Fun in the Morning After the Apocalypse

So I’ve been scavenging through the mess of my writing folders and rereading older works to see what might be worth salvaging, salvaging defined here as extensive editing and rewriting for unintentionally problematic elements, reducing the use of prepositional phrases (or reducing prepositional phrase usage), and cultivating promising ideas to meet my standards.  Granted, this experience often ends in frustration and exhaustion, rarely productivity, but I will chalk it up to a learning experience, if only for the fact that it better illuminates what I favor in terms of subject and theme and, conversely, how best to challenge myself with unfamiliar turf in the future.

In my past and contemporary works, I see a fixation of life after the end of a great calamity.  The timing differs; one old story deals with the characters waking to find their civilization utterly eradicated and must progress from there, while the most recent foray occurs an indistinct amount of time after the fall of Earth’s central civilizations, where the cities are no more than untended graveyards.

The experience leaves me mulling over the motifs examined and unexamined in these post-apocalyptic stories, as well as trying to articulate my gravitation towards these works.  For the latter, I believe it may be a consequence of my escapist tendencies, and perhaps the arrogance that I assume when I look at how many aspects of the contemporary world disgust me and, like the armchair general smoking his pipe and coughing fat clouds of delusion and contempt, I attempt to reinvent the world in my shaping.  It’s no mistake that the most recent foray into post-apocalyptic works has a communal setting that I idealize far more than contemporary American society.  Rather than a cannibalistic world that terrorizes the helpless, where the oppressors gain further power and means to oppress those “beneath” them, through money or government, to outright lying and deceiving these masses to enslave them…

This is a society that nurtures its people.  If you want to farm, you are given your land and seeds, as well as the assistance of the community during harvest, with only the expectation that you give back to the community.  You want to make clothing, the same supplying with the idea of community reciprocation is established.  Because of the insular nature of communities and the decomposition of the world’s infrastructure, civilization is left to small communities of families that trade and communicate for their mutual survival.   The idea of leaving an individual to starvation and sickness is repulsive, because that individual is a neighbor, a friend, and sitting right in front of you.

I suppose this is the point where I say that I loathe the capitalistic system and, yes, I am mad as Hell about the exploitation perpetuated by those in-power, but I cannot find ways to fight beyond telling my stories.

The world is idealized, maybe especially so, because the physical world of the post-apocalypse isn’t as important as the movements of the lead character in terms of the narrative.  It is constructed to serve as an antithesis for the conflict that consumes her.  Because this is a society of reciprocation, she feels ashamed for not reciprocating enough or, more specifically, reciprocating in a manner that better supports the community.  She is skilled with crop and herbal cultivation, unnaturally so, but this one matter that she cannot do, consumes her at a subconscious level and spurs the narrative onward.

The flexibility in the post-apocalyptic landscape is also especially appealing, allowing for the framing of modern-day concerns through a different lens that can zero in on the specifications of these.

In the Sleep series, the post-apocalyptic landscape also serves to illustrate an underlying concept of tradition versus advancement, as well as to inform the reader as to the beliefs and conflicts of the focal character.

In the other example, the three survivors of an eradicated society find themselves burdened with preserving their cultural heritage under the threat of death.  They must measure what values and beliefs can be saved, or must be sacrificed, in order for the three to conceal themselves and survive in a hostile world.  The question the story asked was “Is this preservation of history and culture worth dying for?”

I think this latter question is more common with post-apocalypse works, though the question is usually a more broad “can this value survive in this changed world?”  The Walking Dead video game series by Telltale illustrates this well; is there any place for mercy in a world that will rip your face off in a moment of weakness?  How much is a single life worth?  Is it better to let someone who cannot function in this world die to save him/her further agony, or is every life precious on its own accord due to the scarcity of it?

I invite any other thoughts concerning post-apocalyptic works and what fertile soil the setting has to offer, as well as those considering its weaknesses in expressing certain themes and types of stories.

To any and all who read this, thank you for your time and consideration towards this entry, as well as previous ones.