Tuesday, March 23, 2010

"Men go and come, but earth abides."

The book was both interesting and enjoyable.
The themes that resonated for me was the portrayal of earth as a controlling organic being, that humans are no one privileged then anything in nature. This is the thought also of Ish who believes this as well. The book also shows how the actual earth would cope with the lack of humans. It is portrayed that it would be beautiful without them. Without anyone controlling the production of plants and cultivating them they will develop themselves into live like plants. The novel cleverly portrays the idea that intelligence and survival in terms of academia is one that is created by humans. Without the means to education humans learn coping skills better and with the lack of numbers of humans’ means that the most important skill is to be able to survive, this is our original purpose and Stewart puts this idea across well.
The area I Felt the novel lost the impact of its point was using biblical referencing. I found this book review that back up the feeling I had whilst reading it.

the dual themes are as old as Genesiss...Not a flood but a swift and deadly new disease wipes out all but a few of the human race. Ish (for "Isherwood") is the Noah of this "Great Disaster." As material civilization begins to crumble, Ish gradually devolves into a kind of Adam who, inevitably, finds his Eve, Em (For "Emma"), a level-headed lady with Negro blood, and nature takes its time-worn course. Em. is hailed by Ish as "The Mother of Nations.

Making the story biblical is important in order to reach the reader at the time as religion played a strong part of the lives of readers, so in terms of making the message more effected it is justified.

2 comments:

  1. I like he use of the word organic, because earth was here before man was, leaving the beautiful shall of the world. This book reminds me of 'The happening' when the earth has had enough of humans polluting it, so retaliates by spreading a virus, killing millions. I like the way you included from the book about education not as important as the basic skills of survival, leading us to determine wether schooling was important than knowledge and human instinct.

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  2. I feel the idea of a natural disease killing off mind-kind is somewhat rare in today’s apocalyptic genre. Most texts produced recently are concerned with either man made diseases, such as I Am Legend or some kind of Zombie infection. Most of these conjure up the image of some kind experiment gone wrong in a laboratory (Resident Evil and 28 Days Later), thus meaning mankind is responsible for the destruction of the human race. However as Earth Abides was written 50 or so years ago, we see how the differences in culture and fears have affected the plots of apocalyptic narratives.

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