, apocalypse, post-apocalypse and superhero stories (Herron, para. 5). However, even though all these genres involve some degree of speculation, Annie Neugebauer points out that “the difference is in what’s being speculated upon. Speculative fiction is fiction in which the author speculates upon the results of changing what’s real or possible, not how a character would react to a certain event, etc.” (para. 3). Hence, by asking the question “What if?”, an author creates a new world where other rules apply, for example dystopian or post-apocalyptic settings which require him or her to think about how such worlds would look like and how different life would be. For a better understanding of the constitution of the speculative genre, Neugebauer provides a diagram that illustrates how the fantasy, science fiction, horror, and historical genres overlap and eventually make up the speculative genre (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Constitution of the Speculative Genre. Graph from Annie Neugebauer, “What is Speculative Fiction?”, (Annieneugebauer.com. 24 Mar. 2014. Web. 26 Feb. 2018).

What can be seen in figure 1 is that the fantasy genre is always speculative, while science fiction and horror do not necessarily have to be. However, they may also have fantastic elements or even overlap in certain aspects. Furthermore, historical fiction can be speculative, but most of the time it is not. According to Neugebauer, the speculative stories that do not neatly fit the fantasy, science fiction, horror, or historical genre would be situated in the outer speculative section and include dystopian stories or surrealism. However, it has to be pointed out that even though Neugebauer’s diagram provides a good overview of the constitution of speculative fiction, the respective genres must not be divided so strictly as each of the circles can easily be extended to overlap with others, which creates new genres. In this regard, Neugebauer highlights:

The possibilities are … limitless, which is perhaps why so many people get confused by the term ‘speculative fiction.’ If you find yourself getting lost, go back to the basics: could this world really exist according to our current knowledge of reality? If the answer is yes, it probably isn’t speculative. If the answer is no, it probably is speculative. (para. 16)

Because of the fact that it is difficult if not impossible to know and imagine how the world will end and look after the extinction of civilization, stories involving the apocalypse and post-apocalypse must therefore primarily be considered a sub-genre of speculative fiction. However, most often they include elements of science fiction and horror or even speculate upon different outcomes of historical events. Thus, stories about the end of the world and its aftermaths can take many different shapes and are not just sub-genres of science fiction, as they are often referred to. What will be discussed in the following, is the distinction between apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, which seems to be somewhat ambiguous at times.

2.3. Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Most often, apocalyptic fiction is used as umbrella term comprising “both depictions of cataclysms that destroy the Earth and texts that portray the aftermath of a disaster that annihilates a nation, civilization, or all but a few survivors of the human population” (Hicks, “Apocalyptic Fiction” 2). However, this definition must be considered too broad 9

since apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction are two separate genres that differ in focus and make use of distinct conventions. Addressing the events that will eventually lead to the ultimate catastrophe, apocalyptic literature is primarily concerned with the crumbling pre-apocalyptic world. Furthermore, what is being depicted is the final cataclysm itself and sometimes also the immediate reaction of those who potentially survive it. In contrast, post-apocalyptic fiction takes the reader many years into the future and depicts how the world and human existence have changed since the apocalypse. While the cataclysmic event is often unknown or just a distant memory, the main theme in these stories is the characters’ struggle to survive in a new and often hostile and dystopian world. However, post- apocalyptic stories must not be confused with dystopian fiction as these two genres have different focuses as well. As the opposite of the term utopia, which refers to a perfect world, place or society, a dystopia “is an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one” (“Dystopia”). The main themes in dystopian literature usually comprise governmental oppression, corruption, injustice, rebellion, and revolutions. Thus, dystopian stories imply the presence of some organized ruling body, which is something that does not exist in most post-apocalyptic representations since the depicted worlds are fragmented ones and no new civilizations have been established yet. What is important in post-apocalyptic fiction, though, are the aspects of what it means to be human as well as learning from mistakes in order to be able to build a new and healthy society. Depending on how this goes, future worlds and civilizations might become utopian or dystopian in the end. In terms of trauma, it can be thus argued that apocalyptic fiction depicts the moment of the cataclysmic event, while post-apocalyptic fiction is concerned with its traumatic aftermaths. Hence, the fact that the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic genre often share certain conventions and use elements of the other sometimes makes it difficult to draw a line between them, which is why they are mainly studied together as apocalyptic fiction. However, as has been shown, the post-apocalypse must be considered a genre of its own as most of its conventions differ greatly from apocalyptic fiction. Nevertheless, what the genres share are their history and functions as they have both evolved as response to late 10

early 19th century circumstances and have been used to reflect social fears and anxieties to this day.

2.4. History & Functions

The roots of the word “apocalypse” can be traced back to the ancient Greek word “apocálypsis”, which denotes “revelation” or “unveiling” of things that are only known to God (“Apocalypse”). In the religious context, this term has been used as synonym for the Book of Revelation, which is also known as the Apocalypse of John. In fact, it is the only apocalyptic document in the New Testament, representing John’s record of a God- sent vision about the future. These prophecies foretell the Second Coming of Christ and the ultimate destruction of the world. However, for those who serve God, the future will be positive, for it is written that “blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near” (New International Version, Rev. 1.3). In religious contexts, such apocalyptic writings were especially prevalent during times of persecution and represented a literary form that conveys a specific message by the use of certain symbols, numbers and images (“What is the Book of Revelation About?”). At the time the Revelation was written, early Christian churches of Asia Minor (which is today the Western part of Turkey) were persecuted by the Roman Empire, which was why “some of the symbols and images in Revelation equate the Roman emperor with Satan and depict the ancient Roman Empire as the ultimate evil” (“Book of Revelation”). Because of the fact that these symbols were similar to those used in the Old Testament, the Christians of Asia Minor were able to read the writings, while they did not make any sense to the Romans (“What is Revelation?”). Like that, St. John, who had been exiled to the Roman prison island Patmos, could write down his revelation and send it to the Christian churches in Asia Minor, offering “encouragement to persecuted Christians and assurance that God was still in control. The forces of evil, particularly the Roman Empire, would eventually be utterly destroyed by God” (“Book of Revelation”). Thus, the original Christian meaning of the word “apocalypse” does not denote a catastrophe and subsequent dystopian post-apocalypse but, as Heather Hicks points out, “the hope of a posthistorical spiritual utopia” (“Apocalyptic Fiction” 3). 11

The emergence of the first apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic texts as they are known today began in the early 19th century and went hand in hand with the Industrialization’s concepts of modernity and progress. According to Mousoutzanis, “progress implies the destruction of an existing state of affairs so that it can be replaced by a new one” (458). In this regard, Walter Benjamin argues that the concept of progress is always “grounded in the idea of catastrophe” (50 qtd. in Mousoutzanis 458). In fact, during the modern period, progress was achieved through industrialization and technological advances, which were both celebrated and feared, while “catastrophe became increasingly associated with technology as new means of transportation, such as the railway, increased the potential for accidents” (Mousoutzanis 458). Luckhurst highlights that in literature, science fiction became the predominant genre to express and reflect upon the dangers and benefits of the new technologized modernity” (170 qtd. in Mousoutzanis 458). In this regard, Mousoutzanis points out that “the convergence of sf [science fiction] and catastrophe may therefore be interpreted in terms of their shared relationship to modern conceptions of progress and technology” (458). Published in 1826 and often identified as the very first modern post-apocalyptic English novel, it is Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, which has become “grandparent to an entire genre of elegiac British disaster stories ...” (James and Mendlesohn 19). Set in 2090, the book tells of a futuristic world in which humanity gradually becomes extinct by a deadly plague while the immune protagonist is forced to watch it. Shelley’s viral apocalypse has become the model for many later post-apocalyptic narratives, such as Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague (1912). In 1885, another early example of post-apocalyptic literature followed, namely Richard Jefferies’ After London, which is regarded as “important milestone in the development of the subgenre into its modern form” (Booker and Thomas 53). The novel is about a sudden unspecified catastrophe that depopulates England and leaves the survivors in a world that has aggressively been taken over by nature. Considering Jefferies’ novel as predecessor to later stories of natural disasters, for example Roland Emmerich’s 2004 movie The Day after Tomorrow, Mousoutzanis highlights that “texts like these represent the apocalypse as the result of either a lack of sensitivity to the planet’s ecology or the inability of social systems to respond to environmental needs” (459). Concerning Jefferies’ setting, he also points out the novel’s forerunner role for later post-apocalyptic novels and movies, such as the Mad Max trilogy, 12

whose “post-apocalyptic future is often envisioned as the resurgence of a pre-modern, pre-industrial past” (459). Thus, with the emergence of such apocalyptic and post- apocalyptic stories, the original focus and notion of apocalypse shifted from a religious context to the thematization of modern concerns, as Hicks points out:

... this contemporary fiction is concerned not with the end of a world understood through a religious lens but instead with the end of modernity itself—a modernity that in the West has come to define life as livable and human. Certainly, in some texts, the apocalypse genuinely destroys the world. More often, however, it is modern life that is destroyed, leaving survivors bereft of technology, medical treatment, large-scale social organization, education, legal structures, and other commonplace features of contemporary Western existence. (“Apocalyptic Fiction” 3-4)

In this regard, Mousoutzanis argues, “That the perceived crisis of modernity suggested by postmodernists was narrativized in popular sf in post-apocalyptic terms further testifies to catastrophe’s status as the uncanny underside of modernity and progress” (461). Even though further apocalyptic science-fiction narratives followed in the late 19th and early 20th century (especially in the sub-genre of invasion literature), it was not until the Second World War and the emergence of atomic power that apocalyptic and post- apocalyptic fiction saw a growth in influence and popularity as the danger of a nuclear disaster became real and omnipresent. In this regard, Mousoutzanis highlights:

The rather peculiar relationship between science fiction and reality can thus be found at the very start of the Nuclear Age, which became typical of nuclear catastrophe fiction, most of which condemns nuclear war but also gains an awkward legitimacy from it. Many sf narratives suddenly began to appear more plausible and realistic, and the atomic bomb served as a starting point for many sf classics. These either described the irreversible total extinction of the human race in the aftermath of a nuclear war ... or focused on the possibilities for rebirth and revelation in a much more distant future ....(460)

Subsequently, the post-war period of the 1950s was characterized by Cold War fears and anxieties, which also became apparent in the literature that addressed the possibility of a nuclear disaster and its aftermath. One example of such a post-war science-fiction narrative is Judith Merril’s 1950 novel Shadow on the Earth, in which the United States is hit by a small number of atomic bombs, causing damage and the breakdown of the civil 13

government. In this post-apocalyptic world, the female protagonist needs to take care of her two daughters while trying to cope with the chaotic aftermaths by keeping her household running. In contrast, George R. Stewart’s novel Earth Abides (1949) is considered a more famous and important post-war disaster story of that time, which however breaks rank with the predominant theme of nuclear war as it depicts the fall of civilization from a sudden deadly plague. The few immune survivors form a group that returns to a simpler lifestyle which is similar to that of the Native Americans. Other important post-nuclear and post-holocaust novels include Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) and Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes (1963). What is more, the 1950s also saw a rise of movies addressing nuclear fears, such as Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach (1959). However, Booker and Thomas highlight that “the post-holocaust films that appeared during the 1950s generally present far less troubling images than do the novels, both in their representation of nuclear devastation and in their commentary on contemporary American society” (58). In the 1960s, a shift in interest took place, for “post-disaster fiction began to focus less on nuclear holocaust and more on the possible disastrous consequences of phenomena such as pollution and overpopulation” (Booker and Thomas 60). One early example of post-apocalyptic literature addressing ecological catastrophes is represented by J. G. Ballard’s novel The Drowned World (1962). Set in 2145, it depicts the northern cities of Europe and America as flooded tropical lagoons and jungles after solar radiation has caused global warming, which has led to the melting of the polar ice caps. Even though depicting the struggle to survive of the few remaining people, the story is not a typical representative of post-apocalyptic literature, as Peter Brigg points out:

Ballard's interest does not lie simply in the usual apocalyptic concerns of how man is destroyed or finds a technology of escape. Rather, he penetrates the heart of the apocalyptic experience by integrating the changing physical universe with a changing psychic one, as his characters progress to an intense new relationship with nature, derived partly from uterine fantasy and partly from the genetic unconscious. (para. 1)

In fact, the dreamy post-apocalyptic setting mirrors the unconscious wishes of the characters and by exploring their minds, Ballard examines the relationship between inner psychological changes and the outer world:

One of the subjects of the novel is the journey of return made by the principal characters from the 20th century back into the paradisal sun-filled world of a second Triassic age, and their gradually mounting awareness of the ambivalent motives propelling them into the emerging past. They realize that the uterine sea around them, the dark womb of the ocean mother, is as much the graveyard of their own individuality as it is the source of their lives, and perhaps their fears reflect my own uneasiness in reenacting the experiences of childhood and attempting to explore such dangerous ground. (para. 2)

Thus, different to other characters in post-apocalyptic novels, Ballard’s main character Keran views the end of civilization and the new world as something positive and melancholic, which rather stands for a return to the natural world and the beginnings of humanity than the final ending of it. In this regard, Brigg highlights that The Drowned World “depicts an increasingly frenzied dance of death in a vegetable universe, but it is a dance that ends not in death but in a curiously optimistic assimilation” (para. 4). In this regard, Hicks points out that by depicting the chaos following a catastrophe as emerging freedom, Ballard enters the post-modern territory (“Apocalyptic Fiction” 9). In fact, post- modern concerns also play a part in other post-apocalyptic stories of that time, including different forms of mutation and the notion of “the other” as threat to postmodernity (“Apocalyptic Fiction” 2). According to Hicks, it is especially Ballard who uses notions of otherness to warn about their negative influence on human progress in many of his other novels and short stories:

In Ballard’s world, women and racial “others,” along with queer and disabled subjects, become part of a landscape of alterity that serves as both the justification for and signature of apocalyptic events. These others rupture modernity, creating an aperture through which the white male protagonists attempt their flight to freedom even as they resist identifying with their liberators. (12)

Nevertheless, typical themes that are addressed in 1960s post-apocalyptic fiction, such as overpopulation, ecological catastrophes and environmental disasters caused by human ignorance, have remained of interest to this day. In this regard, Hicks points out:

While many of the [post-apocalyptic] texts take as their premise a nuclear war or pandemic, increasingly the imagined disasters are economic in nature. Supply systems falter, hunger and violence spread, governments fail, societies crumble, and populations radically decline. Rather than present a local or personal calamity in apocalyptic terms, the texts portray sweeping disaster and its aftermath as the center of their plot. (4)

Apart from these topics, the subsequent 1970s also saw a rise in feminist apocalyptic literature as reaction to the misogynistic apocalyptic works of the preceding decade, while in the 1980s it was danger from space and plague that became the major themes in post-apocalyptic fiction. The perennial fear of pandemics and deadly viruses arose first after a 1981 U.S. report about a mysterious fatal disease that affected gay men and has been a popular theme among post-apocalyptic authors ever since (“A Timeline of HIV and AIDS”). Furthermore, Hicks explains that during the Reagan Era in the United States, a sub-genre of apocalyptic fiction emerged, which combined anxieties about a global nuclear catastrophe with fears of economic decline:

What will be called “American apocalypses” depict America collapsing economically while other nations endure, and they often use the depradations [sic.] of the post-apocalypse to allegorize contemporary economic inequality in the United States. This preoccupation with economic catastrophe might have been in part a literary response to the oil embargo and recession of the 1970s or a more immediate reckoning with the slashing of social programs taking place in the 1980s. (“Apocalyptic Fiction” 15)

One example of such an American apocalypse is Madison Smart Bell’s novel Waiting for The End of the World (1985), whose main character Larkin struggles to decide between good and bad in a fictional 1982 New York that is economically ruined and full of crime, violence, madness, and terror. However, not all post-apocalyptic fiction of the 1980s is set in the Unites States, wherefore Russel Hoban’s novel Riddley Walker (1980) is a famous representative. Depicting a post-apocalyptic England two thousand years after a nuclear war has destroyed the world, the story is best known for its specific use of the English language, which has decayed to a broken dialect and is fragmented like the remaining civilization. After three decades of a great many works of post-apocalyptic fiction on various themes and topics, the decade between the Cold War in 1991 and the war on terror beginning in 2001 saw a slight decline in the number of publications. Yet, most of the post-apocalyptic literature that was published at that time was a combination of feminist and American apocalypse as well as works addressing environmental concerns and risks (Hicks, “Apocalyptic Fiction” 2). Octavia E. Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower (1993) represents an important work of such 1990s post-apocalyptic literature. Set in a dystopian California between the years 2024 and 2027, the novel follows the story of the female 16

Afro-American narrator Lauren Olamina, who grows up in world affected by climate change, the collapse of social structures, and the omnipresence of violence, rape and slavery. Possessing the ability to feel pain and sensations of other people (a condition Butler terms hyper-empathy), Lauren develops a new belief system that is based on change and becomes the religious leader of a group of people who have escaped various forms of slavery. In the end, Lauren manages to free them all from the shackles of the dystopian society and build a new world. After a period of less post-apocalyptic fiction being published, the events of the early 2000s led to an increase of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature, which was mainly concerned with the aftermaths of 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror. However, much of the post-apocalyptic fiction of that time is also self-reflective in nature, which is why such works are considered “metapocalypses” (Hicks, “Apocalyptic Fiction” 21-22). In addition, other texts of the 2000s are also concerned with fears about environmental disasters as well as neoliberalism (“Apocalyptic Fiction” 22). As one of the most well- known metapocalyptic novels of the new century and, at the same time, representing a response to the terror attacks of 9/11, Cormac Mc Carthy’s The Road (2006) is among the few post-apocalyptic novels that have won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Some years after an unknown cataclysm, an unnamed father and his son travel south through a bleak post- apocalyptic American landscape that is devoid of people and covered in ash. Searching for food and warmer climate, they are constantly threatened by other survivors who have turned to cannibalism in order not to starve. Regarding 9/11, Hicks highlights that this can be regarded a subtle reference to Robinson Crusoe “to pit a conventional notion of Western humanism against a vision of retrograde barbarity that echoes some characterizations of Islamic fundamentalists” (“Apocalyptic Fiction” 24). Throughout the novel, the reader learns that the father expects his own death; however, all he worries about is his son’s survival, which makes him kill those who threaten the boy’s life. Thus, some of the major themes of the story include paternal love and the father’s religious faith. Concerning the novel’s religious aspect and reference to the Revelation, Betül Ateşci Koçak remarks:

A consideration of The Road’s crucial images—the beast within the father’s recurrent dream, the trout within his fading memory, and the unvarying presence of fire—reveals the way in which McCarthy not only draws upon biblical apocalyptic literature but also creates a larger design of biblical metaphor, as well. (39) 17

In this regard, Hicks further highlights McCarthy’s use of the Babylon tradition, which is accomplished “by depicting the only significant female character in the novel as a self- described ‘faithless slut’ who has taken death as a lover in her ‘whorish heart [and] … commits suicide to be with this lover …” (“Apocalyptic Fiction” 24). In fact, the self- reflective post-apocalyptic fiction of the 2000s is often concerned with the gender dynamics of the genre, especially with the ones of the Book of Revelation and Babylon. Pointing to Margaret Atwood’s 2003 metapocalyptic novel Oryx and Crake, Hicks argues:

Atwood activates the critical function of counter-apocalypse, confronting readers with images of sexuality and the sex trade that undermine the misogynistic tradition of Revelation. She desublimates the sexual aspects of contemporary apocalypticism by populating her novel with seemingly endless doubles of the Whore of Babylon. (The Post-Apocalyptic Novel 30)

Thus, taking up major themes and topics of the previous decades, like gender and race, the post-apocalyptic fiction of the 2000s is primarily self-reflective in nature, while, at the same time, it represents reactions to the 9/11 catastrophe and addresses fears about the war on terror. In contrast to the 2000s, the 2010s have seen a slight shift of focus as the major concerns taken up in post-apocalyptic fiction have been the effects of climate change, the exhaustion of fossil fuels, and especially fears concerning capitalism, “including the economic vulnerability of individuals and the insidious penetration of capitalism into their subjectivity, as well as more macroeconomic concerns regarding the sustainability of capitalism itself” (Hicks, “Apocalyptic Fiction” 2). As one important example of such recent post-apocalyptic literature criticizing capitalistic matters, Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven (2014) needs mentioning. This young adult fiction, which has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2015, is set twenty years after a pandemic called “The Georgia Flu” has almost wiped out all human life. In the midst of this post-apocalyptic world, a group of survivors known as the “Traveling Symphony” is trying to preserve art and human culture by performing music and theater, including Shakespeare and Star Trek, to the people that have settled down and started to build new towns. By depicting the lives of the characters before and after the pandemic, Mandel uses notions of love, loss, nostalgia and memory to show what it means to be and stay human in a post- 18

apocalyptic world. In fact, young adult novels and movies depicting post-apocalyptic worlds have become extremely popular in the last couple of years. Some important examples include Suzanne Collins’ series The Hunger Games (2008-2010) and Veronica Roth’s trilogy Divergent (2011-2013) as well as their movie adaptations. In a study on possible reasons for the appeal of post-apocalyptic dystopian literature to young adults, Justin Scholes and Jon Ostenson found that it is especially dystopian literature that reflects certain stages of adolescent development, such as critical thinking and uncertainties about identities and futures:

Dystopian novels that wrestle with deeper societal and moral issues are often well received by young minds that are developing the ability and even willingness to grapple with complex ideas … Dystopian fiction features protagonists who are likewise questioning the underlying values of a flawed society and their identity within it—who they are going to be and how they are going to act. Every choice the characters make can carry enormous consequences, often to the point of significantly altering the world they've always known. Teenagers connect with these protagonists as they feel a similar weight on their shoulders. (14)

They furthermore found that some of the most appealing themes and motifs of post- apocalyptic dystopian literature include inhumane behavior, feelings of isolation, the protagonists’ coming of age, as well as platonic and romantic relationships (14). As has been shown, the popularity of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, may it be aimed at teenagers or adults, has been ongoing since the Cold War, leading to a great number of novels as well as movies, adaptations and contemporary TV series addressing fictional endings and future world scenarios. Concerning the future of post- apocalyptic fiction, Robert Plank aptly highlights:

We can expect to read many more stories of the end of the world unless that end comes too soon for us to read anything … If we have a chance to read further, we’ll read many embodiments of that double paradox that marks this branch of literature: we can especially expect to read more stories about an end with a lone survivor, or such variations of this theme as a couple surviving to become the Adam and Eve of a new mankind, or a small group of people surviving to be the nucleus of a new civilization. The probability of such a thing really happening is negligible. In fiction it looms large because psychological need makes it so. The unlikelihood of the event did not keep authors in the past from describing it, and there is no reason to think it will in the future. The best such fiction will be cautionary tales to be used with great caution. (52)

Regarding the consistent interest in the post-apocalyptic genre, Booker and Thomas identify possible reasons in its romanticization of apocalypse survivors, on the one hand, and strong elements of heroic adventure in films, on the other hand (56; 61). Similarly, Gary K. Wolfe argues that it is the promise of the notion of “remaking zero” that attracts readers:

On the simple level of narrative action, the prospect of a depopulated world in which humanity is reduced to a more elemental struggle with nature provides a convenient area for the sort of heroic action that is constrained in the corporate, technological world that we know. The ‘true’ values of individual effort and courage are allowed to emerge one again, and power flows to those who possess these attributes to a ‘natural aristocracy’ uninhibited by political and economic complexities … This simplification of relationships permits a simplification of the forces of good and evil, making it possible to depict a world of easily discernible heroes and villains. Thus, merely in terms of the action story, the notion of starting the world over is appealing. (4)

In addition, he points out that the concept of a remade world, which he refers to as post- holocaust, furthermore carries an emotionally “mythic power”, which is constituted of the reemergence of chaos, the reinforcement of cultural values and the assurance of racial survival (5-6). Referring to the first as the chaos within and outside the characters, for instance nature, G. K. Wolfe highlights that “mythic heroic action depends partly upon confrontation with chaos, and the post-holocaust world repeatedly provides opportunities for such confrontations” (6). The second mythic function of reinforcing certain values, in most cases good or bad ones, makes post-apocalyptic stories “openly didactic, pitting diametrically opposed value systems against one another in a final battle for supremacy” (6). As third mythic function, G. K. Wolfe mentions the ironic reassurance of survival in post-apocalyptic narratives since the end of the world never is the complete end of everything in this fiction (7). Thus, what becomes most important in post-apocalyptic worlds is the literal and spiritual survival as well as the survival and preservation of values and humanity. Yet, these are just some conventions and characteristics of the post-apocalyptic genre; more will be discussed in the following subchapter.

2.5. Post-Apocalyptic Genre Conventions

Because of the fact that there is a countless number of possible scenarios that could follow an apocalypse, the post-apocalyptic genre is quite diverse regarding its conventions, which often include science fiction as well as horror elements. Concerning science fiction themes in the post-apocalyptic genre, G. K. Wolfe identifies two main ones. The first is the impact of technology on human behavior by either introducing new technologies, like time machines and spacecraft, or removing the function of familiar machines, which eventually leads to a catastrophe (4-5). While the former is mainly found in post-apocalyptic stories, it can be argued that the latter rather concerns the apocalyptic genre and pre-apocalyptic settings. The second science fiction theme that is often applied in post-apocalyptic stories is humanity’s relationship with the environment or its alienation from it. In fact, G. K. Wolfe highlights that instead of creating new and alien environments, what makes such stories more reader-friendly is to take familiar environments and change them using a disaster (5). In this regard, he points out:

A city emptied of its people, whether through nuclear disaster or disease or environmental catastrophe, becomes a strange and alien place. Similarly, a pastoral landscape becomes a foreboding wasteland by the implied danger of post-holocaust survivors reduced to savagery, disfigured by radiation, or given to strange new beliefs. (5)

In fact, what post-apocalyptic landscapes often also feature are elements that belong to the horror genre, such as isolated places, cannibalism or the presence of humans who have turned into zombies after a deadly pandemic. Regarding the narrative structure of post-apocalyptic stories, G. K. Wolfe identifies a characteristic formula in most of them, which includes five large stages of action: the experience or discovery of the cataclysm (1), the journey through the wasteland created by the cataclysm (2), settlement and establishment of a new community (3), the re-emergence of the wilderness as antagonist (4), and a final, decisive battle or struggle to determine which values will prevail in the new world (5) (8). However, G. K. Wolfe points out that not all post-apocalyptic stories comprise these stages as authors may delete one or the other or even add new ones. If a story contains the first stage, it 21

usually has a rather limited viewpoint and depicts the revelation of the cataclysm to its one or two main characters in two different ways. It is either that the characters are isolated from others when the cataclysm takes place (and thus do not know about it) and only gradually discover what has happened, or they get to witness it from a safe place, like a bunker (8-9). In fact, many post-apocalyptic stories either start out with a lone survivor or two survivors who are family members or friends. In this regard, Tereza Šplíchalová points out that without a survivor, there would be no post-apocalypse:

Central figure of post-catastrophic literature is undoubtedly the survivor, the one making the narrative possible. His/her unique qualities often singularize him [or her] from the potential rest of the survivors or other generations and turn him [or her] into a solitary hero. Moreover, the main protagonist often displays qualities that have been lost, but are desired, such as unshakeable morality or resistance to corruption or exploitation of others. As such, he/she represents humanity encapsulated in one single figure. (13)

The second common stage in post-apocalyptic fiction is the journey through the wasteland, which serves the two main functions of providing an overview and confirmation of the disaster as well as representing a moral cleansing of the main character(s) (G. K. Wolfe 10). Other motivations for such a journey include the oftentimes desperate search for other survivors or family members as well as the exploration of the new world with hopes of finding a place to settle down (10). For the readers, this stage is one of suspense and mystery since danger could linger behind every rock and it is uncertain where the characters will eventually end up. In this regard, G. K. Wolfe mentions remarks that “... geography is an important recurrent element in post-holocaust narratives, and almost always it serves to establish a link between the strange new environment and the world we know” (5). In fact, it can be argued that the destruction of the once familiar world represents a wound that has been inflicted not just on the landscape but also on the survivors’ past and their psyches. What used to be of importance is gone and the world has turned into an unknown place, which there is no escape from. Thus, the journey through it, even though dangerous, can become an optimistic one and full of hope. Once survivors of an apocalypse have travelled through the wasteland and have formed groups, what usually follows in a post-apocalyptic story is stage three, namely the settlement and establishment of a community (11). G. K. Wolfe argues that this stage represents protectiveness and preservation for the survivors, while it often goes 22

hand in hand with the protagonist’s marriage and the prospect of a new family. It must be pointed out, though, that this stage mainly occurs in late post-apocalyptic representations and rarely after the immediate cataclysm. Nevertheless, once communities have been established, stage four holds difficulties and dangers for the settlers as it entails the reemergence of wilderness as well as

the encroachments of the natural world on the community, the proliferation of rats, wild animals, disease, etc. and the erosion of such technological support systems as roads and electricity through the elemental forces of weather, fire, earthquakes, and vegetation growth but also the challenges brought on by unorganized bands of fellow survivors, who commonly revert to savagery and thus threaten the stability of the frontier-type settlement. (13)

Thus, in a post-apocalyptic world it is not just humans that represent a threat but also nature regaining prevalence and power. Furthermore, being forced to start at zero without the comforts of the old civilization means learning how to live a simple life based on agriculture and independent of modern commodities. Therefore, a post-apocalyptic community that is not able to fend for itself will eventually be doomed. Concerning savagery in such stories, G. K. Wolfe points out that there are usually either power- seeking individuals who represent a contrastive moral viewpoint to the main character or groups threatening the stable communities by stealing crops or murdering their members (13). This leads to the fifth stage, which comprises the decisive battle between good and evil (14). In fact, the evil can come in many different shapes and is often represented by false immoral prophets, “whose potential victory would transform not merely a community or an historical movement, but the entire future history of the human race ...”, while it might also be a struggle between ideologies, such as democracy and communism (14-15). Depending on which side wins in the end, the values they represent are the ones that will prevail in the new world. Another important aspect of post-apocalyptic fiction are remains of the old world, which connect the pre-apocalyptic world to the post-apocalyptic one. Considering that in post-apocalyptic writing the post-apocalypse precedes the apocalypse, Berger highlights that “the writer and reader must be both places at once, imagining the post-apocalyptic world and the paradoxically ‘remembering’ the world as it was, as it is” (6). In this regard, it is remains that serve as the connection between both worlds, evoking emotions and nostalgic feelings not just in the survivors but also in the readers. Jeremy R. Grossman 23

refers to such leftovers as “post-apocalyptic remains” and differentiates between material items (e.g. tangible goods that have remained or the sight of a deserted city), cultural knowledge (e.g. morality and language) and rituals (e.g. marriage or before-dinner rituals) (6-8). He argues that what these remains do is, on the one hand, connect the narrative elements of the story to make sense while, on the other hand, they put the text in relation to the readers to evoke emotional responses and warn about present-day threats by creating possible future scenarios they could lead to:

By articulating narrative features with one another and by connecting the audience with the text, post-apocalyptic remains bridge the gap between an audience member‘s inability to engage with a nontextual post-apocalypse and the wish to express real social critique. (6)

However, even though many remains in post-apocalyptic fiction are used to build a nostalgic connection between the past and the present, the post-apocalyptic landscape often holds remnants that rather evoke an uneasy feeling in the survivors as well as the readers. Among others, these include the depiction of abandoned cities, dead bodies, skeletons, etc.; however, such remnants are necessary in post-apocalyptic fiction and, according to Berger, “dirt, excrement, the wound, the corpse all can be symptoms of catastrophe and instruments of revelation” (17). In addition, it is even the moment of the cataclysm itself that can become a remain in the memories of the survivors, which is mainly narrated through flashbacks or dreams about the event. To sum up, common post-apocalyptic genre conventions include science-fiction and horror elements, such as deserted wastelands without technology or the practice of human cannibalism, survivors and their struggle to stay human in the midst of the inhuman, nature or savages as antagonists, as well as remains that serve to create context for the readers by connecting the pre- to the post-apocalyptic world. In fact, these conventions apply to all post-apocalyptic stories, may it be novels, short stories, or movies. Hence, as the focus of this thesis lies on trauma in post-9/11 short stories, what will be discussed in the subsequent chapter is the short story genre and its predestination for the depiction of traumatic symptoms following an apocalypse. 24

3. Small but Effective: THE (POST-APOCALYPTIC) SHORT STORY

The apocalypse can paint a big canvas, but it's often the small stories about the end of the world that resonate the most. —Trent Moore

What has so far been discussed in the second chapter of this thesis is the post-apocalyptic genre, its history and functions, as well as the most common conventions with regard to novels and films. However, there is another popular literary form often addressing the apocalypse and its aftermath, which is the post-apocalyptic short story. There has not been done much research on post-apocalyptic representations in this type of genre, but it can be argued that the conventions and characteristics of the post-apocalyptic genre lend themselves to the short story, whose structure and specific use of literary devices make it a predestined literary form for the depiction of traumatic experiences and their symptoms. Concerning the history of the genre, short tales and stories have existed as an oral form since the beginning of civilization, but it was not until the development of magazine and periodical publishing in late 19th century England and America that the modern short story was considered a literary form of its own (Boyd, para. 3). In England, it was the dominance of the novel that made it difficult for the genre to develop, but industrial and demographic processes of that time brought along changes, as Sacido highlights:

Transformations in different spheres throughout the nineteenth century (mass- production of printed matter, technological innovation, removal of taxation and extension of copyright, the end of circulating libraries, growth of readership to reach mass proportions, etc.) did away with the near-monopoly of the serialised novel in periodical fiction, turning magazines into profitable outlets for short story writers and, more selectively, into affordable vehicles for artistically ambitious projects of literary experimentation with the short narrative form. (3)

In fact, many of these 19th century short stories feature characteristics of early-twentieth century modernism as they reject popular literature and criticize bourgeois ideology (3). In contrast to England, the serialized novel did not prove to be a viable form of literature in the early 19th century United States as the population was constantly on the move and would not have been able to continue reading the next chapter of a story in the newspaper or magazine of the next day (Ostdick, para. 7). Thus, what American writers did to get 25

their works published in the newspapers was to take and alter the form of the short tale from German authors, such as Wilhelm Kleist and E.T.A. Hoffmann, which eventually became a lucrative business for both the writers and the newspapers (para 8.). Since modern short stories emerged much earlier in the United States than in England, it can hence be argued that the origins of the genre lie in America, with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1837 short story collection Twice-Told Tales often being considered the starting point of the genre (Boyd, para. 5). In his review of Hawthorne’s tales, it was Edgar Allan Poe who provided the first definition of the modern short story as distinct to the novel:

The ordinary novel is objectionable, from its length, for reasons already stated in substance. As it cannot be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course of the immense force derivable from totality. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses of perusal, modify, annul, or counteract in a greater or less degree, the impressions of the book. But simple cessation in reading would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity. In the brief tale, however, the author is enabled to carry out the fullness of his intention, be it what it may. During the hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at the writer's control. There are no external or extrinsic influences—resulting from weariness or interruption. (para. 5)

Thus, the two main characteristics of the modern short story that distinguish it from the novel are its brevity (it can be read in one sitting) as well as its coherence and singularity of effect. In this regard, Poe further writes:

In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. (para. 6)

In his own short stories, such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), one can see that Poe has stuck to the characteristics of what he terms tale proper, which eventually became the modern short story as it is known today. Based on Poe’s classical definition, the modern short story is nowadays generally referred to as “an invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot” (“Short Story”). In contrast to the novel, which can cover the whole life of a character, the short story is concerned with just a single moment, incident or period of his or her life. Thus, while the novel often depicts the development of a character, in 26

the short story, the reader “may catch only a glimpse of individuals … from which [he or she] may gain some, but not an entire impression of characters (“The Modern Short Story” para. 2). Another characteristic of the short story is that it tends to be incomplete and suggestive, offering lots of room for interpretation. Thus, the plot does not have to be complex and only comes secondary; what matters are emotions and internal actions within the character. In this sense, the short story provides a moment of emotional intensity, which is transferred to the readers by making them experience an epiphany moment or, in other words, a revelation. Hence, all these characteristics of the short story make the apocalypse and post-apocalypse suitable themes, especially when the intensity of the aftermaths and traumas of the survivors are the focus of the narration. In addition, the incompleteness and suggestiveness of the short story complement the post- apocalyptic genre, which is speculative in nature and concerned with what humanity will look like in the future. In a post-apocalyptic short story, readers get a glimpse into futures that have not taken place and such stories might have the same traumatic effect and impact on the readers as the end of the world and its aftermaths have on the characters in the story. Generally, the short story is comprised of six major narrative elements, which include plot, setting, characters, conflict, point of view and theme. The term plot describes “the ways in which the events and characters’ actions in a story are arranged and how this arrangement in turn facilitates identification of their motivations and consequences” (Kukkonen, para. 1). A short story usually has one plot, which consists of five basic stages of action that are based on Gustav Freytag’s Pyramid or dramatic structure (1863) and include the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement (“Freytag’s Pyramid”). In the exposition, the reader is introduced to the main characters and the setting (place, time, weather and social conditions), which serves to create a certain atmosphere and convey a specific mood. In post-apocalyptic short stories, the setting and atmosphere are important element as they indicate whether the post-apocalyptic world is a dark and frightening one or rather a (unlikely) utopia. The characters are also essential to the short story as they carry the plot. There is usually the main character or protagonist and his or her opposer, who is called antagonist and does not necessarily have to be human (e.g. nature). In fact, convincing characterization is what makes characters real to the reader and easy to identify with. An author can choose between four methods of 27

presenting characters, which include actions or thoughts of the character, his or her physical appearance, conversations he or she has with other characters, and conversations and reactions of other characters about him or her (Sweetland, “Character”). In addition, characters can be round or flat, depending on the complexity of their personalities, while they may or may not change throughout the story, which is why they are either called static or dynamic. What is also introduced in the exposition is the main conflict or problem of the story without which there would be no plot. A conflict is a struggle between two opposing forces of which one is the main character (Sweetland, “Plot”). There are two main types of conflicts in a short story, namely external vs. internal ones. An internal conflict takes place in the character’s mind and is thus also referred to as character vs. self. In contrast, an external conflict concerns a struggle between a character and an outside force, which can be another character, nature, society, or fate. In post- apocalyptic short stories, the survival vs. humanity aspect may be represented through internal struggles of the main characters as well as external conflicts including man vs. nature (devastated post-apocalyptic landscape), man vs. man (other survivors), and man vs. fate (future of humanity). In the second part of the short story, which comprises the rising action, the conflict begins to develop as the plot and characters become more complicated and dramatic. This creates suspense and leads to the climax, which is the part that represents the turning point and most intense moment of the short story (Sweetland, “Plot”). It is the moment of confrontation between two opposing forces in which the conflict is faced and solved by the main character. Considering post-apocalyptic short stories, the rising action may depict weak survivors hiding from savages as they are coming closer, while the climax would be the confrontation between the two and the main characters’ reaction to it. After the climax, what follows is the falling action, which reveals the resolution of events and complications as well as the results of the climax. It dispels some of the tension that has been built up during the prior parts of the plot and eventually ends with the resolution or denouement, which untangles the events and depicts the outcome of the story. However, there might also be an open ending, in which the conflict is not resolved, or even a surprise ending, which does not fulfill the readers’ expectations (Sweetland, “Plot”). Moreover, what is also common for short fiction are implicit endings that are based on interpretation. In the falling action and resolution of a post-apocalyptic short story, what might be depicted is the scene after a fight between the 28

main characters and savages, followed by the subsequent continuation of a journey towards hope. Another important element of each (short) story is its theme, which can either be explicit or implicit and represents the underlying meaning or main idea the author wants to convey, based on his or her view on a certain topic (Sweetland, “Theme”). As to post- apocalyptic fiction, some of the most prevalent themes to address the fragility of civilization encompass the preservation of humanity and morality in the struggle to survive as well as the adjustment to the given conditions to build viable communities and eventually establish a new civilization. The last element of the short story is perspective or point of view, which denotes “the way the representation of the story is influenced by the position, personality and values of the narrator, the characters and, possibly, other, more hypothetical entities in the storyworld” (Niederhoff, sec. 1). Thus, a (short) story can be told from the perspective of a first-person narrator (e.g. the protagonist), a second person narrator (less common) or a third-person narrator who is not part of the story world (Eshbaugh, para. 1). With this kind of point of view, the author can either allow the readers to have insight into the thoughts and feelings of one character (third person limited) or know the thoughts of every character (third person omniscient). If the author decides to be objective without commenting on anything and only let the readers see and hear what is happening, this would be an objective point of view. Another popular narrative technique is stream of consciousness or interior monologue, which “is a method of narration that describes happenings in the flow of thoughts in the minds of the characters” (“Stream of Consciousness”). Concerning the knowledge of a first-person narrator, Margolin points out that he or she might know less or more than the other characters and can even “withhold information from his [or her] addresse” (Margolin, sec. 3.3.1). Thus, for different reasons, information that would be necessary for the reader to fully understand the narrative discourse and what is going on is not given at all or, at least, subtly incorporated into the narrator’s thoughts and utterances. In fact, this is what can make a first-person narration unreliable. According to Margolin, unreliability means that “the validity of some or even all claims made by them [narrators] is low or non-existent, that these claims need consequently to be rejected and, if possible, replaced by more valid [...] ones (sec. 3.3.2.). She also points out that the most profound way of an unreliable narrator 29

is not to be true about actual facts “since it may prevent [the reader] from figuring out what the narrative world was ‘really’ like”, which is done by “citing lack of information or inability [...] to fathom things” (sec. 3.3.2). Yet, there may be other reasons why a narrator is or becomes unreliable in the course of a narration, which Margolin reasons as follows:

Once we are ready to psychologize the narrator, we could seek for mental explanations for the unreliability of some or all of his claims. Depending on the particular text, such grounds could be the narrator’s lack of knowledge or experience, mental deficiencies ranging from limited intelligence to insanity or drug-induced hallucinations, self-deception (in cases of autobiographical narration), a particular mental disposition (the chronic liar), and a deliberate deceptive strategy. Creating a narrator figure whom readers will deem unreliable redirects attention from the told to the telling and the teller, from what is known and evaluated to the circumstances and activities of informing and judging, and to the person failing to perform them properly. (sec. 3.3.2)

Thus, the different reasons for a narrator to be unreliable are manifold and need a lot of interpretation work on behalf of the reader. Considering the fact that survivors of fictional apocalypses most likely suffer from psychological symptoms caused by experiencing traumatic events, there is a high chance that first-person narrators of post-apocalyptic stories are unreliable to a certain degree. Concerning literary devices, the short story’s characteristic use of symbolism, flashbacks, foreshadowing and suspense needs mentioning, especially regarding post- apocalyptic representations. The term symbolism refers to “the practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character” (“Symbolism”). In post-apocalyptic worlds, it might be something as simple as a road that represents danger but also mortality as time and weather take its toll and it slowly crumbles. Moreover, journeys on empty and dangerous streets, for example in McCarthy’s novel The Road, symbolize humanity’s urge to move on and survive. Another example from this novel is the can of Coca Cola the father gives to his boy as a treat, and which the boy does not recognize (22). Examining the prominence of remains in McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, Talitha Dehaene highlights the changing symbolic meaning of everyday objects from the pre-apocalyptic world:

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- 30

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. (42-43)

Thus, like many other everyday objects in a post-apocalyptic world, the can of Coke becomes something special to those who knew the pre-apocalyptic world; however, children growing up in a post-apocalypse and future generations of survivors will not have any sort of emotional connection to these objects. A second literary device often used in post-apocalyptic short stories are flashbacks, which are interruptions “by which an event or scene taking place before the present time in the narrative is inserted into the chronological structure of the work” (“Flashback”). These are either be represented through dreams or memories of the characters. In post-apocalyptic representations, the main function of flashbacks, which are often triggered by remains, is to illustrate the difference between the present (after the apocalypse) and the past (before the apocalypse). In addition, many post-apocalyptic stories are set many years after the apocalypse and therefore do not render a depiction of the cataclysmic moment, which is why a character’s flashback of the catastrophe provides context for the readers and eventually helps them understand the characters’ motivations for their actions. A third literary device commonly used in short stories is foreshadowing, which is “an indication of what is to come” (“Foreshadowing”). This includes any hints or clues the author provides to create suspense in the readers, which is yet another literary device “that arouses excited expectation or uncertainty about what may happen” (“Suspense”). Foreshadowing can be implemented in various ways, for instance through a character’s words or thoughts, names, a change in setting, and even the title itself. In a broader sense, it can in fact be argued that authors of post-apocalyptic (short) stories foreshadow possible fates of humanity to warn about the future while, at the same, they hope that their predictions will not come true. Nevertheless, even though the post-apocalyptic genre may be a dark and frightening one, it is today more popular than ever before. This might be due to the many recent terror attacks and natural disasters, which have shown how fragile and instable modern civilization really is. One such historical event that was followed by a great amount of post-apocalyptic fiction were the terror attacks of 9/11. What makes this specific type of post-apocalyptic fiction different to the ones before is the rather overt 31

thematization and representation of the suffered trauma and its psychological aftermaths. Since the focus of this thesis lies on the representation of trauma in five post-9/11 short stories, what will be provided in the subsequent chapter is a discussion of trauma with regard to apocalyptic events and traumatizing experiences.

4. What It Means to Survive: TRAUMA & THE END OF THE WORLD

The hugest changes were the ones that could not be seen—that's where the real apocalypse lay: in people's hearts, their souls, their beings. —Dianna Hardy, The Last Dragon

History has shown that catastrophic events, such as World War II or 9/11, have deeply affected the lives of those who lived through them and fundamentally shaped the generations that followed. According to Berger, traumatic events as these resemble small apocalypses, for what they represent are “absolute breaks with the past” while being considered final and ultimate due the many deaths they have brought about (XII). Hence, what is left after such cataclysms is a post-apocalyptic world with people who have survived and who must cope with traumatic aftermaths, which not just affect each individual but also the greater human collective. In this regard, Berger identifies a congruency between the concepts of apocalypse and trauma, “for both refer to shatterings of existing structures of identity and language, and both effect their own erasures from memory and must be reconstructed by means of their traces, remains, survivors, and ghosts: their symptoms” (19). He further amplifies the importance of the before and after for each of these concepts as follows:

Trauma is the psychoanalytic form of apocalypse, its temporal inversion. Trauma produces symptoms in its wake, after the event, and we reconstruct trauma by interpreting its symptoms, reading back in time. Apocalypse, on the other hand, is preceded by signs and portents whose interpretation defines the event in the future. The apocalyptic sign is the mirror image of the traumatic symptom. In both cases, the event itself is so overwhelming as to be fundamentally unreadable; it can only be understood through the portents and symptoms that precede and follow it. Both apocalypse and trauma present the most difficult questions of what happened ‘before,’ and what is the situation ‘after’. The apocalyptic-historical-traumatic event becomes a crux or pivot that forces a retelling and revaluing of all events that lead up to it and all that follow. (20-21)

In other words, to understand what has caused an apocalypse and to be able to recover from it by not making the same mistakes, survivors need to look at what was before (pre- apocalyptic world) and which circumstances eventually led to the cataclysm. In contrast, for trauma it is the traumatizing event itself (which resembles an apocalypse) as well as the 33

memory of it that needs to be worked through in order to recover from physical and emotional posttraumatic symptoms. What will be provided in the course of this chapter is a discussion on the post- apocalypse as trauma narrative, which is followed by contemporary definitions of the term trauma as well as an outline of the historical development of trauma studies and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in particular. To provide the theoretical background for the analysis of post 9/11 short stories, what will further be addressed are the concepts of psychological and collective trauma.

4.1. The Post-Apocalypse as Trauma Narrative

The congruency between the concepts of post-apocalypse and trauma Berger has identified can also be applied to literature. In this regard, he argues that while traumatic experiences resemble an apocalypse that are always followed by posttraumatic symptoms and psychological aftermaths, post-apocalyptic writing is itself “a remainder, a symptom, an aftermath of some disorienting catastrophe” (Berger 7). Hence, what writers of post- apocalyptic fiction do is try to work through individual or collective traumas caused by apocalyptic events to recover the lost sense of identity and reestablish order. In fact, writing about trauma (scriptotherapy) can help reduce posttraumatic symptoms and advance individual and collective healing (Vickroy 8). Thus, post-apocalyptic writings can be considered trauma narratives at their core since they “help readers access traumatic experience” and “internalize the rhythms, processes, and uncertainties of traumatic experience within their underlying sensibilities and structures” (Vickroy 1; 3). Originally used in the treatment of trauma patients, trauma narratives are considered an effective coping strategy and important step in the recovery process as they help victims organize and understand their memories and emotions (“The Trauma Narrative”). In this regard, Amanda Wicks highlights that “trauma narratives assert a narrative order were none originally existed … to make sense of a moment beyond the immediate recall of memory” (140). Thus, what authors of post-apocalyptic fiction do is “demonstrate a structuring impulse—albeit a creative one—to make sense out of what has remained and continues to remain unintelligible by imagining the end of the world, as well as its after” (140). 34

According to Vickroy, another function of trauma narratives is to “reshape cultural memory through personal contexts, adopting testimonial traits to prevent and bear witness against such repetitive horrors” (5). In fact, the (fictional) figure of the survivor and his or her testimony have become an important aspect of trauma as well as post-apocalyptic narratives, for “what the survivor has survived is some trauma endowed with cultural significance—some apocalypse” (Berger 47). According to Berger, the apocalyptic survivor and his testimony represent a certain authority that makes him or her superior to those that did not experience the same trauma, for “… [he or she] was there, was present at the event, went through the event. The survivor was present, and his testimony seems to make us present, and thereby gives to us, the listeners and the readers, something of his epistemological, ethical, and spiritual authority” (48). Nevertheless, due to the fact that catastrophes have happened and continue to happen to every person and collective in different ways, survivors of apocalypses are everywhere, which is why “trauma and survival have become regarded as universal and inescapable, and the survivor stands both as witness and as symptom” (49). Concerning trauma literature, Berger regards the haunting of the ghost as symptom of the returning trauma while, at the same time, the ghost itself is the ultimate trauma survivor (50). This is quite similar in real life, as “our culture remains haunted by multitudes of ghosts, who are ourselves, the living symptoms of historical catastrophes, and we cannot determine how to respond to our traumatic histories” (52). Authors of (post-apocalyptic) trauma narratives want readers to sympathize with their traumatized characters and do so by depicting their struggles with recalling traumatic memories, which are often repressed and only surface fragmentally. Piecing together these fragments into a complete memory that can be processed and worked through is what is done by the verbal or written (therapeutic) reconstruction of the traumatic event (Felman and Laub 69). In this regard, Vickroy emphasizes that trauma narratives

… enact the directing outward of an inward, silent process to other witnesses, both within and outside the texts. Such reconstruction is also directed toward readers, engaging them in a meditation on individual distress, collective responsibilities, and communal healing in relation to trauma. (3)

Thus, fictional trauma narratives are always symptoms of apocalyptic events while, at the same time, they help the writers as well as the readers reestablish a sense of order where there is none. The chaos that would follow an actual world-ending apocalypse is something 35

that is inconceivable; yet, by imagining after-the-end scenarios, authors of post-apocalyptic fiction try to establish a certain order that makes the incomprehensible comprehensible to the readers. What post-apocalyptic fiction also does is provide the space to confront the readers with their own fears, including death, the loss of control, and the future. Thus, the depiction of traumatized survivors and their struggle to make sense of what happened and adapt to the new circumstances is what makes post-apocalyptic writing essentially traumatic. However, trauma narratives can also be a traumatizing experience for those who read them. Regarding post-apocalyptic fiction, it can be argued that the experiences the characters of such stories make on their journeys through devastated wastelands are likely to be just as shocking and terrifying as the cataclysmic event itself; nevertheless, it is not just them who might be traumatized but also the readers. In fact, research has shown that people who passively or emotionally engage with trauma or trauma victims might suffer from similar long-term psychological effects, which is a condition that is referred to as vicarious traumatization (McCann and Pearlman 1990). Pearlman and Saakvitne highlight that “vicarious traumatization can affect anyone who engages empathically with trauma survivors—journalists, police, emergency room personnel, shelter staff, prison guards, clergy, attorneys, researchers etc.’’ (281). Furthermore, it is especially trauma therapists exposed to the traumatic narratives of their patients who are at risk of developing similar symptoms (279). In this regard, Neil Smelser highlights the importance of affect or emotional reaction to traumatic events by arguing that “affects constitute a kind of universal language, the symbolic representations of which operate as effective means of communicating among individuals” (39). In other words, the language of affect, including both positive and negative emotional expressions, is easily recognizable and transmittable by members of the same (cultural) community. Hence, even though a person has not personally experienced a traumatic event or suffered from its psychological aftermaths, he or she can be traumatized by watching, hearing, or reading about dramatic experiences. In this respect, Smelser points out

… individuals who are passively watching or reading thrilling, gripping, or frightening movies or books can be temporarily ‘traumatized’ by them even though they are completely fictional. They attach the affects that would have been excited by actual events to fictional situations. This implies that trauma can be experienced by attaching appropriate affects to imagined situations. (40)

With regard to apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, it can thus be argued that the depiction of imagined cataclysms and traumatized characters trying to remember and survive in terrifying post-apocalyptic worlds evokes fear and unease in the readers and might therefore lead to temporary vicarious traumatization. However, this condition can be regarded a necessary evil that trauma narratives entail, as the recreation of traumatic memory makes (insensitive) readers experience the depicted trauma more intensively and, like that, are more likely to understand it (Vickroy 8). Nevertheless, trauma narratives play an important role when it comes to comprehending and working through traumatizing apocalyptic experiences. In fact, they have a long tradition in trauma studies, whose history will be the subject of discussion in the following subchapter.

4.2. History of Trauma Studies

Deriving from the Greek word for wound (“traûma”), the term trauma nowadays has two concurrent meanings, of which only the second one is relevant for this thesis. In the pathological sense, trauma is used to refer to “a body wound or shock produced by sudden physical injury, as from violence or accident” while in psychology it can either denote “an experience that produces psychological injury or pain” or even designate “the psychological injury so caused” (“Trauma”). The origins of trauma studies can be traced back to the development of the railways during the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 19th century. While the railway was an important symbol of modernity and the ecological and social progress of that time, it were the many accidents and collisions that eventually turned this new means of transport into the symbol of catastrophe and trauma, making the railway accident “an important place in the history of mid- and late-nineteenth-century medical and medico-legal discourses over trauma and traumatic disorder” (Harrington, para. 2). In fact, railway accidents did not just affect individual survivors, but the dangers it represented also led to collective trauma, which was intensified by the heavy sensational news coverage (para. 3). Most of those who survived such train crashes suffered from bodily injuries and physical traumas; however, some victims also complained about injuries that were not visible and that affected their nervous system, which among others led to exhaustion, loss of memory, nightmares and numbness of extremities. Because of the fact that only physically visible damage qualified 37

accident victims for compensation by the railway companies, physicians had to find a diagnosis for those whose damage was not pathologically demonstrable or just prove that the symptoms were the products of the victim’s imagination (Schivelbusch 1-2). This was the first time in history that posttraumatic symptoms were studied systematically, and it was John Eric Erichsen who came up with an initial diagnosis, which was based on a pathological cause damaging the spinal cord, which however lacked physical evidence (Harrington, para. 27). This so-called Railway Spine condition was later challenged by Herbert Page, who did not believe that a physical injury of the spinal cord would affect the nervous system of the victims. On the contrary, he was of the opinion that “the emotion of fear alone was sufficient to inflict severe shock on the nervous system, and he saw the psychological effects of involvement in a railway accident as quite capable of inducing nervous illness and collapse” (para. 44). Thus, for Erichsen, there was first the physical injury of the spinal cord eventually causing the nervous symptoms, while for Page, it was the psychological shock that triggered physical changes in the nervous system (para. 46). Based on Page’s theory, Hermann Oppenheim later replaced the concept of the railway spine by that of traumatic neurosis; however, he identified it as being a primarily male condition because he wanted to keep it separate from the studies of Jean-Martin Charcot as well as Sigmund Freud, who focused on psychological trauma and its relation to female hysteria caused by childhood sexual abuse (Pietlikäinen 44-45). It was he who eventually offered a scientifically precise approach to the dynamics of trauma, repression, and symptom formation, which was that “a distinctive event (passive sexual experience in childhood) occasions repression of both affect and memory, a period of incubation, and subsequently the appearance of specific conversion symptoms” (Smelser 55). In other words, the memory and emotional reaction to a passive sexual experience in childhood, e.g. molestation, are repressed from the consciousness until much later in life certain events make these emotions, particularly anxiety, return. If these are then again denied or repressed, the trauma turns into an organic symptom, such as the paralysis of a limb. The only way to make the symptom disappear is to bring to light the memory of the event, provoke the suppressed emotions and work through them verbally. However, as Berger points out, Freud realized that his initial theory of trauma was somewhat problematic because many of the neurotic symptoms of his patients seemed to stem from repressed drives and desires rather than from traumatic experiences (22). Distinguishing between actual neuroses (created by an 38

overwhelming physical experience) and psycho-neuroses (caused by sexual experiences before puberty), he subsequently developed two separate models of trauma (Krystal 84). One was the “unacceptable impulse” model, which was concerned with the effects of the repression of infantile sexual fantasies on the psyche, while the second so-called “unbearable situation” model derived from Freud’s treatment of World War I veterans who suffered from nightmares and other post-war symptoms. In fact, posttraumatic stress symptoms had already been studied in the United States during the American Civil War; however, they were believed to be cardiac conditions and not psychological in nature. Because of the fact that many soldiers suffered from heart palpitations and cardiac pain in addition to various other symptoms, Jacob Mendez da Costa coined the term irritable heart syndrome or soldier’s heart in 1874 to refer to the syndrome, which also came to be known as effort syndrome during World War I (Potter, para. 1-2). Nowadays, Da Costa syndrome is considered a manifestation of an anxiety disorder, “with the physical symptoms being a reaction to something perceived to be dangerous or otherwise a threat to the person, causing autonomic responses or hyperventilation” (“Da Costa Syndrome”). In fact, with the war neuroses and posttraumatic stress syndromes as response and reaction to the bombardments of World War I, what trauma studies became particularly concerned with was known as “shell shock”. Because of the fact that there was a large number of soldiers affected by symptoms of fatigue, tremor, confusion, and nightmares, the British army called for psychologist Charles S. Myers to study the cases of shell shock in British soldiers in France (Jones, para. 2-3). He soon concluded that the many perceptual and physical symptoms were manifestations of repressed psychological trauma and suggested “prompt treatment as close to the fighting as is safe, with an expectation of recovery and return to unit”, which is an approach that was also used during the Second World War (to fight what was then known as “combat exhaustion”) and is still used by British and American military in foreign war zones today (para. 8-11). Other wars that contributed to the research on the relation between traumatic experiences and psychological aftermaths include the Second World War (e.g. concentration camp survivors) and the Vietnam War in particular. Nevertheless, trauma studies have also been concerned with the effects of other traumatic events on the human psyche, such as natural catastrophes and domestic violence. However, even though the symptoms of these different traumatic events are very similar, there was no general term to refer to this specific anxiety disorder. 39

This changed in 1980 when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) added the diagnosis Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to its anxiety disorders section. According to their definition, PTSD is a “psychiatric disorder that can occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, rape or other violent personal assault” (“What is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder?”, para. 1). Concerning its symptoms, it can be distinguished between four main categories, which include intrusive thoughts (repeated memories, distressing dreams, vivid flashbacks), avoidance of anything that reminds the affected person of the event (people, places, objects), negative thoughts and feelings (enduring horror, shame, guilt, detached and estranged feelings) as well as symptoms of arousal and reaction (angry outbursts, self-destructive behavior, sleeping problems) (para. 5). What must be pointed out, though, is that PTSD does not necessarily develop in every person who experiences a traumatic event. Causing similar symptoms, Acute Stress Disorder does not last longer than one month, while symptoms of PTSD can persist for years and occur with other related conditions, such as depression (para. 6-7). With PTSD as diagnosis for different kinds of traumas manifesting through similar psychological aftermaths, scientific research of this anxiety disorder has seen a strong increase since the 1980s, leading to a vast amount of different research reports, articles and handbooks on the topic. What this also involved were different opinions on the efficiency and suitability of PTSD as diagnosis. On the one hand, there are researchers like Van der Kolk and McFarlane who highlight the positive aspects of PTSD:

The development of PTSD as a diagnosis has created an organized framework for understanding how people’s biology, conceptions of the world, and personalities are inextricably intertwined and shaped by experience. The PTSD diagnosis has reintroduced the notion that many ‘neurotic’ symptoms are not the results of some mysterious, well-nigh inexplicable, genetically based irrationality, but of people’s inability to come to terms with real experiences that have overwhelmed their capacity to cope. (4)

However, it is exactly the aspect of inclusion that makes PTSD a questionable diagnosis for other researchers. Smelser, for instance, laments the fact that the simple causal connection of Freud’s trauma theory has been extended to include a great number of possible traumatic events that are all classified as a single diagnosis (PTSD), which also displays an unlimited 40

number of possible symptoms (58). He argues that this has led to a “loss of scientific precision” and produced “a classificatory jumble” that needs revision (58). Thus, in the last 160 years, apocalyptic events like the 19th century railway disasters, WWII and 9/11 have led to a great amount of studies and research on trauma and PTSD. It is apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic works of literature that can be considered as responses and reactions to such traumatic historical events while, at the same time, authors of this fiction create imagined apocalypses and depict devastated post-apocalyptic landscapes with traumatized survivors to warn about possible consequences of present-day human behavior and social conditions. In fact, in the analyzed post-9/11 short stories, two different types of trauma have been identified and will therefore be discussed in the following subchapter.

4.3. Types of Trauma

Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction often addresses and depicts two specific kinds of trauma. On a superordinate level, the first kind can be termed collective (socio-cultural) trauma, for the end of the world affects not just the existence of humanity, but also threatens social structures within the collective of humankind. The second type of trauma that can be identified in post-apocalyptic fiction works on a much deeper level and concerns psychological processes within individuals who have survived the apocalypse. Hence, this kind of trauma is generally referred to as (individual) psychological trauma, and the two subtypes that were primarily identified in the analyzed post-9/11 short stories include PTSD and childhood trauma. What will be provided in the following is theoretical information on both kinds of trauma, which will then be applied to the trauma of 9/11.

4.3.1. Psychological Trauma

Throughout history, man-made and natural cataclysms have led those who witnessed and survived them to suffer from psychological aftermaths. Kai Erikson defines such events as “a blow to the psyche that breaks through one’s defences so suddenly and with such brutal force that one cannot react to it effectively …” (153). It can be argued that for the survivors of apocalyptic events the moment of the cataclysm itself as well as the sudden death of loved ones can have such an emotional impact. In this regard, Jeffrey Alexander points out the 41

contemporary psychoanalytical approach to trauma, which “places a model of unconscious emotional fears and cognitively distorting mechanisms of psychological defense between the external shattering event and the actor’s internal traumatic response” (5). In other words, trauma victims tend to repress the experience of trauma, which, however, does not stop traumatic memories from reoccurring, as Van der Kolk remarks:

When the trauma fails to be integrated into the totality of a person’s life experiences, the victim remains fixated on the trauma. Despite of avoidance of emotional involvement, traumatic memories cannot be avoided; even when pushed out of waking consciousness, they come back in the form of reenactments, nightmares, or feelings relating to the traumas. (Psychological Trauma 5)

In fact, there are a variety of signs and symptoms of psychological trauma, which can take on various forms. From a cognitive and psychological perspective, these can include “intrusive thoughts of the event that may occur out of the blue; nightmares, visual images of the event, loss of memory and concentration abilities, detachment from other people and emotions, emotional numbing, depression, guilt [etc.]” (“Symptoms, Signs and Effect”). There are a great number of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories, whose survivors suffer from psychological trauma, such as PTSD; however, their defense mechanisms and symptoms can manifest in various ways and might not be easily recognizable by readers. One specific form of psychological trauma that has been identified in the analyzed post-9/11 short stories is (complex) childhood trauma. In fact, even though traumatic experiences represent life-changing threats to adults, they are even more dangerous for the healthy development of children and adolescents. Van der Kolk points out that “because children’s brains are still developing, trauma has a much more pervasive and long-range influence on their self-concept, on their sense of the world and on their ability to regulate themselves” (qtd. in DeAngelis, “A New Diagnosis” para. 4). According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the term childhood trauma refers to “the experience of an event by a child that is emotionally painful or distressful, which often results in lasting mental and physical effects” (“What is Childhood Trauma?”). In fact, most of the time, traumas in children are caused by caregivers or people who have authority and power over them. What is more, research has shown that when traumatic experiences happen in childhood, they influence the later adult life. In their study on the connection between childhood trauma and adult health, Felitti et al. examine seven categories of adverse childhood experiences (short 42

ACE) already identified in trauma literature (1998). These include three categories of abuse (psychological, physical and sexual) as well as four categories of household dysfunction (substance abuse, mental illness, violently treated mother or stepmother and criminal behavior) (248). The researcher added three additional categories, namely parental divorce or separation (household dysfunction) and emotional as well as physical neglect. The results of the two-year long study show that about two-thirds of the 17.000 participants were exposed to at least one type of adverse childhood experiences (251). Felitti et al. also found that “persons who had experienced four or more categories of childhood exposure, compared to those who had experienced none, had 4-to 12-fold increased health risks for alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempt” (245). Thus, childhood trauma is closely linked to the later development of social problems, mental and physical illnesses as well as adult violence and early death (255-256). Apart from sexual and physical abuse, child neglect represents one of the major types of child maltreatment, which is “related to the failure [of caregivers] to provide needed, age-appropriate care. ... neglect is usually typified by an ongoing pattern of inadequate care and is readily observed by individuals in close contact with the child” (“Child Neglect”). De Panfilis points out that depending on the severity, child neglect can be classified as mild, moderate and severe (10). While mild neglect rarely puts the child in danger (e.g. a parent does not put the child into a car safety seat), moderate neglect takes place when the child has been harmed and community interventions have failed (e.g. a child is consistently inappropriately dressed for the weather). Severe neglect occurs when the child has been exposed to long-term harm (e.g. a child suffering from a chronic illness does not receive his or her medication from the parents). Furthermore, four main types of this kind of child maltreatment can be distinguished, namely physical, educational, medical, and emotional neglect (11-13). The first type, physical neglect, is the most easily recognizable form and includes abandonment, expulsion, inadequate supervision, malnutrition, lack of clothing, and inadequate hygiene. Whereas educational neglect comprises chronic or permitted truancy as well as the caregiver’s failure to enroll the child in school, medical neglect “encompasses a parent or guardian’s denial of or delay in seeking needed health care” (12). The last type concerns emotional neglect, which is the only type that is not visible right away but can have the most severe and long-lasting effects on the child. It includes the caregiver’s withholding of affection, 43

emotional support or attention as well as exposing the child to domestic violence or even permitting them to use drugs and alcohol. Concerning the traumatic effects of emotional neglect on children, Pete Walker highlights:

When children experience long periods of being powerless to obtain needed connection with a parent, they become increasingly anxious, upset and depressed. Over time their dominant experience of self is so replete with emotional pain and so unmanageable that that they have to dissociate, act out [aggression against others] or act in [aggression against the self] to distract from it. ... Emotional neglect, alone, causes children to abandon themselves, and to give up on the formation of a self. They do so to preserve an illusion of connection with the parent and to protect themselves from the danger of losing that tenuous connection. (5-6)

Thus, emotional neglect hinders the healthy development of a child and his or her identity and, as Walker further argues, it alone can lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in later stages of life. Adults suffering from PTSD often deny their adverse childhood experiences, which however prevents them from recovering and moving on with their lives (1). Walker also addresses the long-term harms emotional neglect can have on the child’s behavior and tendency to develop an addiction:

Growing up emotionally neglected is like nearly dying of thirst just outside the fenced off fountain of a parent’s kindness and interest. Emotional neglect makes children feel worthless, unlovable and excruciatingly empty, with a hunger that gnaws deeply at the center of their being, leaving them starving for human warmth and comfort—a hunger that often morphs over time into an insatiable appetite for substances and/or addictive processes. (4)

Nevertheless, emotional neglect and trauma could easily be avoided by the caregiver’s right behavior in terms of attachment and bonding. In fact, children need to learn about feelings by their parents and only those

whose caregivers respond sensitively to the child’s needs at times of distress and fear in infancy and early childhood develop secure attachments to their primary caregivers. These children can also use their caregivers as a secure base from which to explore their environment. They have better outcomes than non-securely attached children in social and emotional development, educational achievement and mental health. Early attachment relations are thought to be crucial for later social relationships and for the development of capacities for emotional and stress regulation, self-control and mentalisation ... (“Children’s Attachment”).

Thus, the first years in a human’s life are crucial and determine who somebody will become. Children who do not get the chance to develop these social and emotional skills will not be able to catch up on them when they are older, and they will have difficulties with their emotions for the rest of their lives. Because of the fact that childhood trauma is a complex form of trauma (often caused by various forms of abuse or neglect), whose effects mainly become recognizable in adulthood, there is a medical tendency to equate it with symptoms of PTSD. However, Van der Kolk criticizes this diagnosis, for it rather refers to acute traumas in adults, while children most often experience chronic traumas caused by their caregivers. He further highlights:

Multiply abused infants and children often experience developmental delays across a broad spectrum, including cognitive, language, motor, and socialization skills they tend to display very complex disturbances with a variety of different, often fluctuating, presentations. … Moreover, the PTSD diagnosis does not capture the developmental impact of childhood trauma: the complex disruptions of affect regulation, the disturbed attachment patterns, the rapid behavioral regressions and shifts in emotional states, the loss of autonomous strivings, the aggressive behavior against self and others, the failure to achieve developmental competencies; the loss of bodily regulation in the areas of sleep, food and self-care; the altered schemas of the world; the anticipatory behavior and traumatic expectations; the multiple somatic problems, from gastrointestinal distress to headaches; the apparent lack of awareness of danger and resulting self endangering behaviors; the self-hatred and self-blame and the chronic feelings of ineffectiveness. (“Developmental Trauma Disorder” 8-9)

Therefore, van der Kolk calls for a more precise diagnosis to refer to repeated traumatization during childhood and has suggested the term developmental trauma disorder (DTD), which is based on the notion that “multiple exposures to interpersonal trauma, such as abandonment, betrayal, physical or sexual assaults or witnessing domestic violence have consistent and predictable consequences that affect many areas of functioning” (10). In their study on complex trauma in children and adults, Cook et al. have identified seven primary domains of impairment observed in exposed children (2005). These include attachment (e.g. problems with boundaries), biology (e.g. somatization), affect regulation (e.g. difficulty expressing feelings), dissociation (e.g. impaired memory), behavioral regulation (e.g. aggression towards others), cognition (e.g. difficulties in attention regulation), and self-concept (e.g. shame and guilt) (392). Thus, 45

trauma in childhood can have tremendously negative effects on a child’s physical and psychological development and well-being. The problem is that often symptoms of traumatizing childhood experiences do not show until adulthood; however, if traumas are not processed or worked through appropriately during childhood, it becomes harder to tackle them once a person is grown up. Thus, emotionally impaired children tend to become emotionally impaired adults, who often do not know where their problems, such as depression, anxiety or addiction, have their roots. In (fictional) post-apocalyptic worlds, it is children who are the hope and future and the starting point for the development of a new society. However, if they have been traumatized by apocalyptic events and eventually become traumatized adults, it is doubtful that—suffering from the long-term effects of their childhood traumas—they would actually be able to build a healthy society. In fact, if traumatic experiences are not processed appropriately during childhood or adulthood, a person will not be able to move on and try to change things for the better. However, in a post-apocalyptic world it might be difficult to find someone that will help work through one’s traumas since usually not many people survive an apocalypse. What is more, people are most often concerned with other things than processing what they have experienced during or after the final cataclysm (such as surviving). Hence, childhood trauma will most likely never be worked through appropriately and those adults suffering from its symptoms will not get the chance to overcome their problems. That might even be the reason why fictional post- apocalyptic worlds are almost never imagined as being better than the old world, but rather change for the worst, including some version of an undesirable, frightening and even traumatized dystopian community or society. In this regard, it is not just individual human beings who are affected by an apocalyptic event but also a greater human collective. The dynamics of this type of trauma will be addressed in the subsequent subchapter.

4.3.2. Collective Trauma

Apart from individual survivors suffering from psychological traumas, what disastrous cataclysms and (fictional) apocalypses also create are collective socio-cultural traumas that affect a whole population or community. According to Lisa Garrigues, a collective trauma 46

thus “… happens to large groups of individuals and can be transmitted transgenerationally [historical trauma] and across communities. War, genocide, slavery, terrorism, and natural disasters can cause collective trauma … Some of the symptoms of collective trauma include rage, depression, denial, survivor guilt and internalized oppression …” (para. 1). In this regard, Scholz highlights that a collective trauma does not just affect those who are directly exposed to the cataclysm, but also those who feel connected to the social group concerned (2). In fact, when collective trauma also impacts the generations that follow, it is considered historical trauma. Examples of groups whose lives are still affected by the legacy of traumatic historical events, such as slavery, colonization and genocide, include, for example, Native American and African American communities (“Fact Sheet” 1-2). Studies have shown that historical trauma may affect psychological as well as physical health, while symptoms often manifest in suicide, alcoholism, substance abuse or distrust of white people (e.g. Mohatt et al., 2014). Thus, the impact of collective historical trauma is long-lasting and cross-generational, leading to individual psychological aftermaths. Concerning collective trauma in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, it can be argued that any destructive event causing the end of the world, or rather civilization, affects the sense of community between all members of the human race, which eventually influences the reestablishment of a new civilization. Regarding the alteration of collective identity, Erikson refers to collective trauma as

a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality. The collective trauma works its way slowly and even insidiously into the awareness of those who suffer from it, so it does not have the quality of suddenness normally associated with ‘trauma’. But it is a form of shock all the same, a gradual realization that the community no longer exists as an effective source of support and that an important part of the self has disappeared … ‘We’ no longer exist as a connected pair or as linked cells in a larger communal body. (154)

Within the concept of collective trauma, Smelser furthermore differentiates between social and cultural trauma. He defines “catastrophes as social traumas if they massively disrupt organized social life” and “society’s social structures”, leading to the breakdown of economic and political systems (37). Regarding culture as multi-layered meaning system consisting of various elements, such as values, beliefs and ideologies, Smelser also distinguishes cultural trauma, which he defines as “invasive and overwhelming event that is 47

believed to undermine or overwhelm one or several essential ingredients of a culture or the culture as a whole” (38). Since a fictional apocalypse leads to the downfall of humankind, civilization and identity, it can thus be argued that the people surviving it are affected by collective socio-cultural traumas, which are often accompanied by negative symptoms such as collective denial, forgetting and repression (42-43; 50-51). Hence, collective traumas resemble individual psychological traumas in their manifestation of symptoms, as Arthur Neal emphasizes:

The enduring effects of a trauma in the memories of an individual resemble the enduring effects of a national trauma in collective consciousness. Dismissing or ignoring the traumatic experience is not a reasonable option. … When the event is dismissed from consciousness, it resurfaces in feelings of anxiety and despair. Just as the rape victim becomes permanently changed as a result of the trauma, the nation becomes permanently changed as a result of a trauma in the social realm. (4)

In fact, while it is difficult if not impossible for a person to completely “get over” a psychological trauma due to its strong long-lasting effects, the same applies to the dynamics of collective traumas, which tend to be represented as indelible. In this respect, Smelser argues that “if the element of indelibility becomes fixed in the cultural definition of trauma, it then becomes difficult to imagine that it will be ‘worked through’ in any once-and-for-all way” (42). In other words, “… if a potentially traumatizing event cannot be endowed with negative affect (e.g., a national tragedy, a national shame, a national catastrophe), then it cannot qualify as being traumatic” (40). Another similarity between psychological and collective traumas can be found in a person’s or collective’s tendency to simultaneously wanting to forget and having to remember (53). Thus, at the psychological level, a person tries not to think about the traumatic event, but it inadvertently comes back into the mind in the form of flashbacks or nightmares. Concerning collective socio-cultural traumas, Smelser identifies a compulsion of “mass forgetting and collective campaigns” with regards to memorials:

… to memorialize is to force a memory on us by the conspicuous and continuous physical presence of a monument; at the same time a memorial also conveys the message that now that we have paid to our respects to a trauma, we are now justified in forgetting about it. (53)

This double tendency or memory is what leads to ambivalence towards collective traumas, which “sets the stage for the frequently observed tendency for generation after generation to engage in compulsive examining and reexamining, bringing up new aspects of the trauma, reinterpreting, reevaluating, and battling over symbolic significance” and eventually makes them indelible (54). Nevertheless, Alexander argues that collectives that have experienced a social or cultural trauma need to establish a new collective identity, which requires the reworking of collective memory:

This identity revision means that there will be a searching re-remembering of the collective past, for memory is not only social and fluid but deeply connected to the contemporary sense of the self. Identities are continuously constructed and secured not only by facing the present and future but also by reconstructing the collectivity’s earlier life. (22)

In this respect, most post-apocalyptic fiction depicts its survivors as being concerned with the preserving of things from before the disastrous event. This recollection of a shared past helps establish solidarity between the survivors and, as Alexander points out, “… ‘lessons’ of the trauma become objectified in monuments, museums, and collections of historical artefacts” (22-23). Hence, collective trauma caused by apocalyptic cataclysms deeply affects and alters the collective and national identity of a group or population. Similar to individual psychological trauma, collectives can suffer from PTSD and its symptoms, which is why recounting and understanding the collective’s past helps affected communities and individuals to work through their traumas. However, it is a long process that also affects the generations that follow. One rather recent apocalyptic event that has not just caused individual psychological traumas in its survivors but also a collective national trauma and break in the collective American identity are the terror attacks of 11th September 2001.

4.4. The Trauma of 9/11

The attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on the morning of September 11, 2001 represent one of the worst terrorist attacks the United States has fallen victim to till this day. Either watching the events on TV or being on site witnessing the terror first-hand, those who lived through the attacks were exposed to 49

horrifying scenes of the burning and collapsing Twin Towers, people jumping off the buildings in despair, streets covered and people breathing in ash, and shocked survivors crying in disbelief. Laying Lower Manhattan in ashes, the attacks took the lives of almost 3000 people and left more than 6000 injured. The United States should never be the same again after this unprecedented trauma; in fact, 9/11 has become the apocalypse come true of the early 21st century. Following the events, a great amount of research was done regarding the psychological impact of the traumatic events on those who survived and witnessed the attacks. In their review of studies on PTSD conducted in the wake of 9/11, Neria et al. show, among others, that “the burden of PTSD among populations exposed to 9/11 has been substantial and enduring” (14). In fact, three national studies that immediately followed the 9/11 attacks found that most of the U.S. population suffered from posttraumatic stress symptoms (Schuster et al., 2001; Schlenger et al., 2002; Silver et al., 2002). The study of Schlenger et al. is in so far important as it shows that exposure to disasters in general need not be direct in order to develop posttraumatic symptoms. In fact, what they found was that Americans who watched four to seven hours of 9/11 television coverage a day were four times more likely to develop similar symptoms than those who did not. Other studies showed that people with direct or high exposure to the attacks, including NYC and Manhattan residents, people in the WTC or Pentagon, fire fighters, as well as rescue and recovery workers, had high levels of PTSD or were at risk of developing long-term physical and psychological effects (e.g. Silver et al., 2005; Berninger et al., 2010; Jordan et al., 2004; Brackbill et al., 2009). What is more, studies on the mental impact of the attacks on children and young adults found a high PTSD prevalence in those who either lived near the WTC or experienced the death of both or one parent (e.g. Brown & Goodman, 2005; Mullett-Hume, 2008). Yet, as Neria et al. remark, in most groups studied, the level of PTSD decreased over time after the events; however, those whose rates increased significantly after five to six years included high-exposure groups, including “firefighters, rescue and recovery workers and volunteers, lower Manhattan residents and office workers, and people who were on the street or in transit in the WTC area on 9/11” (10). Thus, the 9/11 disasters did not just have psychological impacts on those who were highly or directly exposed to them, but also affected people watching the events occurring live on television or replayed in the days and weeks that followed (vicarious traumatization). 50

Yet, 9/11 not just caused psychological traumas in the survivors, but also altered the collective American psyche. Referring to it as the perhaps greatest trauma in the history of the United States, Smelser regards the apocalyptic events and the reactions that followed as example par excellence of a cultural trauma (265-267). According to him, some of its “traumatic ingredients” include the initial reaction of shock and emotional numbing to the suddenness and intensity of the attacks, as well as affective and collective reactions of fear and anxiety. He further points out the collective mourning and immediate sense of indelibility of the trauma, which not just altered the American identity but changed the whole world into a pre- and post-9/11. Other ingredients comprise the sanctification of the events with Ground Zero representing a place of pilgrimage as well as the efforts and public interest in the remembering process. Nevertheless, the shocking events also revealed other reactions to the trauma, including a great sense of national solidarity and the temporary suspension of political matters. In this regard, Smelser highlights:

In sum, the September 11 catastrophe unfolded as a fully ambivalent event– simultaneously shocking and fascinating, depressing and exhilarating, grotesque and beautiful, sullying and cleansing—and leaving the country feeling both bad and good about itself. It was a trauma to be sure, but a trauma with a rare historical twist. (269)

Nevertheless, Charles Strozier argues that the trauma of 9/11 was further intensified by the horrifying experiences and deaths of Americans as well as Iraqis and Afghans in the subsequent wars in the Middle East, for “war itself creates a deepening, aggravating trauma that doesn’t stop; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq created an ongoing double trauma on top of 9/11 (Peay, para. 22). In fact, the events of 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror have created a culture of fear in the United States that has led to paranoia and distrust against people from the Middle East. Moreover, Strozier points to the apocalyptic dimension of 9/11:

Whereas before it took an act of imagination to think about the end of history, it now takes an act of imagination not to think about it. If you’re at all aware, this awareness exists just below the surface, and an event like 9/11 brings these apocalyptic fears to the surface. (para. 34)

In this regard, he argues that since the emergence of nuclear weapons during the Second World War, the fear of an actual end of the world caused by humanity itself has become so 51

realistic that disastrous events represent an even greater threat to the human existence (31). In fact, Strozier states that some of the 9/11 witnesses who saw the buildings collapse and were caught in the dust first thought that a nuclear bomb had hit New York (43). This shows how deep the fear of a nuclear war, death, and subsequent end of civilization goes in the modern society of the 21st century. Thus, the attacks on September 11, 2001 have not just deeply impacted those directly exposed to the apocalyptic disasters but also the collective American identity. The United States have never completely recovered from the scar inflicted by the terror attacks and the wars in the Middle East have caused further psychological wounds as well as paranoia and distrust. In fact, the trauma of 9/11 has become a historical as well as trans-generational trauma as emotions about the events have been and will be communicated to the younger generations and those to come. In literature, many authors have reacted to the disastrous events with post-9/11 stories, in which they address and process the suffered psychological and collective traumas. Five of such (short) stories have been studied for this thesis and their individual analyses follow this chapter.

5. Analyzing the Post-Apocalypse: TRAUMA & SURVIVAL IN POST-9/11 SHORT FICTION

The hardest lesson in the world: Maybe it’s just that when things are gone they’re gone. They ain’t coming back. —Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain

What has been shown in the theoretical part of this thesis is that notions of the apocalypse can take many different shapes and so do literary depictions of post-apocalyptic worlds. What they all have in common, though, are survivors who have been traumatized by the catastrophic events and losses of their loves ones. In the wake of the apocalyptic events on 11th September 2001 and the subsequent war on terror, many American writers were concerned with the psychological and collective aftermaths and processed their traumas and fears about the war in post-apocalyptic fiction. As a lot of research has already been done on post-9/11 novels, the works that have been chosen for the practical part of this thesis comprise five post-apocalyptic short stories that were written shortly after 9/11 and thus represent a reaction and response to the events of that day and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What will be analyzed in these post-apocalyptic stories are, on the one hand, the characteristics of the fictional post-apocalypses the writers create and, on the other hand, the representation of the characters’ struggle to survive and stay human while trying to cope with the traumas they have suffered. Compiled by John Joseph Adams, the selected stories have been published in two different anthologies of post-apocalyptic short fiction, including Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (2015) and Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse (2015). As there is a great number of post-apocalyptic short stories following the terror attacks of September 11, the limited choice made it easier to find and decide between stories that were published shortly after the events and that are concerned with the trauma of 9/11, while depicting different fictional post-apocalyptic future scenarios. Thus, based on post- apocalyptic genre conventions and trauma theory discussed earlier in the thesis, the analysis of each short story comprises an investigation of its post-apocalyptic setting and plot as well as the depiction of the characters’ traumatic experiences, trauma symptoms, and coping behavior. 53

Three of the selected post-apocalyptic short stories have been identified as post- 9/11 stories by their authors and include James Van Pelt’s “A Flock of Birds” (2002), Mary Rickert’s “Bread and Bombs” (2003), and Carol Emshwiller’s “Killers” (2006). While Van Pelt’s story represents a reaction to 9/11 and the grief and hope that followed the events, Rickert and Emshwiller are concerned with the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq and its traumatic aftermaths. The other two short stories, which are Gene Wolfe’s “Mute” (2002) and Richard Kadrey’s “Still Life with Apocalypse” (2002), have not been explicitly designated post-9/11 stories by their authors; however, they can be read as such due to the time they were written and the implied symbolism they use. As their titles already indicate, both stories are concerned with the feelings of speechlessness and inertia the population of the United States suffered from after the terror attacks of 9/11. What is more, the authors seem to reflect on the fear of the unknown that followed the events by making their stories feel somewhat incomplete to the readers as much is left unsaid.

5.1. James Van Pelt’s “A Flock of Birds”

In James Van Pelt’s post-apocalyptic short story “A Flock of Birds” (2002), the United States falls victim to a biological terror attack, which causes the death of almost the whole population. Set two years after this apocalyptic event, the story depicts the surviving characters’ struggle to cope with their suffered traumas and come to terms with their situation. It is a story about the fear of loneliness and extinction as well as the hope that things will eventually get better again. What the author also shows is that compassion with others as well as companionship and friendship are things that can outlast an apocalypse and eventually become essential survival tools for the remaining civilization. Van Pelt wrote this short story as a reaction to the shock and grief that followed the events of 9/11 (Adams, “Interview: James Van Pelt”). Processing his feeling of helplessness and the overwhelming sense of loss and grief, what he depicts in his story is a fictional post-9/11 future, in which further terror attacks with biological weapons have turned the United States into a deserted landscape. While the human race is almost completely extinguished, other species are not affected by the infectious disease and even return from their presumed death. In Van Pelt’s story, this is what eventually raises hope 54

for the future of the human race, whereas for the readers it signifies that the United States can recover from the trauma 9/11 has caused. Told by a limited third person narrator, Van Pelt’s story is set in a post-apocalyptic Denver, Colorado, two years after tuberculosis bacteria were released during a biological terror attack, causing infections and the subsequent deaths of almost the whole U.S. population. The story follows the main protagonist Carson, who is the last bird watcher in his area and who has made it his business to keep record of the different bird types and species. Carson shares his home in Littleton with a sickly woman named Tillie Waterhouse, who seems to have lost her mind during the time the disease spread across the country. Even though he does not know if what she physically suffers from is infectious tuberculosis, he takes care of her and tries to find medicine to make her feel better. In fact, what becomes obvious in the course of the story is that both Tillie and Carson struggle with the psychological aftermaths and symptoms of the traumatic experiences they have made, and while Tillie seems to be stuck in the past, Carson is the one who worries about the future of the world. At first, the post-apocalyptic world Van Pelt depicts in “A Flock of Birds” is neither frightening nor dystopian. In fact, it seems to be rather peaceful, with “no traffic” and the “the air above the Denver skyline … [being] crystalline” (342). There are birds in the sky and “pleasant heat” coming from the September sun (341). The description of the Colorado landscape further evokes an atmosphere of peace and calm:

On the horizon to the west, the mountains rose steeply, only a remnant of last winter’s snow clinging to the tops of the tallest peaks. Fifty yards away at the bottom of a short bluff, the river itself, at its lowest level of the season, rolled sluggishly. Long gravel tongues protruded into the water where little long-legged birds searched for insects between the rockets. A bald eagle swept low over the water going south. (348)

Thus, the world Van Pelt’s characters live in appears like a real paradise; however, what the reader learns in the course of the story is that the peacefulness of the post-apocalyptic world came at a price and is the result of the almost complete extinction of the American civilization due to a tuberculosis epidemic caused by the spreading of infectious agents as biological weapon of terrorists. Tuberculosis is a contagious infection that mainly attacks the lungs and is characterized by symptoms that, among others, include coughing that lasts several weeks, coughing of blood, pain with breathing or coughing, fever, night 55

sweats, and skin swellings or bumps (N.N, “Tuberculosis”). There are two types of TB infections, which are latent TB and active TB. With latent TB, the bacteria stay inactive and cause no symptoms. Different to active TB, this type is not contagious. Active TB needs treatment over a long period of time and if many people are infected at the same time, medication and antibiotics might not suffice to treat and rescue everybody. This is what most likely happened to most of the American population in Van Pelt’s short story. In fact, there are constant reminders of the time the disease spread across the country, such as brochures and posters, giving advice on how to behave and act correctly in order not to catch the disease (Van Pelt 352). In addition, even though the horror is not immediately obvious in Van Pelt’s story, it is always subtly present or lurking in the shadows, for instance when Carson breaks into some of the deserted houses in his neighborhood in search for medication and only finds “bed sheets … [covering] long lumps” (355). However, for him personally, what is even more horrifying about this post- apocalyptic world is the notion of being one of the last people on earth, and what he fears most is the complete extinction of the human species, for “extinct meant you’d never come back. No hope” (349). His unease about being alone also becomes evident in the following passage:

Carson stopped at the distribution center on the way home. The parking lot was empty. He wandered through the warehouse, between the high stacks, down the longs rows. No manager. No assistant. Last year Carson had hauled a diesel generator into a theater near his house. He’d rigged it to power a projector so he could watch a movie on the big screen, but the empty room with all the empty seats gave him the creeps. He’d fled the theater without even turning off the generator. The warehouse felt like that. As he walked toward the exit, his strides became faster and faster until he was running. (353)

Hence, he feels overwhelmed and frightened by the emptiness and tranquility the epidemic has left behind. In this regard, Van Pelt’s story shows that human beings need to socialize and communicate with others in order not to lose their minds; however, in a post-apocalyptic world devoid of humans this is not easily possible. What is more, Van Pelt’s main characters Carson and Tillie both suffer from posttraumatic stress and the aftermaths of their trauma, which shows in different ways. The reader learns that Carson found Tillie walking around with her suitcase through the Botanical Gardens in Denver during the time the infection was spreading (343). The fact 56

that her “strikingly blue eyes … hardly ever focused on anything” and that she always calls Carson “Bob Robert” or waits for the pool man to come indicates that she must have some mental problem that makes her confuse the past with the present (343). In fact, she seems stuck in the past and unable to move forward, which is why she never changes her nightgown and waits for flowers to blossom instead of taking care of it herself by planting the seeds Carson brings her (343). The fragile emotional state of the fifty-something woman is furthermore emphasized by her “little-girl voice”, the “red-rimmed [and] watery” eyes and her inability to concentrate on something for more than an hour (344). She apparently does not want to talk about what happened to her because whenever “he [Carson] asked her about her past, she’d be unresponsive for days” (344). At one point in the story, however, Tillie recalls, “When it started, I watched TV all the time. That’s all I did, was watch TV. My friend’s watched TV. They played it at work. ‘A Nation Under Quarantine’ the newscasters called it. And then I couldn’t watch any more.” (354) By saying this, she reveals that she was overwhelmed by the whole situation and did not know what to do. She further says, “I was innocent”, which reinforces her feeling of despair and incomprehension about the events (354). In fact, this short remark is a powerful one as it also reflects what the U.S. population thought about the innocent people who were killed during the terror attacks of 9/11. Thus, Tillie was deeply traumatized by the apocalyptic events and many of the things she immediately suffered and still suffers from two years later, including sleeping and concentration problems, being confused as well as avoiding memories of the events, are symptoms of PTSD. What is more, there is even a direct reference to the year 2001 and the terror attacks in Van Pelt’s story, namely in Carson’s video recording of the New York Marathon, which “was only a month after that first terrorist thing” (345). With its depiction of a huge human crowd moving into the same direction and holding up American flags, the video visualizes the feeling of national solidarity that followed the events of 9/11. This is furthermore emphasized by the announcer, who calls the marathon “a celebration of life” and says, “In the shadow of disaster, athletes have gathered to say we can’t be beat in the long run” (356). However, it can also be argued that as “a celebration of numbers”, the many runners of the Marathon represent the exact opposite of the deserted post-apocalyptic world Van Pelt’s characters live in, which makes it even more frightening to the reader (345). Concerning coping mechanisms, it is not just Tillie 57

who tries to avoid remembering the cataclysmic events, but also Carson who reacts to his companion’s sudden flashback in an emotional way:

Carson blinked his eyes shut against the burning. That’s where he didn’t want to go, into those memories. It’s what he didn’t think about when he sat in his camp chair counting birds. It’s what he didn’t picture when he bolted solar cells onto the roof, when he gathered wood for the new wood stove he’d installed in the living room, when he pumped gasoline out of underground tanks at silent gas stations. Sometimes he had a hard time imagining anything was wrong at all. When he drove, the car still responded to his touch. The wind whistled tunelessly past his window. How could the world still be so familiar and normal and yet so badly skewed? (354)

His reaction suggests that he has also not come to terms with the past and that he is still struggling to fully grasp what has happened. Thus, both him and Tillie have difficulties accepting that things will never be the same; however, while Tillie seems to be stuck in the past and seems to be not able to move forward, Carson is the one who goes outside in the hope of finding bird species that have survived the apocalypse. In fact, he has made it his business to keep record of the birds and this is also what gives him peace of mind and, at the same time, distracts him from their hopeless situation. Considering Van Pelt’s story as reaction to 9/11, it can be argued that Tillie represents the grief and loss many people suffered from after the events, while Carson stands for the hope that the United States will be able to recover from the trauma of 9/11. Van Pelt’s story furthermore shows that in a post-apocalyptic world, it is not just food and shelter that are essential tools for survival and overcoming one’s trauma, but also friendship and companionship. The way Carson takes care of Tillie shows that he cares for her and worries about her health. This becomes evident when he examines her body and looks for symptoms of tuberculosis:

Her neck was clammy, and underneath the covers she was sweating. She smelled warm and damp. Clumsily he unbuttoned her nightgown’s top buttons, then he moved the light so he could see better. No rash. She wasn’t wearing a bra, so he could see that the tops of her breasts looked smooth. … Her eyes moved under her eyelids. Maybe she dreamed of other places, the places she would never talk to him about. Gently he rubbed his fingertips over the skin below her collarbones. No boils. (351).

The fact that Carson reacts to her human smell and touches her body with great care indicates that he has not been close to another person for a long time and that he misses 58

this physical closeness and warmth. However, even though his body is so close to Tillie’s, he cannot reach her on an emotional level because her mind and thoughts are far away. Nevertheless, he feels responsible for the woman and is glad to have her as companion. In fact, what he fears most is losing her to the infection and being all alone:

What would he do if she left? He leaned against the car, his hands deep in his pockets, chin on his chest. What if she were gone? So many had departed: the girl at the magazine stand, the counter people at the bagel shop, his coworkers. What was it he used to do? He could barely remember, just like he couldn’t picture his wife’s face clearly anymore. All of them, slipping away. (352)

Thus, Carson still suffers from deep grief and might even have feelings of guilt because he is the one who survived them all without being able to help. This might also be the reason why he desperately tries to rescue Tillie. The importance of friendship in Van Pelt’s short story is also represented by Carson’s relation to the warehouse manager, whom he regularly visits when he needs food or medicine. This man reveals to Carson that knowing him sixteen months makes him his oldest friend because he states, “There isn’t anyone alive that I’ve known longer” (347). In real life, the length of knowing somebody like a warehouse manager would most likely not count as friendship; however, in a post-apocalyptic world devoid of humans any contact to other trustworthy survivors becomes extremely important. Thus, friendship gets another value in a post-apocalypse and knowing each other’s names does not matter when other things, like survival and helping each other, are of more importance. This is emphasized by the warehouse manager who wrongly quotes a famous line of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet when he says, “A rose by any other moniker, as the say” (347). In fact, this is not the only time the warehouse manager refers to Shakespeare, for there are two other instances in Van Pelt’s story, where he distorts famous lines of Shakespeare plays. When he brings Carson the antibiotics against his pneumonia, he states, “Birnam Wood has come to Elsinore”, and Carson corrects him by saying, “Isn’t it Dunsinane that Birnam comes to?” (359). This quote is taken from MacBeth and refers to the defeat and death of MacBeth by Birnam Wood. Thus, the warehouse manager refers to himself as Birnam Wood coming to kill the disease that wants to take the life of Carson. The last instance of Shakespeare quotes occurs at the end of the story when the warehouse manager refers to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, which he watched the night before. 59

However, he again wrongly quotes, “If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come it will be now” (360). What this quote means in Hamlet is that it is not time for Horatio to die. When the manager then adds the rest of the quote by saying, “The readiness is all, they say” (360), what he means is that it is not important when a person dies, but that he or she is ready. Thus, what the manager wants to say is that a person need not be afraid of dying if he or she is prepared for it. The fact that he refers to himself and his plan to leave the warehouse and move on represents his desire to leave behind the paralyzing past and start into a hopeful future (360). He knows that he could die at any time, no matter if he stayed or left, and so he chooses hope over grief. By having his characters use quotes of one of the most famous and important poets of all times, what Van Pelt seems to highlight is that if literature is appreciated and remembered in a post-apocalyptic world, humanity will not be doomed and there is hope for a new civilization that can build on the values of the old world. However, there is yet another passage in the story where Shakespeare is referred to. When Carson is watching birds one day, he recalls the history of the starlings in the United States:

He wondered what the distribution manager would make of the birds. After all, they had something in common. If it weren’t for Shakespeare, the starlings wouldn’t be here at all. In the early 1890s, a club of New York Anglophiles thought it would be comforting if all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays lived in America. They tried nightingales and chaffinches and various thrushes, but none succeeded like the 100 European starlings they released in Central Park. By the last count there were over two hundred million of them. He’d read an article in one of his bird books that called them ‘avian cockroaches’. (348)

In fact, starlings are considered one of the most destructive and invasive birds as they raid fields and compete with native species (Langston, para. 1). In Van Pelt’s story, Carson also considers these birds as invaders, “like infection, spreading across the country” (348). However, he also discovers a native species in the trees, which knows how to stand its ground against the starlings. Considering the theme of extinction, this passage can thus further be considered as allegory of the resilience of the American or Western civilization. In this regard, the invading starlings represent the enemy and threat to the United States, while the native species, which cannot be chased away that easily, symbolizes the American or Western population. Thus, what this passage suggests is that so long as there 60

are representatives of native species or, in other words, scattered survivors of the epidemic, there is hope for the future of the post-9/11 United States. In fact, hope is an important theme in Van Pelt’s post-apocalyptic short story and it is what prevails at the end. During his bird watches, Carson discovers three strange birds he has never seen before, but which still look familiar to him and which he believes to be foreign (349-350). He gets excited because he thinks that “if he could add a new bird to his list, maybe that would make things better. A new bird! He could concentrate on that. Something good to cling to” (342). Thus, the idea of discovering an unknown species and keeping record of it gives him the feeling of his post-apocalyptic life having a purpose. Subsequently, he tries to find out about the species in bird books he takes from the library, but he cannot find anything about them (352-353). Some days later, when he already has the same symptoms of pneumonia as Tillie, he has a dream about John Audubon, whom he asks for help with the identification of the birds. John James Audubon was an 18th century French ornithologist, who became famous for his drawings and paintings of North American birds and his mission to protect them (“John James Audubon”). Continuing his work, the National Audubon Society was founded in 1896 and has been concerned with bird conservation ever since (“About Us”). In Van Pelt’s story, Audubon unfortunately does not tell Carson the name of the bird, but he tells him something about its history:

They flew in flocks that filled the sky for days. Outside of Louisville, the people were all in arms. The banks of the Ohio [sic.] were crowded with men and boys, incessantly shooting at the birds. Multitudes were destroyed, and for a week or more the population fed on no other flesh … (356)

This is all the information Carson gets, except for a painting of the bird with “… flames below it” (357). Waking up from his feverish dream, he tries to find antibiotics for him and Tillie, whose condition seems to get worse by the minute. When he eventually finds penicillin in a neighbor’s house, he returns and shares them with Tillie. Shortly afterwards, he has a revelation about the strange bird:

He put his head back and stared at the ceiling. Swirls and broad lines marked the plaster. For a moment he thought they were clouds, and in the clouds he saw a bird, the narrow-winged one that he’d seen by the river, the one Audubon said he knew, and suddenly, Carson knew too. He’d always known, and he laughed. No wonder it looked familiar. Of course he couldn’t find it in his bird books. (358). 61

This is the turning point in Van Pelt’s short story, as things start to change for the better. First, the penicillin seems to work, as Tillie’s symptoms slowly improve. When Carson realizes that they need more antibiotics in order to fully recover, the distribution manager knocks at the door and tells him that he has found the needed medication to cure their pneumonia (358-359). Then, it is Tillie who has changed her clothes and announces, “I’m tired of waiting for flowers, Carson. I’m going to plant something” (360). This sudden change in Tillie’s behavior is in so far important as it represents her development from a traumatized woman that cannot come to terms with the past into a person with new hopes and goals for the future. Moments later, Carson’s personal flicker of hope is represented by the flock of birds in the sky, which have “narrow wings” and “red breasts” (360). He identifies them as passenger pigeons and wonders where they have been all those years (360). Passenger pigeons were the most abundant bird species endemic to North America in the 18th century and were eventually hunted to extinction during the 19th century (“Passenger Pigeon”). What made these birds so unique is that they travelled in huge flocks that would darken the skies for days and this is exactly what Audubon refers to in Carson’s dream. Hence, the fact that this extinct bird species returns in Van Pelt’s story represents the final flicker of hope that the American civilization will recover from the aftermaths of the epidemic and, in a broader sense, it evokes hope in the reader that the United States will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes and grief the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have left behind. Thus, Van Pelt’s post-apocalyptic short fiction “A Flock of Birds” is a story about grief and hope, loss and friendship, as well as extinction and resurgence. What survives in his post-9/11 world are the positive aspects of humanity and the good in man. As both a response to and a symptom of the apocalyptic events of 9/11, Van Pelt’s story is one of hope for the future of the United States and its population. In fact, this is something that sets it apart from some of the other post-9/11 short stories analyzed in this thesis, for their authors create terrifying post-apocalyptic worlds where human values and hope do not necessarily survive.

5.2. Richard Kadrey’s “Still Life with Apocalpyse”

One such story is Richard Kadrey’s 2002 post-apocalyptic short fiction “Still Life with Apocalypse”, in which he depicts how society is trying to regain control in the chaos a man-made apocalypse has left behind. Due to the date of publication and the loss of control and security the United States and the rest of the world suffered from at that time, the story can be regarded as reaction to the events of 9/11 (even though this is not explicitly stated by the author). Most likely set in a post-apocalyptic United States, Kadrey’s story is told by a nameless first-person narrator, whose reaction to the end of the world and the terrifying post-apocalyptic landscape and circumstances seems rather indifferent and even cynical at times. However, read in terms of trauma theory, his apathetic emotional state can be identified as psychological aftermath of the traumatic experiences he has made and the events he has witnessed. Concerning the aftermath of 9/11, the reason why Kadrey’s story feels somewhat incomplete and missing important information reflects the American population’s lack of knowledge and inability to fully grasp what has happened and eventually caused the terror attacks. In fact, it can be argued that trauma and its psychological aftermaths not just play an important role in the story itself, but also on a superior level as it can be interpreted as post-apocalyptic symptom of the author. According to Adams, Kadrey got the idea for the story from “a dream image of horse carcasses being dragged from canals under industrial lights” (289). As nightmares are often an unconscious reaction to traumatic events, it is likely that the author’s dream was related to the horrors of 9/11, and to work through his trauma he eventually wrote “Still Life with Apocalypse”. However, as there is no evidence for what really triggered Kadrey’s dream, this interpretation might also be misleading. Nevertheless, while the story shows what could have happened to the world if things had gone differently at some point in history, it can also be regarded as warning that a final apocalypse will not be one single event, but rather comes in small catastrophes that are caused by humanity itself. With his title “Still Life with Apocalypse”, Kadrey offers his readers “a snapshot of life after everything has fallen apart—about the people left behind and the jobs they do to fill their days, about the poor slobs who have to clean up the mess at the end of the world” (Adams 289). According to MacMillan, a snapshot is “a short description that tells 63

you what a particular place or situation is like at a particular time” (“Snapshot”). Thus, what Kadrey refers to with the word “snapshot” most likely concerns the shortness of the piece (about 3000 words). However, the reason why he refers to it as “Still Life” might also have to do with the fact that throughout the story there is no direct speech or dialogue between characters (of whom one is even mute). It is just the first-person narrator telling the readers about the post-apocalyptic world he lives in. In fact, Kadrey seems to argue that what an apocalypse might lead to is a post-apocalyptic world in which nobody talks and everything is quiet and still. Yet, the title also adds another layer of meaning to the story. In art, a still life is a painting that depicts “anything that does not move or is dead” (“Still Life”). Thus, what painters of still lifes portray are inanimate things and everyday objects, such as flowers, books, wine and food. Often based on symbolism, the function of these paintings is to celebrate the material pleasure of such things and, at the same time, warn about their ephemerality as well as the shortness of life in general (“Still Life”). Regarded as reminder of mortality, such paintings are generally referred to as memento mori or vanitas in art terms. Apart from reminding the viewers of their mortality, a vanitas furthermore addresses the “worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures” (“Vanitas”). Considering these concepts, the short story’s title as well as the story itself thus get a much deeper meaning. For one thing, what Kadrey refers to and warns about is the fragility of human life and that it does not take a lot to destroy everything. Concerning the depiction of inanimate things, the dead animals that are dragged from the canals and pools represent a horrifying traumatizing imagery, both for the characters who have to do it as well as for the readers. For another thing, the fact that in Kadrey’s story important cultural things, like books, are used to make fire and people are killed for the sake of their houses or belongings can be regarded as warning of the possibility that in a post- apocalyptic world knowledge and life itself might not matter anymore and survival stands above humanity. Kadrey’s short story is told by an unnamed first-person narrator who is most likely male and part of a community that is in charge of removing the bodies of dead animals and humans from the canals and tar pits. He also collects remains of the old world for an institution that is called “Information Retrieval” (290). As he does not give an indication of a specific place or country, the readers do not know where Kadrey’s short story takes place. Yet, due to the fact that it is (most probably) a post-9/11 story and Kadrey is an 64

American author, it is likely that what is depicted is some city or urban area in the United States. Another thing that is not explicitly mentioned by the narrator is the nature of the ultimate apocalypse or cataclysm; however, the narrator explains that what has led to the downfall of civilization was triggered by human aggression, ignorance and recklessness:

It started in New York. Or London. Mumbai, possibly. A minor traffic accident— just a fender bender—and someone missed a meeting, which meant someone else couldn’t send a fax, which made someone else miss a plane. That someone got into an argument with the cabbie and was shot. No one knows by whom. Whatever happened, the shooting sparked a riot. TV cameras broadcast the riot live to a country so knotted with fury and tension that riots broke out from Maine to Hawaii. When the footage hit the satellites, riots spontaneously exploded around the world. (290-291)

He further recalls trying to find an explanation for the sudden explosion of violence on earth and subsequent loss of control many blamed “terrorist cells”, “a biblical plague” or other Gods (291). Nevertheless, regardless of the cause, it seems as if Kadrey wanted to say that the crumbling of civilization was not the fault of one person or nation, but that everybody was to blame. At the same time, this can be considered a warning to the society of the 21st century, which tends to be ignorant of its own ignorance and often puts the blame on everyone else but itself. With the death of many people during the riots or possible civil wars, what the survivors in “Still Life with Apocalypse” are left with is a devastated post-apocalyptic world, which has become a deserted wasteland covered with pinkish “stagnant pools” that are filled with “old engine oil” and “freon” that rises from “forgotten nukes” (290). These tar pits can form at any time and, except for the smell, resemble water holes, which is why many animals (as well as some humans) get trapped in them and die. In fact, there seems to be a lot of water everywhere as many buildings are submerged and the narrator has to swim in order to find what he is looking for (290). However, he never explicitly mentions why there is so much water; yet, what becomes obvious is that the post- apocalyptic world he lives in is a comfortless and dangerous one with death at every corner. The narrator furthermore mentions a blue-tinted light that lights up the tar pits and most likely comes from industrial lights (290). There is not much natural sunlight as “half the cities in the world [are] still burning [and] the sky is mostly a swirling soup of ash” (291). This imagery creates a spooky, mysterious, and gothic-like atmosphere, which is 65

further intensified by the fact that it sometimes rains fish, stones, or Barbie dolls (292). The raining of animals, particularly fish, is a real meteorological phenomenon caused by heavy storms or tornadoes while stones falling from the sky might be small meteors. Both scenarios are frightening and, at the same time, realistic and fitting for a horrifying post- apocalyptic setting. However, what is rather unlikely, even in a post-apocalyptic world, is the raining of Barbie dolls. In fact, this must be regarded as cynical remark on the downfall of popular (American) culture after an apocalypse has extinguished modern civilization. Concerning the social conditions in Kadrey’s story, those who have survived the apocalypse have formed post-apocalyptic communities and established a type of controlling ruling body, which seems to feel compelled to keep records of objects and remains of the old world in order to maintain a sense of control in the midst of the chaos. The narrator cynically regards this as “the last gasp of bureaucracy” (292); however, the desire to collect objects of the time before the apocalypse is only human and something that needs to be done in order to establish a new collective identity. Nevertheless, what the narrator of Kadrey’s short story does not know is the exact reason why the government wants people to gather remains and hand them in for the process of cataloguing. For him and the others, “It’s something to do”, something that gives meaning to their lives and fills their days (292). It almost seems as if the government thinks that as long as there is work to keep people busy, the end of the remaining civilization can be procrastinated. This impression is also emphasized by the fact that it does not matter which things the people turn in because the government just wants “anything useful” (290). However, as this is not further explained, it does not become clear which objects might be useful in the post-apocalyptic world the narrator lives in. Yet, what is apparently not of interest or use (for the new civilization) is the preservation of books as people “keep warm by looting the libraries …, burning first the old periodicals, then the card catalogs, bestsellers and the self-help book, finally working … [their] way up to the first editions” (291). In a post- apocalyptic world, survival is most important; however, books should be the first thing to preserve because they are the connection to the time before the apocalypse. Furthermore, the survivors could also read to be distracted and escape their horrifying situation; yet, by burning these cultural artifacts they extinguish knowledge, collective memory, and the past itself. Hence, they will not be able to learn from the mistakes the former civilization made and it is this ignorance that makes Kadrey’s post-apocalyptic 66

society no different from the one that caused the apocalypse. This is further emphasized by the narrator cooking salmon “over an autographed copy of The Great Gatsby”, which can be regarded as symbol of the downfall of American culture and the American Dream. It also shows that many objects that are considered precious by a modern civilization would be of no value in a post-apocalyptic world, where survival comes first. Thus, the government in “Still Life with Apocalypse” only tries to preserve regular everyday objects from the past that might be useful for the present and future civilizations. Nevertheless, it seems as if Kadrey’s post-apocalyptic society has not been able to come to terms with its past yet, and because of dismissing the traumatic experience it cannot begin to work through its cultural trauma. However, it is not just the society and collective that suffers from traumatic aftermaths, but also Kadrey’s first-person narrator. In fact, even though many of the things he says are rather cynical, there are certain remarks that can be read and interpreted as manifestations of posttraumatic stress symptoms. First, the fact that he wishes that there had been a final cataclysm, “a war, a plague or some new, grand Chernobyl”, signals that he would need somebody or something to blame in order to accept what happened (290). Thus, he cannot find his piece of mind and this makes it more difficult for him, if not impossible, to come to terms with the past, work through his trauma and move on. He furthermore feels disoriented and without control, which is why he states, “I can’t say how long it’s been since the world went to pieces. All the clocks seem to have stopped” (291). The fact that he does not know whether the clocks really stopped reinforces his apparent disorientation and, at the same time, makes the reader wonder about the truth of his narration because even if there were no more clocks after an apocalypse, people would find a way to keep track of the time. Nevertheless, his feeling of disorientation might just be a symptom of posttraumatic stress and repressed trauma, while it can also be regarded as reference to 9/11 and reflection of how disoriented the American population felt afterwards. However, since it is never mentioned when the apocalyptic events took place in Kadrey’s story, the narrator might also have been born or grown up sometime during the end of civilization and only fragmentarily heard about it—simply because Kadrey’s post-apocalyptic society is traumatized as well and represses its memory of the events. This could thus explain the narrator’s lack of knowledge concerning how much time has passed since the apocalypse. Another likely posttraumatic symptom is represented by his 67

emotional numbness and indifference towards the traumatizing experiences he makes on his trips to gather remains:

Once, I came up in a police records vault, surrounded by mug shots and photos of murder scenes and rapes. I came up in an IRS office where a dissatisfied citizen had gutted an auditor, then placed the bureaucrat’s viscera on a photocopier. I swam through hundreds of grainy duplicates of his liver and intestines. (290)

Moreover, he recalls killing a man because he wanted to own his container and “still … slice[s] and dice[s] the occasional house crasher” whose meat he eats (292). The way he describes these horrifying scenes and the words he uses signifies that these things leave him cold and emotionally untouched. He does them because he needs to survive; however, it almost seems as if he finds pleasure in killing and collecting body parts. It could be that he has not been able to develop a sense of compassion in the midst of the chaos; however, due to the fact that the reader does not get any information on the narrator’s life before the traumatizing apocalyptic events, the real reason for his emotional state remains untold. Nevertheless, at one point the narrator remarks, “I’m not fool enough to say that I’m happier since the world went away, but except for the rains of stones, I’m no more miserable” (292). Thus, it seems as if the end of the world has not changed much for him and he has accepted his situation. For the reader, however, the lack of information about the narrator’s past makes it rather difficult to sympathize with him and understand the situation he is in. Yet, similar to Van Pelt’s protagonist, what seems to be of importance for Kadrey’s narrator is companionship, for he shares his container with a mute girl named Natasha. He describes her as being skillful with killing intruders, making clothes, growing herbs and decorating their place (292). However, he also knows that what they have is not “a typical romance” but rather a matter of practicality, as she has skills he does not have and vice versa (292). What their arrangement shows is that during and after the man- made downfall of civilization, it has become difficult for the narrator to trust in others and become emotionally attached. This can be interpreted as yet another symptom of his trauma and might apply to the other survivors as well. Nevertheless, he seems to be glad not to be alone and have a companion even though he cannot talk with his mute companion. In fact, Natasha’s muteness might be a psychosomatic symptom of her own repressed trauma, while it may also represent the shock the events of 9/11 have caused 68

and the population’s difficulty to talk about what has happened. Much like the American people, Natasha continues with her life after witnessing the traumatic events, but she has been changed by them and is not able to fully trust anymore. Nevertheless, the fact that both are part of a community might give them a certain feeling of safety, which could be something the narrator did not have before the world fell into pieces. What is more, he does not seem to be afraid of what the future holds for him and his fellow survivors. They know that they could die every moment—falling into one of the tar pits or being killed by other survivors—yet, they try to make the best of their situation, for example by spending their evenings watching cars sink into the pools (293). In fact, Kadrey’s post-apocalyptic world seems like a hopeless on and so does his narrator. Without hope, he cannot be more than cynical about their future, which is why he also makes a joke about their own extinction when he asks, “Will the last person on the planet please turn off the lights?” (293). Thus, Kadrey’s first-person narrator is, on the one hand, a person the reader feels pity for, while, on the other hand, his indifference towards killing and death evokes a feeling of horror and disgust. What is more, the fact that he might be traumatized and suffering from posttraumatic stress symptoms also makes him an unreliable narrator because the reader cannot rely on his view of the world, which is compromised and would explain why there is so much information missing in the story. However, Kadrey’s narrator does not lie or prevaricate on purpose; he just tells the readers about the way he perceives the post-apocalyptic world around him. In fact, it can be argued that the many things he cannot explain or fully grasp reflect the post-9/11 atmosphere and the feelings of helplessness, dumbness and terror following the events. Even though Kadrey’s post-apocalyptic short story does not have a lot of plot or characteristic epiphany moment, what makes it so frightening for the readers are the things that are not said and that are left open for interpretation. Yet, it is mainly the dreaded imagination of a man-made downfall of civilization that might have been caused by some triggering event like a terror attack as well as the depiction of a horrifying post- apocalyptic landscape without hope for a better future that leaves behind an unpleasant feeling in the readers. What is more, humanity and the values of the old world do not survive in Kadrey’s post-apocalyptic short story, and the very fact that this might really happen after an apocalypse is what is most feared by modern society.

5.3. Gene Wolfe’s “Mute”

Feelings of speechlessness and inertia also play a role in Gene Wolfe’s 2002 post- apocalyptic short story “Mute”, which depicts the psychological aftermaths two child survivors suffer from after experiencing multiple traumatic events. Told by a third-person narrator, G. Wolfe’s story is about two siblings who return home after an unknown apocalyptic event has wiped out almost all of humanity. What they find, however, is an empty house with a muted television and the ghost of their dead father haunting the place. Lonely and isolated from the rest of the world, they eventually decide to stay and slowly grow up in a place they cannot escape anymore. G. Wolfe claims that he wrote the story “to show that horror need not wallow in blood and wrap itself in the bowels of its victims, that loneliness, isolation, and vulnerability can be more than sufficient” (Gregson, para. 4). In this respect, the story can be read as horror story depicting a nightmare vision of two young survivors while, at the same time, it represents a possible post-apocalyptic future scenario with an unknown cause and an obscure system of authority. What is more, G. Wolfe shows what traumatic effects neglect and social isolation can have on young children. By using strong symbols and allegories to depict and reflect the protagonists’ emotional state, he creates a story that evokes sympathy for the children’s situation while leaving the reader with a feeling of unease and fear enhanced by the unknown. Asked about the reason for writing “Mute”, G. Wolfe states that he got the idea for the story while watching a muted television show, which is something he often does because “at times, it can be interesting to try to figure out just what is going on …” (Adams, “Gene Wolfe”). This already indicates that many things in his story are left unsaid and the reader might not get answers to all the questions that may arise. Moreover, due to the date of publication, the story can also be considered a reaction to the events of 9/11 and the subsequent feelings of inertia and speechlessness many Americans had after the attacks. In fact, people were left with many open questions as to what had really happened and who to blame for the tragedy. This lack of knowledge created an unsettling feeling in the American population and eventually led to anxiety and paranoia. In “Mute”, G. Wolfe seems to reflect on this post-9/11 atmosphere by not giving his reader all the information he or she would need to completely make sense of the story. He furthermore reinforces this impression by having his traumatized child protagonists suffer from 70

fragmented memories, which makes it almost impossible for them to understand what has happened. In fact, it is already the beginning of the short story which indicates that something about the world the two child protagonists Jill and Jimmy live in is not the way it should be:

Jill was not certain it was a bus at all, although it was shaped like a bus and of a bus-like color. To begin with (she said to herself) Jimmy and I are the only people. If it’s a school bus, why aren’t there any other kids? And if it’s a pay-when-you- get-on bus, why doesn’t anybody get on? Besides, there was a sign that said BUS STOP, and it didn’t. (G. Wolfe 354)

In this very first scene, Jill’s inner monologue reveals that she and her brother are all alone, going somewhere they apparently do not know. The fact that Jill wonders about the bus and his unusual conduct means that she knows what buses are normally used for. This could be interpreted as the first hint at a post-apocalyptic setting because old means of transport would probably be used for other purposes if the world really ended. Jill’s knowledge about buses might also indicate that she was born before the unknown apocalypse took place and that she survived it. Since she is not sure whether the bus really is a bus, it might also be argued that the bus ride seems like a ride into hell to the children and their driver like the personified devil who is taking them there. This is also emphasized by the description of the street they are driving on, which is “narrow, cracked and broken ... Trees closed above it to shut out the sun, relented for a moment or two, then closed again. As it seemed, forever” (354). Thus, the further the children go the darker, the more frightening and the emptier the world seems to get, for “there were no cars on the road, no trucks or SUVs, and no other buses ... there were no girls and no horses” (354). It can be argued that the sight of such a deserted landscape would already evoke an uneasy feeling in adults, but for children this experience would even be more frightening, if not even traumatizing. Even though there is no explicit mentioning of what caused the probable end of civilization in the story, the fact that the landscape is intact but devoid of humans might indicate that some invisible infectious disease or epidemic has annihilated humanity. As every word is used for a specific purpose in a short story, the coughing of the driver might be an indicator for such an apocalyptic scenario (355); however, it is the only possible evidence for that interpretation. 71

During their ride, the driver points out the place where the children’s mother is buried. The fact that the driver knows about their mother and can also locate her grave could mean that he has some kind of relation with the children and is not unknown to them. Another, more likely, interpretation could be that he knew their parents and is now taking the children back to where they used to live. When they arrive at the house, he says to them, “This here’s your papa’s place. ... He’ll be around somewhere, and glad to see you. You be good kids so he’s not sorry he was glad, you hear?” (356). Thus, it is likely that the driver has been instructed (maybe by their father) to bring them home from a place that remains unmentioned throughout the story. Moreover, the above sentence of the driver almost sounds like a threat and could indicate that he has authority over them, which might also have to do with the place they have been staying at. The fact that the driver refers to the house as the place of their father only, could mean that the mother has been dead for a long time and probably fell victim to the deadly epidemic or other apocalyptic event, leaving behind the father and their little children. This is also emphasized by Jill not being able to recall a clear memory of her mother, for “no clear image would come, no tone of voice or remembered words” (355). By saying that their father might not be glad to see them again, the driver reveals that the father might have decided to give the children away after their mother had died, maybe to give them the chance of growing up in a safer place. However, another interpretation could be that they were taken away by order of some unknown regime, which tried to save the children of the country from a possible infectious disease that wiped out humanity. This would explain why Jimmy, when comforting Jill on the loss of her storybook, says that “maybe they’ll send it.” (355) Hence, the “they” in this sentence might refer to a group of survivors or the members of a new regime who took care of the two children either because the father was not able to or to save them from whatever caused the lives of the rest of the population. Either way, the driver’s apparent power over the children can be regarded as strong indication for a post-apocalyptic system of authority. Thus, up until this point in the story, the reader has learned that the children have been staying at some unknown place; yet, what is not explicitly mentioned is how long they were gone, why they were brought there and why they return home. G. Wolfe seems to deliberately have kept this information in the dark to create an unsettling and mysterious atmosphere that evokes an uneasy feeling in the reader. It appears as if he 72

wanted to raise awareness of the fact that there are things that will always remain untold. By leaving open questions, he seems to reflect on the aftermath of 9/11, which left people puzzled and irritated about what had happened. Yet, apart from having been told to return home, another likely reason for the children in “Mute” to come back could be that they have become too old to be allowed to stay with the group any longer or they might even have infected themselves with the deadly disease. Yet, no matter the reason, kicking somebody out of a group represents a rather anti-social behavior and implies that the children might not have experienced love or affection by the members of the group or regime. This is also emphasized by “all the worldly goods” the children were allowed to take in their bags as well as the fact that Jill could pick up hers easily (356). Thus, the children do not have many things they can call their own, which could have two reasons. It is either that there are not many worldly goods left in the post-apocalyptic world they live in or that they were not allowed to possess anything. This is also left open for interpretation. Yet, the fact that the readers do not learn anything about the children’s whereabouts or the people they grew up with might also be a sign of the children repressing memories about traumatic experiences they have made. In this regard, it can be assumed that the siblings have experienced neglect and rejection by those who were supposed to take care of them (the members of the group or regime). Thus, being taken away from their father and growing up with people who most likely did not love them (and who maybe casted them out), the children have been deprived of the chance to develop attachment skills, which has made them mistrust anyone but each other. One symptom of the traumatic experiences the children have had to go through is represented by the ghost of their father as a figment of their imagination. Arriving at their place, Jill sees “a man in a tweed jacket” standing in the doorway and smoking a pipe (356). Even though Jimmy does not see him, he thinks that his sister might have heard their father talking on the phone. After the driver leaves, the two go inside the house to find the door unlocked and leaves of trees on the floor. The fact that “her brother’s voice cracked” when he says that their father “might be in front” could indicate that he already suspects that there is nobody in the house (357). However, Jill “sensed, although she did not say, that there was a presence in this empty house that made you listen. Listen, listen. All the time” (359). Frank McAndrew highlights the risks of being socially isolated and without sensory stimulation because this state can deeply affect one’s physical as well as 73

psychological well-being. He further points out that one of the most remarkable things that can happen to people in isolation is the sensing of a presence or supernatural being, whose “vividness can range from a vague feeling of being watched to seeing a seemingly real person” (para. 10-13). McAndrew explains that this phenomenon stems from the brain manufacturing social experiences to stay mentally sane (para. 17). In G. Wolfe’s story, it is Jimmy who, at one point, hears somebody walking around in the house and he even sees their father looking at him and then disappearing in the basement. When the two children go down to see if he is there, they notice a strange smell:

They found the source of that smell in back of a bank of freestanding shelves heaped with tools and paint cans. It was rotting and had stained its clothing. In places its flesh had fallen in, and in others had fallen away. Her brother cleared scrap wood, a garden sprayer, and half a dozen bottles and jugs away from the shelves so that the light might better reach the dead thing on the floor ... (362).

They right away know that the dead body in the basement is their father who died before his kids arrived. In fact, he might have died from a possible deadly disease and went to the basement in the hope that they will not immediately see him and be scared. Yet, another interpretation of his death could be that he had been hiding from an intruder and then got killed by him or her. In this regard, it can be argued that by not getting information about the cause of his death, the readers are put in the same position as the children, who also do not know what has happened to their father. Nevertheless, finding him in such a condition represents yet another traumatic experience for the children, which may have long-term effects that can lead to a condition called Childhood Traumatic Grief. In fact, this is something Jill must have suffered from since the death of her mother because she cannot remember her:

Children grieve in their own way following the death of someone significant. While many children adjust well after a death, other children have ongoing difficulties that interfere with everyday life and make it difficult to the positive memories of their loves ones. (“Childhood Traumatic Grief”).

However, the children’s reaction to the sight of their dead father is rather unexpected yet understandable when considering the fact that they have probably never had a strong relationship with him. They do not seem to be shocked or scared by what they found, but try to find an explanation for why they saw their father’s ghost: 74

“You think we’ll see him any more?” “No.” “Just like that? He wanted us to find him, and we did, and that was all he wanted?” “He was telling us that he was dead. ... He wanted us to know he wouldn’t be around to help us. Now we do. You’re going to eat?” (G. Wolfe 363)

In this conversation, Jill appears to be even less emotionally affected than her brother because “her voice was flat, expressionless” (363). She seems to have difficulties sympathizing with her father and expressing her feelings, and the fact that she is emotionally numb can be regarded as symptom of the emotional neglect she has experienced throughout her life. She was hoping that her father would be there and happy to see them again, but what they found instead was a lonely home they do not even have a memory of. Since the children are all alone and socially isolated, there is nobody there to help them recover from the traumatic experience of finding their father’s decaying body. In fact, it must have been the first time the children saw a dead body, for Jill says, “I didn’t know being dead was like that” (363). The children’s seeing and hearing the father and hoping to find him somewhere in the house can also be interpreted as the last remainder of their past and, at the same time, hope for a better future. However, with his death everything has changed and what was before is gone, while the future they were hoping for will never take place. Thus, this traumatic experience resembles another apocalypse that divides their lives into a before and after. In this sense, it can be argued that the death of their father represents the end of their childhood and beginning of adulthood. The social isolation the children are exposed to in their old and empty home is also emphasized by the muted television, which can be interpreted as sign of the children’s emotional states as well as an indicator that the world in general has gone quiet. The children as well as the reader do not know why the TV is muted or who has done it; it might have been the children’s father or somebody else. As there does not seem to be a button that would enable the siblings to have a sound, they start switching channels:

The next channel was a grey screen with wavy lines and the yellow word mute in one corner, but the next one after it had a pretty, friendly looking woman sitting at a table and talking. The yellow MUTE was in the corner of her screen, too. ... The next channel showed an almost empty street, and the yellow MUTE. The street was 75

not quite empty because two people, a man and a woman, were lying down in it. They did not move. (359-360)

The fact that the word “mute” is always there, no matter which channel they are on, might signal that there is nothing left to say, and the old world and its civilization has completely disappeared. Similar to Kadrey’s mute character in “Still Life with Apocalypse”, the muted TV in G. Wolfe’s story can also be regarded as reflection of post-9/11 feelings of speechlessness and inertia. Moreover, on the third channel, the scene with the (dead) man and the woman lying in the empty street and not moving strongly indicates that they represent Jill and Jimmy and their situation. Thus, it is not just the television and the people in it that are muted but also the children, who are unable to express their feelings and emotions (just like the American population after 9/11). What is more, the fact that the couple on TV cannot or do not move highlights the children’s emotional numbness as well as their inability to leave their home because there is just nowhere else to go. Hence, they are trapped in their situation, just like the man on TV:

In the living room, the man who had been (silently) talking talked silently still, on and on. Jill spent most of her time watching him, and eventually concluded that he was on tape. His last remark (at which he looked down at the polished top of his desk) being followed by his first. (361)

What needs to be pointed out is that after the children find the dead body of their father, the man on TV is gone and “the screen was gray and empty now for the single word MUTE in glowing yellow” (363). This is again an indicator that with the death of their father things from the past are gone for good and the children are faced with the end of their childhood. This is further emphasized by Jimmy’s voice, “which suddenly deepened, as the voices of adolescent boys will”, when he realizes that with nobody on TV anymore, the two of them might be the last people on earth (365). However, since this is a quite frightening thought, the children try to find reasons why other people might also still be alive. It is especially Jill, who does not want to believe that everybody is dead; however, on their way to Poplar Hill the signs of nature seem to tell her differently:

A small bush, fresh and green, sprouted from a crevice in the middle of the highway. Seeing it, Jill sensed that some unknown and unknowable power had overheard them and was gently trying to show them that they were wrong. She shuddered and 76

summoned up all the good reasons that argued that the bush was wrong instead. (365)

Thus, the fact that nature finds its way through the concrete indicates that there has not been anybody who has taken care of that for a long time, which is not surprising in a post- apocalyptic setting. When the children pass Poplar Hill at the beginning of the story, the narrator remarks that there are no poplars in Poplar Hill, only alders, maples and birches (355). Due to their strong set of roots, poplars are often associated with the symbolic values of grounding, security and resiliency (“Poplar Tree”). These are all the things the children have been missing throughout their lives, which might be the reason why there are no poplars in a place that should have poplar trees. In fact, Poplar Hill seems to be where the children have been staying all along because during their bus ride Jill remarks that “gate, sign, pillars, and lions were gone almost before she could draw breath” (G. Wolfe 355). Thus, they might have been taken inside the area right at the beginning of the story, which could also be interpreted as an allegory for their trapped minds. By saying that she has been waiting inside the gate for a long time and that Jimmy cannot get out anymore, Jill might actually refer to their hopeless emotional states all their traumatic experiences have led to and which they cannot recover from without help. This is why the end of the story appears like the beginning, with the same house and muted TV (367). Thus, the children cannot escape their situation and must stay where they are, socially isolated and growing up without a chance of working through their traumatic experiences, which in the end forces them to grow up in a hurry. As they are the last two people on earth, the incest scene at the end of the story does not come as surprise considering factors that influence sibling incest, such as physical and emotional absence of the parents, isolation from the community and an environment that fails to protect them (“Sibling Incest”). Regarding the children’s fragmented memory, it can also be argued that it is their unknown past that eventually forces the children to commit incest. Thus, even though there is not much information as to the characteristics of the post-apocalyptic world G. Wolfe depicts in his short story, it seems to be a quiet one, devoid of life and humans. What is rather unlikely, though, is that humanity will survive if the future of civilization depends on two traumatized (and potentially infected) protagonists committing incest. In his story, G. Wolfe furthermore shows that it is child survivors whose lives are most affected by the aftermaths of an apocalypse. Experiencing 77

traumatic events, such as the parents’ death or being excluded from a community as well as growing up in social isolation can deeply impact and hinder a child’s development into a physically and emotionally healthy adult. Considering the story as response to the traumatic events of 9/11, the information G. Wolfe withholds from the readers (and his protagonists) to make them fully understand the events of the story reflects the population’s lack of knowledge as to what had really happened as well as the fear of the unknown (future).

5.4. Carol Emshwiller’s “Killers”

Another post-apocalyptic story written in response to 9/11 and especially the events that followed is Carol Emshwiller’s 2006 short story “Killers”. Originating from her “objections to the war in Iraq”, Emshwiller wrote the story to explores what life would be like for the survivors after such a war had been fought on American soil (Adams 462). Her fictional post-apocalypse is one in which trauma and its aftermaths are ubiquitous and affect not just those who have fought the war but also her female protagonist and narrator, who appears to have deep psychological and emotional problems that stem from her childhood and the circumstances of the war. Concerning her criticism of the American war in Iraq, what Emshwiller further addresses in her short story is that it is not the foreign enemy the United States have to fear most, but the apocalyptic consequences of their own ignorance and greed. In “Killers”, Emshwiller envisions a post-apocalyptic American society that is run by women after most of the male population has been killed in a war against an unknown enemy. The story is told by an unnamed 29-year old female first-person narrator and protagonist, who lives in a small self-sustaining community somewhere in the mountains of Nevada. The female community is not alone as there are soldiers of both sides who have retreated to the higher areas of the mountains and keep fighting each other. To the dismay of the townswomen, one of these men has started to kill the others and dump their dead bodies near the village. When the narrator discovers the killer hiding in her house, she believes him to be an enemy of the other side and is indecisive of whether to help or kill the man. Throughout her childhood, she was used to looking after her obese and alcoholic mother and since her death, the narrator has felt useless and lonely. Thus, when 78

she sees the injured man, she cannot help but fall back into old patterns and take care of him even though he is the enemy. However, after she has changed his name and appearance to make him look like an American soldier to the other women of the town, she begins to feel attracted to him. Yet, due to the circumstances of the war, she does not have any experience with men and does not know how to react to him when he tries to approach her. She regards him as her property, and it is her teenage-like jealousy that eventually makes her reveal his true identity, whereupon the man is killed and eaten by the townswomen. At the beginning of Emshwiller’s short story, the reader is introduced to the post- apocalyptic circumstances by the first-person narrator (who not just uses the pronoun “I” but also “we” to speak for the whole female community) and immediately learns that there has been a war and bombing of the area’s pipeline that has caused a stop of the water and gas supply, which was the reason why many people have left the area (462). What is not explicitly mentioned, though, is the enemy as well as the cause of war; however, due to the information given it might have been a war for oil. In fact, one of the main goals of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq and subsequent war was oil, which is why it can be argued that, in her short story, Emswhiller has relocated the Iraq war to America to make its horrors more tangible to the American readers. Concerning the vagueness about the cause of war and the enemy in “Killers”, Alicia Pavelecky provides a different reasoning:

One interpretation of “Killers” is that the United States has brought war upon itself through its culturally ignorant attitudes and actions, which is supported by the vagueness of why and by whom it occurred. Through the vagueness of the enemy, “Killers” seems to suggest that this practice could facilitate hostility from a vast number of cultures and cause the downfall of the United States. (36)

In fact, there is a second instance in the story in which Emshwiller seems to criticize the ignorance and selfishness of the United States, which may also have an impact on other countries. At one point in the story, the enemy accuses the side of the narrator (thus America, or the Western world in general) of heating up the planet because of being greedy (473). The narrator reacts to this accusation by saying, “It heated up mostly by itself. It’s done that before, you know. Besides, all that’s over” (473). Considering Pavelecky’s interpretation of the narrator as “generalized representative of the American people, [representing] the ill-conceived mentality that is shared by many American”, her 79

rejecting any blame and being ignorant of the consequences can be regarded as yet another instance of criticism of the American culture (39). Concerning the setting of Emshwiller’s short story, the narrator mentions that fourteen years ago “all the able-bodied men” went to war and many have died, which is why there are almost only women in the town the narrator lives in (462). This town used to lie remotely at the foot of the mountains before the war; yet, due to the lack of water, the weather conditions and the enemy, who stole their livestock, the women decided to move and found a new village along a stream higher up in the mountains (462). The exact location of the town is not explicitly mentioned; however, there are some reference points which indicate that it is most likely situated somewhere in the mountains of Nevada. The strongest indicator for this location is the mentioning of the “John Muir wilderness”, which is part of the Sierra Nevada mountain range (463). What is also referred to are the cities of Reno and Carson City as well as the Death Valley desert (476; 473). What is more, the narrator refers to the weather as being hot and dry as “it must be well over 110 degrees” and even in winter the valley appears “as if Death Valley in summer” (473). She also complains about frequent “sand storms and dust devils” (469); hence, it does not seem to be a pleasant place to live. However, the women have made the best of their situation by digging irrigation ditches to have water for cooking and bathing. Furthermore, they also grow their own food and have a library and provisory hospital, where elderly nurses train new ones (463). It is a matriarchal society which produces and trades crafts but also does the work of men as “there’s a good roof repair group and there’s carpenters…” (464). The women feed on animals that are around and easy to hunt, like small birds and rats (473; 477). Moreover, the narrator also talks about a depository where the townswomen bring the dead bodies of the mountain men that were killed (466). What is implied with this is that the women also live on human meat, which is further hinted at when the narrator is glad about getting to eat little-bird soup “instead of the other” (477). In fact, these hints at cannibalism already foreshadow the ending of Emshwiller’s story. What is more, there are regular town meetings, where “lots of good things happen” and the women “give each other [their] news” (477). Different helping committees have been established, which is why, according to the narrator, “in some ways [they] take care of each other more than [they] did before” (477). Nevertheless, even though the women seem to have arranged with the simple lives they live, they know that with the absence of 80

men they will most likely never get the chance to get married or have children (467). Thus, their lives and futures are deeply affected by the aftermaths of the war. Yet, the female community is not the only group in the area as there is also the Paiute tribe living in the former reservation (464). The third group in the mountains are soldiers of both sides who have retreated to the higher parts of the mountains and live solitary lives. The narrator and the other townswomen are not pleased by them staying there and call them “crazies”:

Lots of those men brought their injuries and craziness to our mountains. Both sides came here to get away from everything. They’re hermits. They don’t trust anybody. Some of them are still fighting each other up there. It’s almost as bad as having left- over mine fields. They’re all damaged, physically or mentally. Of course most likely all of us are, too, and we probably don’t even know it. (465)

In fact, what the men suffer from is most likely war-related posttraumatic stress, which is a common psychological and emotional condition of soldiers after traumatic war experiences. Nevertheless, even though the townswomen know that the men’s strange behavior is an aftermath of the war they fought in, it is extremely disconcerting to them. This feeling is further reinforced when one of them is killing the other men and puts their dead bodies close to the village (465-466). However, not all the men who have returned show these posttraumatic symptoms, for Leo, who owns the town’s store, seems to be completely normal. When the narrator asks him why he has not gone crazy, he answers, “I was lucky. I never saw the real horror.” (467). However, the narrator knows that deep inside “… he might not be so okay” because he never got married to one of the women, lives alone, smells, and is always in a bad mood (467). Thus, even though he might not seem to suffer from PTSD, it is likely that he also struggles with the psychological aftermaths of the war and tries to cope with the experiences he has made. The fact that he does not mention the reason why he never got to see the horrible things the other soldiers saw could indicate that he was unable to serve their units. Thus, he might have feelings of guilt and remorse because others died while he survived and as self-punishment he has decided to live a lonely life devoid of love. With his fragile emotional state and psychological problems, he appears to be a difficult person to be with, which is why none of the women has shown interest in him. The narrator reinforces this impression by stating, “You have to get used to him” (468). 81

In fact, the narrator of Emswiller’s story and the other townswomen do not know whether the war has really ended, “but it seems to be over” as “there hasn’t been any action that [they] know of for quite some time” (464). Throughout the story, the reader does not learn who the enemy was; however, due to the story being a reaction to 9/11 and the narrator describing these people as having “black eyes and hair and olive skin …”, it is highly likely that they are of Middle Eastern descent (465). She also recalls that “the enemy was among [them] even before [the war] started” (465). This might be a reference to the events of 9/11, which could have been the trigger for war in the short story. History has shown that since 9/11, Americans and other nations have mistrusted people who look like the terrorists and who are from the same part of the world. Emswiller’s narrator also talks about mistrust; however, by putting everyone who looked like the enemy into internment camps, the mistrust of the Americans turned into hatred against the other group and culture. In fact, the way the narrator describes the whole situation and says, “You can’t get them all”, strongly resembles both the persecution of the Jews during WWII and the European concentration camps, as well as the Japanese internment camps in the United States during that time (465). Thus, what Emshwiller seems to say and warn about with this is that (dark) history can easily repeat itself if Americans (or humanity as a whole) do not learn to be more tolerant towards other cultures. Moreover, her narrator also addresses the fact that after a war that has caused the end of civilization and the modern world, sides do not matter anymore (466). The traumatic aftermaths are the same for both groups and there are no winners or losers. Thus, it does not matter if the soldier who is killing the other men is an American or the enemy because, in the end, it is a human being killing another human being. In every war, it is the survival instinct that turns both sides into killers and this is what makes people alike. In Emswhiller’s post- apocalyptic short story, killing also becomes a necessary evil for the townswomen, especially with a mentally-ill killer in the area. This is highlighted by the narrator when she thinks about ways to kill the intruder while also reflecting on how life has changed since the war and “how [they]’ve all changed–how, in the old days, [she]’d not ever have been thinking things at all like that” (472). This can also be regarded a reaction to the post-9/11 atmosphere in the United States, for the events changed the lives and mindset of the American population. 82

In fact, Emshwiller’s unnamed female narrator and protagonist has deep psychological and emotional problems herself, which were caused by the difficult circumstances she and her brother Clement grew up in. At some point in the story, the reader learns that, as a child, Emshwiller’s narrator had to look after her sick mother as there was no father (for some unknown reason):

I had to look after Mother. I was taking care of her even before my brother left. She wasn’t exactly sick but she was fat and she drank. Her legs looked terrible, full of varicosities. It hurt her to walk so she didn’t … Looking after somebody who can’t walk seems normal to me. I’ve done it since I can first remember anything. (464)

Thus, from an early age on, the narrator had to act like an adult or parent because her mother was unable to fulfill the responsibilities of a caregiver. In psychology, this process has been termed parentification:

Parentification refers to the process through which children are assigned the role of an adult, taking on both emotional and functional responsibilities that typically are performed by the parent. The parent, in turn, takes the dependent position of the child in the parent-child relationship. Although a small degree of parentification can be beneficial to child development, this process can become pathological when the tasks become too burdensome or when the child feels obligated to take on the role of adult. (Engelhardt 45)

As a form of child neglect, parentification can deeply affect the psychological development of a child because he or she ignores its own needs in order to support and care for the parent. This also becomes evident in Emshwiller’s story when the narrator states, “I could have just walked off and let her but until she died I didn’t think of it. I actually didn’t. I’d looked after her for so long I thought that’s just the way life is” (Emshwiller 467). There are, in fact, two different types of parentification that have been identified and include instrumental and emotional parentification (Engelhardt 46-47). Instrumental parentification refers to physical responsibilities of the child, such as organizing the household or looking after a sick parent; thus, this is the obvious type Emshwiller’s narrator was exposed to. However, emotional parentification is more harmful to the child as it involves taking on the role of a mediator or arbiter between family members. Even though there is no hint at that in the story, there is no doubt that the narrator experienced emotional neglect throughout her childhood. What is more, research has shown that parentified children are likely to be depressive and anxious, 83

complain about headaches and stomachaches, show signs of aggressiveness and disruptive behavior, and have difficulties with interpersonal relationships (47). In “Killers”, the narrator reveals that her older brother was physically abused by the alcoholic mother and has suffered from anxiety ever since:

I can understand him being afraid of her. They never got along. When she was drunk she used to throw things at him. If he got close enough, she’d grab his arm and twist. Then he got too strong for her … Mother was nicer too me. She got worried I’d stay out of reach or not help anymore. (466-467)

Thus, it can be argued that both children suffered childhood trauma by experiencing emotional neglect and physical abuse. Engelhardt points out that the aftermaths of such experiences can continue into adulthood and lead to psychological problems, such as attachment issues, psychological distress, and narcissistic personality disorders (47). After her mother’s death, Emshwiller’s narrator feels helpless and lonely because without somebody to look after, her life does not make sense. This is why she eventually wants to track down the killer herself:

Truth is, I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know how to live with just me to care about. I can go anywhere and do anything. I ought to find the man who’s the killer. I have nothing else to do. Who better do it than I? (468)

Nevertheless, the real reason why she wants to find the man is to make sure that it is not her brother, who has never returned from war. The narrator is sure that “if he’s alive he’s got to be here. He loves this place … He’d get along fine and I know he’d do anything to come back” (465). However, these thoughts appear to be rather wishful thinking as the brother does not seem to have had such a peaceful childhood with a mother like theirs. Yet, even though the narrator hopes for his return, she knows deep inside that he is dead, which is why she makes up fictional news about him:

I think I made up that news because I know my brother’s dead. Otherwise I’d not have mentioned anything about him. I’d keep on thinking he’s out in our mountains as one of the crazies, but I don’t think I ever really believed that. I just hoped. (476)

Thus, the thought of having lost her brother evokes pain and grief in Emshwiller’s narrator and the uncertainty about his whereabouts makes her wish him to be one of the men in the mountains. Her worrying about him indicates that he might have been the only good 84

thing about her childhood and accepting his death would also mean accepting the fact that she is all alone and lonely. Hence, when the stranger and supposed killer hides in her house, she is not sure at first if the men is her brother or not. From his looks, she cannot even tell “if he’s a brown man or just weather-beaten, sunburned, and dirty” (470). However, his eyes are “as black as the enemy’s always are. Eyebrows just as thick as theirs” (470). Thus, apart from the eyes he may as well be an American soldier, which is further emphasized by the paleness of his skin underneath the beard and of the forehead where his hat used to be (471). This again shows that after the war, sides cannot be clearly separated anymore and, in the end, do not matter in a world where every stranger can be a potential killer. Yet, the narrator identifies the intruder as an enemy and is torn between killing or helping him. In fact, with his dirtiness and bad health, the man reminds her of her mother, which is probably why she feels obliged to help and take care of him. This shows how deeply her life has been influenced by the experiences of her childhood, while taking care of her dying mother seems to have been yet another traumatic experience. Thus, the narrator cannot help but wash the man even though she hates to touch him (471). She recalls her mother being “a mess as she was dying” and sprinkling pine needles over her in order not to smell the dying body (471). This is not the kind of experience a child or young adult should make as it can have long-term effects on the psyche. When her mother eventually died, the narrator recalls thinking that she was finally freed from the shackles of her childhood (471); however, she must learn that by taking care of the woman for almost her entire life, this behavior has become compulsive and she cannot do anything about it. Thus, she decides to keep the stranger to have someone to look after, and in order to let him pass as an American soldier, she changes his appearance and replaces his name “Jal” by “Joe” (472). It can also be argued that she takes this action to make him remind her of her lost brother, whom she was not able to help and whose life she had no control over, neither as a child or an adult. Thus, the narrator is still haunted by her traumatic past and the neglect she experienced by her mother. However, there is yet another factor why Emshwiller’s narrator has not been able to develop into a healthy adult. The fact that all the men left for war when the narrator was fifteen also had a deep impact on her development from a girl into a woman as she missed out on experiencing teenage love and having first sexual contacts. Because of the war, she never got the chance 85

to be close to a man or develop feelings and become attached to somebody else. When she changes Jal’s identity and looks, she realizes that he is the first man she sees from up close and that she enjoys it (471); thus, his manliness and otherness make her feel physically attracted to him even though she knows that he is the enemy:

Enemy or not, I do like a man in the house. I watch him sleep. He has such long eyelashes. I like the hair on his knuckles. Just looking at his hands makes me think how there’s so few men around. Actually only four. His forearms … Ours don’t even look like that no matter how much we saw and hammer. Even my brother’s never looked like that. I like that he already needs a shave again. I even like his bushy eyebrows. (474)

Nevertheless, whenever there seems to develop an emotional closeness between the two, the narrator feels insecure about how to behave towards Joe, for “his eyes upset [her]” and “[she has] to get up and turn her back” (475). Moreover, when he touches her hand to say thank you, she feels confused and reacts in the same way (477). This is a completely new situation to her and, in a way, her behavior resembles that of a young girl. What is more, so long as she only had to take care of Joe, the narrator felt reminded of her mother and her childhood; however, when he starts to feel better and tries to approach her on an emotional level, she feels overwhelmed by the situation and blocks her unfamiliar feelings. Because of her inability to develop an attachment, Joe remains an object for her throughout the story. She regards him as her love property and does not accept that he is an independent man who makes his own decisions. Thus, when she introduces him to the other women at the town meeting, she immediately gets jealous when she sees how they look at him:

I admire him more and more, and I can see all the women do, too. He could have any one of us. I’m worried he’ll get away from me and I’m the only one knows [sic.] who he really is. Whoever gets him in the end will have to be careful. (477)

The way Emshwiller’s narrator thinks about Joe during this meeting is rather teenage- like, if not childish. It shows that she does not have a lot of self-confidence when it comes to love matters, which is not surprising considering the fact that she does not have any experience with men. Her jealousy is further intensified when she notices Joe showing interest in a beautiful Paiute woman:

They all crowd around but I saw him push in so that he was next to her. The tables are small but now nine chairs are wedged in close around the one where he sits. I can’t see what’s going on, but I do see her shoulder is touching his. And their faces are so close I don’t see how they can see anything of each other. (478)

What needs to be taken into consideration is that the narrator’s interpretation of the whole scene might not be reliable as it is highly likely that her jealousy makes her see things that are not there. Considering the fact that the narrator is also a racist, the reason for her extreme reaction might be the Paiute woman. Nevertheless, her subsequent action of revealing Joe’s true identity to the townswomen very much resembles that of a stubborn and revengeful teenage girl who does not get her will; however, for Joe it means death. Thus, due to her messed up childhood and the circumstances of the war, Emswhiller’s narrator has become a traumatized and broken person, who cannot help but robe herself of the chance of being happy. In fact, by having Joe killed and eaten, she is the worse killer of the two. In this regard, it is the end of Emswhiller’s short story that reveals where the real danger comes from and who the real killers are. It is not the invisible men and enemy living in the mountains fighting each other, but the seemingly innocent townswomen themselves, who eventually kill the soldier and eat him. Pavelecky examines “Killers” in terms of Edward Said’s orientalism and the concept of the “other” and argues that, in her story, Emshwiller inverses this concept onto the Western culture. Orientalism is defined by Said as “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’ (11). During times of colonization of Eastern parts of the world, Western and European countries established their position of authority over the foreign cultures by regarding them as being inferior, backward, and exotic. Based on this mindset, the colonizers created biased depictions of the Eastern culture, which were at odds with the truth and only served to highlight the difference between the familiar West and the unknown “other”. In this regard, Said further points out:

A very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, epics, social descriptions and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, “mind,” destiny, and so on. (10-11)

Hence, the East has been described from the perspective of the West, which includes stereotyping and generalizing, and the process of orientalism can thus be considered “a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience” (11). In Emshwiller’s story, the “them vs. us” attitude of the narrator and the townswomen can be felt throughout the story and becomes evident when, for example, she describes the enemy as being “weak and low tech” (465). Concerning the inversion of the “other” in the story, Pevelecky refers to the end of the short story and the fact that the townswomen eat and kill the soldier as follows:

This act suggests that the protagonist’s group are just as “other” as the men fighting in the mountains, if not more so, as cannibalism is an extremely taboo and barbaric act. While it is not revealed if the men in the mountains have ever resorted to cannibalism themselves, the fact that the townspeople (including the narrator) are the characters committing the act makes the townspeople a savage “other”. Emshwiller … seems to use the construction of the ‘other’ and her complication of who the ‘other’ is to suggest that perhaps the dominant Western group is actually more barbaric than the cultures it ascribes that label to. (7-8)

Read as criticism of the war in Iraq, what Emshwiller thus seems to argue with her story is that when fighting the enemy or supposed “other”, the Americans might even turn out to be more vicious and remorseless than they imagine their enemies to be. What is more, by relocating the war on terror to the United States and having her protagonist and narrator suffer from its traumatic aftermaths, Emshwiller makes its horrors more tangible and realistic for the American readers. In fact, what she shows is that things could have gone differently after 9/11 and that the war could have easily taken place on American soil. At the same time, she seems to want to make her American readers aware of the consequences of their ignorance and greed, for the post-apocalyptic world she depicts is one where humanity and its values have not survived.

5.5. Mary Rickert’s “Bread and Bombs”

Like Carol Emshwiller, 9/11 and the subsequent war in Iraq and Afghanistan have also inspired Mary Rickert to write about the traumatic aftermaths and anxieties many people suffer from after such events. The author states that her 2003 short story “Bread and Bombs” represents “a response to news reports concerning food packages being dropped 88

in Afghanistan which were wrapped in the same color packaging as bombs—which detonated when picked up by hungry children” (Adams 105). Similar to Emshwiller in her short story “Killers”, Rickert imagines a war against a Middle Eastern enemy taking place in the United States and changing everything. While the older generation, which has experienced the horrors of war, suffers from paranoia and mistrusts foreigners, the younger generation grows up oblivious to these horrors and without an understanding of how life used to be before the war. In her story, Rickert shows that traumatic experiences—no matter if they happen to an adult or a child—deeply influence the emotional state of a person and often have long-term psychological effects. She further illustrates the consequences of intolerance and prejudice against other cultures as well as the capability of children to commit a crime if they grow up innocently and ignorantly. In “Bread and Bombs”, Rickert depicts a fictional post-apocalyptic future in which the United States has been fighting a war against an undisclosed enemy. Even though not explicitly mentioned, it is implied that the war follows events similar to 9/11, causing the American population to distrust and fear anyone of Middle Eastern descent. The events take place in the childhood of the unnamed first-person female narrator and are told 25 years after, when the narrator is an adult and sees things in a different way. Thus, the reader gets to experience the narrator’s past through the eyes of her eleven-year old self, while throughout the story she gives hints as to the crime she and the other children eventually commit. This kind of foreshadowing creates a disturbing atmosphere throughout the story, while some things are left unsaid or kept vague. By letting the reader see the narrator’s world through the eyes of a child, Rickert leaves open those things that also the children do not know about. Thus, like a child, the reader does not get all of his or her questions answered and must interpret the information he or she gets. Rickert’s narrator grows up in the fictional American town of Oakgrove during times of war between the United States and an unknown enemy. There are hints suggesting that the war was sparked by a terrorist attack, presumably that of 9/11, which would make the enemy be some Middle Eastern terrorist organization. However, even though there is war, the narrator describes her late childhood as peaceful and, at the same time, exciting as she and the other children slowly reach puberty and experience all its changes:

We were walking to the wonders of the world and the body; the strange realizations that a friend was cute, or stinky, or picked her nose, or was fat, or wore dirty underpants, or had eyes that didn’t blink when he looked at you real close and all of a sudden you felt like blushing. (106)

Thus, they are quite concerned with themselves while still possessing the quality of innocence and carefreeness that makes children question things adults take for granted and take for granted things that adults question. In fact, the narrator has happy memories about that time before things began to change:

Now, when summer approaches, I count the weeks when the apple trees and lilacs are in blossom, the tulips and daffodils in bloom before they droop with summer’s heat and I think how it is so much like that period of our innocence, that waking into the world with all its incandescence, before being subdued by its shadows into what we became. (113)

The children seem to grow up protected from the horrors of war, which makes them somewhat oblivious to the happenings in the world. In contrast, their parents are well- aware of what is going on around them, and the terror of the events has made the adults distrustful and prejudiced against foreigners. Thus, when a refugee family moves to their town, there is immediate mistrust towards them, and it is the mother of the narrator who seems to be most intolerant of all the adults. The trigger for her fierce opposition to the refugee family can be found in the loss of her beloved son Jamie, who fell victim to a biological terrorist attack that hit the United States (116). This was such a traumatic experience for the mother that she started drinking in order to cope with her grief. Thus, it was the loss of a child that provoked her extreme distrust and prejudices against foreigners, and she now also fears losing her second child to the enemy. Since the death of the boy, however, the relationship between the alcoholic mother and her daughter has become quite difficult because the narrator recalls, “My mother and I usually ate separately. When I was at my dad’s we ate together in front of the TV, which she said was barbaric” (110). Thus, the mother does not appear to be a loving person; however, she might have been before the war and before losing her son. The trauma she suffered has changed her life and with the arrival of the refugee family, who come from the country of the enemy, she finally has someone tangible to blame. Because of the distrust of the townspeople, the Manmensvitzender family does not take part in town matters and the two refugee girls do not attend school. In fact, the 90

adult citizens of the town never get to see the family, only the children do. The narrator recalls them having “hair like smoke and eyes like black olives” and wearing “bright clothes the color of a circus, and gauzy scarves, one purple, the other red, glittering with sequins” while riding on “a wooden wagon pulled by two goats with bells around their necks” (106-107). What is more, one of them is always crying, which is quite irritating for the narrator and the other children as they do not understand why someone would cry all the time. At one point, however, they learn that “it’s the war, and all the suffering” (115); yet, due to their ignorance about the war they do not know what is really meant by that. Nevertheless, the arrival of the foreigners is a welcome change for the children and their otherness sparks their interest; however, the narrator’s mother and the other parents are not so pleased about the family staying in the neighborhood and their children playing with the refugee daughters. The narrator cannot understand why her mother tells her to “stay away from them” and warns her not to eat anything they offer them (109-110). All she tells her daughter is that “people are dead because of that family. … Many, many people died because of them” (111). However, as she does not get more information, the eleven-year old narrator cannot understand what her prejudiced mother is talking about. She even rolls her eyes when her mother tells her that “there’s a war going on” (112). This again shows how oblivious the children of the town are to what is happening in their country while the adults are concerned about their safety and want to protect their childish innocence by not telling their children too many horrible things. Yet, the arrival of the Manmensvitzender family is the beginning of several incidents that should change things forever and deeply impact the lives of the children. This is foreshadowed by the narrator when she says:

That is how the trouble began. The news accounts never mention any of this; the flame of crab apple tree, our innocence, the sound of bells. Instead they focus on the unhappy results. They say we were wild. Uncared for. Strange. They say we were dangerous. As if life was amber and we were formed and suspended in that form, not evolved into that ungainly shape of horror, and evolved out of it, as we are, into a teacher, a dancer, a welder, a lawyer, several soldiers, two doctors, and me, a writer. (108-109)

This is one of the first hints at the horrible event at the end of Rickert’s story and the description of the children in the news reports represents a stark contrast to the narrator’s own view of her childhood. What is more, the fact that Rickert’s narrator is a writer herself 91

suggests that there might be certain similarities between the author and her narrator. Moreover, by not mentioning specific names, it almost seems as if Rickert implies that everyone could commit such a life-changing crime in their childish ignorance. This is further emphasized by the narrator addressing the reader directly, trying to justify that no one is the same person as he or she was as child:

Everybody promises during times like those days immediately following the tragedy that lives have been ruined, futures shattered but only Trina Needles fell for that and eventually committed suicide. The rest of us suffered various forms of censure and then went on with our lives. Yes, it is true, with a dark past but, you may be surprised to learn, that can be lived with. The hand that holds the pen (or chalk, or the stethoscope, or the gun, or lover’s skin) is so different from the hand that lit the match, and so incapable of such an act that it is not even a matter of forgiveness, or healing. It’s strange to look back and believe that any of that was me or us. Are you who you were then? (108)

The way the narrator talks about her dark past suggests that the (unknown) crime the children committed was traumatic and apocalyptic at the same time as it represented the end of the narrator’s childhood. Yet, even though she now tries to persuade herself of her innocence and childish ignorance, she knows that she and the others are guilty. This is also why she wonders “if [her] happiness is really happiness” (122). Nevertheless, there is also another factor that makes the narrator think about what happiness means in the post-apocalyptic world she lives in. She knows that “once there was a different emotion. People used to have a way of feeling and being in the world that is gone, destroyed so thoroughly we inherited only is absence” (122). What she refers to with this is the way of life before the war. She learns about this pre-war world from her father, who seems to strongly cling to the past because whenever she visits him at the nursery house he reminisces about the good things of the old and happy world, which included “six different kinds of cereal at one time … coated in sugar …” or catalogs from which they could order packages “filled with candy and nuts and cookies, and chocolate …” (113, 116). He wants his daughter to know about the way of life before the war because the world has become a different place since then, where thinks like “cakes, money, [and] the endless assortment of everything” are unimaginable (113). The younger generation grew up without these things, which is why they do not really understand what the older generation is talking about. In fact, the narrator even complains, “We’ve heard it so much it doesn’t mean anything” (113). However, the older generation witnessed the 92

horrors and changes the war brought and has suffered from these traumatic experiences ever since. At one point in the story, the narrator’s father tells his daughter about the snow that the enemy used as biological weapon to infect the American population with an unknown disease and eventually cause its death:

“It was the snow, right?” “Your brother, Jaime, that’s when we lost him.” “We don’t have to talk about that.” “Everything changed after that, you know. That’s what got your mother started. Most folks just lost one, some not even, but you know the Richters. That big house on the hill and when it snowed they all went sledding. The world was different then.” “I can’t imagine.” “Well, neither could we. Nobody could of guessed it. And believe me, we were guessing. Everyone tried to figure what they would do next. But snow? I mean how evil is that anyway?” (116-117)

Thus, for the older generation, snow used to mean “peace and joy” (117); however, with the biological attack this has changed, and snow has become to be associated with terror and death. The day the snow fell has become the day of the apocalypse - of the event that separated the world into a before and after. This traumatic event has led to collective trauma and has also caused many characters in the story to suffer from psychological aftermaths. For instance, the narrator’s parents seem to never have recovered from losing their son and the mother has started drinking to cope with her grief. The narrator living with only her mother furthermore suggests that the parents’ marriage went to pieces after the death of their child. In fact, the vicious attack with toxic snow in the story highly resembles the food packaging bombs that the United States dropped in Afghanistan as they were believed to bring something positive while they turned out to be fatal for the people living there. Thus, Rickert inverts the horror of war and brings it to the American shores, most likely, because she wants to make her (American) readers understand the atrociousness and insidiousness of the crimes the United States committed in Afghanistan. It can also be regarded as warning that something like that can easily happen in the United States and cause the downfall of the American civilization. What is more, the trauma the war and the biological attack have caused in Rickert’s story is further shown by the character’s fear of an aerial assault. The narrator recalls that whenever they 93

heard planes flying over their town, she put on her helmet while her mother was screaming and shivering with fear, unable to help (113). The fact that the mother is more scared than her daughter again shows that the girl has never experienced such an attack and does not know about the consequences of a bomb impact. Yet, she has been taught to associate airplanes with danger and death, which is why she keeps on her helmet throughout the night. At one point in the story, her mother tells her about the way life used to be before the war and that airplanes were a common means of transport:

“You don’t even remember, do you? Well, how could you, you were just a toddler. But there were times when this country didn’t know war. Why, people used to fly in airplanes all the time.” I stopped my fork halfway to my mouth. “Well, how stupid was that?” (112)

This again shows that the children are unable to imagine things from the time before the war, while the older generation has happy memories about it. Thus, the post-apocalyptic world the narrator grew up in is completely different to the one the older generation had lived in. However, it seems as if war has not ended and is still going on when the narrator is an adult. When she visits her father one day and they hear airplanes flying over, the narrator wants him to put on a helmet (121). This indicates that planes still represent a threat and people fear an aerial attack; however, the father, who is dwelling in nostalgia, refuses to accept this reality and “slaps at [the helmet], bruising his fragile hands” (121). When he finds that he cannot unbuckle the strap, “he weeps into his spotted hands” (122). The strong reaction of the old man shows that the older generation has never really come to terms with the fact that the world is not the same as it was when they were young. For them, “the world used to be safe, and then, one day, it wasn’t” (112). For the narrator and the younger generation, however, putting on a helmet when a plane drones past seems to be something completely normal since they grew up with the dangers of war and do not know a different way of life. In fact, it is the narrator’s ignorance that plays a major role in the events that unfold in the course of the story. It is her who believes and tells her mother that Bobby got the bright-colored candy from the refugee girls and gave them to the children of the town (118). In her childish ignorance, she thinks that they must have given it to him when he was at their place playing with them, and the constant questioning of her mother eventually makes her say that. For the mother, this is the confirmation and proof that the 94

Manmensvitzender family are dangerous and have come to kill. She believes that they have poisoned their children even though none of them has shown any symptoms or has died. In her delusional state, she organizes a town meeting, where she reminds the other adults, “We have to remember that we are all soldiers in this war” (119). The subsequent discussion about what to do with the refugee family ends in a decision that is not stated explicitly; however, it seems as if the plan of the adults is to kill them. Yet, when it turns out that the candy was from Bobby’s grandfather and not dangerous at all, the adults have to let go of their intention and the mother blames her daughter for misinterpreting the situation. Feeling guilty about her misunderstanding, the narrator wants to apologize to the refugee girls with a loaf of bread the next day; however, she is surprised to see that instead of being happy about it, the girls start crying:

“God, don’t you know anything?” Bobby says, “They’re afraid of our food, don’t you even know that?” “Why?” “’Cause of the bombs, you idiot. Why don’t you think once in a while?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about?” The goats rattle their bells and the cart shifts back and forth. “The bombs! Don’t you even read your history books? In the beginning of the war we sent them food packages all wrapped up the same color as these bombs that would go off when someone touched them.” “We did that?” “Well, our parents did.” (121)

This is completely new and shocking information for the narrator, and it can be argued that it might also be for some readers. The fact that these things really happened during the war on terror makes Rickert’s story even more horrifying and traumatic. It also explains why the refugee girls are crying when they see the bread. It is likely that they witnessed other children die from bombs that looked like a loaf of bread, and they have been deeply traumatized by these horrific experiences. The narrator has never heard of anything more ferocious, and the fact that Bobby says that their parents are responsible for this insidious campaign changes something in the narrator and the other children in town:

We were under attack is how it felt. The Manmensvitzenders with their tears and fear of bread, their strange clothes and stinky goats were children like us and we 95

could not get the town meeting out of our heads, what the adults had considered doing. We climbed trees, chased balls, came home when called, brushed our teeth when told, finished our milk, but we had lost that feeling we’d had before. It is true we didn’t understand what had been taken from us, but we knew what we had been given and who had done the giving. (122)

Hence, to the children, the adults seem like monsters with all their racism and prejudice against the refugee family. In their childish ignorance, they also believe that it was their parents who sent the bombs to Afghanistan and are therefore personally responsible for the refugee girls’ emotional state. They start to see their parents with different eyes and eventually develop a feeling of disgust and hatred against them. Thus, even though not explicitly mentioned, it can be argued that what they lose that summer is the innocence and carefreeness of their childhood. They know that it is their parents and their intolerance and mistrust towards foreigners that is to blame for this change of feeling. Knowing what the parents plan to do with the Manmensvitzenders, they try to resolve the problem by eventually burning down the town hall during a meeting and, like that, most likely cause the deaths of all the people inside (the narrator remains vague about that) (123). Thus, it can be argued that what the children try to do is stop their parents from committing the same crimes they have been exposed to by their enemy. They do not want their childhood to be affected by such horrors, which is why they think that “once again the world was safe and beautiful” (123). However, they are not aware of the consequences of their doings, and the older they get the clearer they see how wrong they were. In this regard, the narrator once more turns to the reader:

You may ask, who locked the door? Who made the stick piles? Who lit the matches? We all did. And if I am to find solace, twenty-five years after I destroyed all ability to feel that my happiness, or anyone’s, really exists, I find it in this. It was all of us. (123)

Thus, in the end it does not matter who started the fire because it was a collective decision, and everyone had a part in it. It changed the lives of all the children involved and no one has ever been able to feel happy again since then. When they were children, they did not think about the consequences of their actions; however, when they look back at how many lives they have destroyed, they are shocked about their capability of doing something so horrible. In fact, it can be argued that what the children did to their parents and the other townspeople was even more terrifying than what the adults might have done to the 96

Manmensvitzender family. Moreover, their crime was even deadlier and more sinister than the biological terror attack of the enemy, for they killed their own families without a warning. Hence, they are traumatized by what they have done and will most likely never recover. What Rickert shows in her short story is that ignorance can be a dangerous thing as it opens the way for prejudice and misunderstandings, which eventually robs people of their innocence. Considering the story as reaction to 9/11, what she seems to want to say is that the paranoia that followed the traumatic events could have been avoided if people had reacted differently and had not become so extremely prejudiced against people from the Middle East. By depicting the horrors the United States brought to Afghanistan with their food packaging bombs, she wants her readers to understand that the people there are no different but just as innocent as any American citizen.

6. CONCLUSION

What has been shown in this thesis is that, like many other cataclysmic historical events, the terror attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan were followed by writings of post-apocalyptic fiction that reflected the fearful atmosphere of that time and the struggle of the traumatized survivors and the American population to grasp what has happened. In this regard, writing and reading the post-apocalypse can be considered a means to work through, understand, and recover from psychological and collective traumas caused by real apocalyptic events. This is what makes post-apocalyptic fiction essential trauma narratives. The analysis of the five selected post-9/11 short stories has revealed that the short story is a predestined and effective literary form for the depiction of traumatic experiences and their symptoms. What has further been shown is that the authors of the analyzed stories create fictional post-apocalyptic worlds by imagining and speculating what could have happened if things had gone differently after 9/11 or similar apocalyptic events. In each of these stories, the individual and collective trauma caused by the (fictional) apocalypses are represented through psychological and physical symptoms of the first- person narrators or protagonists and the other characters. Some of these symptoms include fragmented memory or the repression of it, which makes most of the stories seem to lack important information that would enable the readers to fully understand what is going on or has happened to the characters. Like that, the authors put them in the same position as their narrators and characters while, at the same time, they do so to reflect on the uneasy feeling following the terror attacks as well as the American population’s lack of knowledge as to what has really happened and why. Thus, the post-9/11 atmosphere of fear that was enhanced by the unknown is taken up and reflected in the stories by leaving things unsaid or staying vague about them (especially in Kadrey’s and G. Wolfe’s stories). Yet, another aspect of the post-9/11 fear of the unknown is represented through paranoia as well as intolerance and mistrust of people coming from the Middle East. This fear of the “other” is mainly addressed and criticized in Emswhiller’s and Rickert’s post- apocalyptic short stories on the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, what they do is depict (fictional) consequences of intolerant and greedy behavior of the American population to speculate and warn about future apocalyptic events that may be caused by 98

humanity itself. Thus, the analyzed post-9/11 short stories can be considered reactions to the collective trauma the United States has suffered, while their authors also explore the (psychological) aftermaths the apocalyptic event has had on individuals who either experienced the horrors first-hand or on TV. Concerning the post-apocalyptic theme of survival vs. humanity, what the analysis of the selected short stories has also shown is that their authors are rather pessimistic about the survival of humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. The only exception is Van Pelt, who seems to believe in the good of man and a hopeful and positive future (for the United States) in his post-9/11 story. However, it must be pointed out that the fictional apocalypses the authors imagine have all been caused by humanity itself; thus, by not giving humanity the chance to survive, what they seem to argue is that people are incapable of changing and learning from their mistakes. Considering the many man-made apocalyptic events that have happened in recent history, such as the IS terror attacks in Europe and the election of Donald Trump as American president in 2016, the future of post-apocalyptic fiction and (fictional) survivors suffering from psychological and collective trauma seems to be assured, at least until the day the world really ends and there is nobody left to imagine the post-apocalypse.

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