Doomsday

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road seem to be a typical example of what Liz Rosen would call “neo-apocalyptic” literature. Two survivors, the elect, are living in a dystopia in the aftermath of some worldwide catastrophe. In the beginning, the child is called the voice of God. Food basically nonexistent—what the two find through scrounging can barely feed them and they often go hungry. They live in constant fear of being caught and eaten by cannibals, ostensibly representing the unelect. Only the cannibals have anything resembling an organized society, and they create one only by oppressing and murdering other people. The world is covered in ash, creating an endless stretch of gray. In short, they live in a never-ending Tribulation.

At second reading, however, I started to see the more biblical apocalyptic story. McCarthy obliquely hinted that fierce fires that burnt everything in its path ravaged the world, leaving behind the ash. The traditional idea of Hell is a place with lakes of ever-burning fire.  Food is often found spoilt, as if touched by Famine, the rider of the black horse in the Book of Revelation. Everywhere, you see the dualistic relationship between the living and the dead, young and old, and good guys and bad guys.

Then, you have to consider electism. The father and the boy are not elect. By the end of the book, the father is forced to commit several acts that might have killed people. Even then, the father dies before the boy meets up with the new family, who might be considered New Jerusalem. Finally the child will have the company of other “good guys.”

One of the realizations that came to me as I read Cormac McCarthy’s The  Road was that life is far more precious if you had to fight for it. Every sacrifice you make to accomplish something means that the worth of that sacrifice goes into that accomplishment. To have to fight everyday for survival, to be hunted, hungry and cold everyday either breaks one spirit or tempers it into steel.

Another thing that caught my attention was how the father kept telling his son that they were the “good guys.” The son’s uncertainty shines through in that he is not secure in the knowledge that the measures his father took to survive were not unquestioningly moral. To a great extent, this moral ambiguity is justified. That they left the slaves that they found to the cannibals rather than setting them free comes to mind as an example. However, the practicality of these actions cannot be questioned. Everything the father did, was for his own and son’s survival. In a dystopia where everyone is in imminent threat of being eaten by other people, your own survival becomes far more important than anyone else’s.

This brings me to the subject of cannibals. While I have heard accounts of cannibalism when people are in desperate straits, somehow desperation does not seem quite extreme enough to justify the idea of cannibalism. Seriously, you are eating other people! That’s a terrifying idea to contemplate—eating people or being chopped up and eaten by other people. I can’t wait for this book to be over.

The Albertine Notes invokes many of the common themes of apocalyptic thought. In many ways, I am reminded of “Twelve Monkeys.” Both the novella and the movie have a cyclical nature. In “Twelve Monkeys,” Bruce Willis relives his memory of seeing a man being shot in an airport only to find that he has witnessed his own death. In Albertine Notes, Kevin Lee is obsessed with Serena, a girl he loved who was dating another man. Eventually, he finds out that his mother, the microbiologist, gave him a drug, which he gave to Serena who gave it to her boyfriend, Irving, who became Addict Number One of the Albertine drug. It involves a twisted cycle of growing awareness, realization and remembering the truth. The epidemic ravaged Earth’s population in “Twelve Monkeys” while Albertine is referred to as an epidemic. Both Bruce Willis and Kevin Lee go back in time to try to prevent the catastrophe. Finally, both Bruce Willis and Kevin Lee will die in the attempt.

There is a haunting quality in Rick Moody’s post-apocalyptic world, in which we see just enough of ourselves to be convinced of its possible existence. The uranium bomb used by Cortez or some other man reflects the increasing public awareness of the nuclear arms race and the potential for destruction that so many countries now possess. The proliferation of drugs everywhere mimics the reliance on Albertine in Kevin’s world. (In my middle school, we all knew who the resident drug dealer was, and mind you, I went to one of the higher rated public schools in the city.) Finally, Moody touched on an interesting point when he chose memory to focus on. Everyone wants to relive moments in her own life, snippets of time and experience which would bore anyone else to tears. In that sense, Albertine increases urban isolation, further cementing the idea that we are alone, especially in an urban dystopia.

One of the more interesting concepts in machinist apocalyptic thought is that of the cyborg. Part man and part machine, the two species merge as the necessary yet incestuous lovechild of evolution. The existence of the cyborg is not truly questioned because we have yet to truly examine what a cyborg is. The stereotype that science fiction generates is Star Trek’s Borg—a mishmash of wires plugged into flesh, a product of the distant future that cannot yet possibly exist in our modern world.

Yet, cyborgs do exist and humanity is the parent. We have become cyborgs out of necessity. According to Dictionary.com, a cyborg is “a person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device.” By that definition, anyone with a pacemaker in her chest is a cyborg. There also exists a growing trend of parents implanting tracking devices in their infant children in case the child is ever kidnapped; does this make the children cyborgs? The reality of the human robot is here.

However, we must ask ourselves several questions. The first is what we sacrifice for technology’s sake. With the reality of cyborgs comes concerns about the impending tide of technoppression. As Lee Quinby wrote in Millenial Seduction, “Programmed perfection does not just promise that electronic prosthetics will perfect life—it mandates it.” (134) As technology allows humanity to achieve more than is humanly possible, evolution dictates that we must reach for this or risk becoming obsolete.

At the risk of sounding like a bad joke, I ask whether we create technology, or does it create us? Have we lost ourselves in this pursuit, so much so that we create for the sake of creation, because we are compelled to for no other reason than to lose ourselves in the frenzy that comes with playing God? Are we truly building this great technology to further humanity’s interests or because we are competing with an imaginary rival whom we can never beat and thus, will never surrender to?

By the time I got to the end of Glorious Appearing, I could see the appeal of it. It takes away the need for thought and responsibility. It gives the Christians and the Jews the option to be a child again, and to wholly rely on your mommy or daddy.

You aren’t held responsible because you don’t know any better. It gives the unthinking sheep a Shepard to herd them to moral slaughter. God/Jesus tells his followers what to do, so they don’t have to make decisions. They don’t have to question whether killing all these people is ethical. They don’t have to wonder if any of Carpathia’s people took the mark out of fear or to keep their families safe. Good people of other faiths still deserve to burn in the fires of hell because don’t fall completely in line. How do you tell a small child that they deserve to be killed because they were too young and too innocent to understand that they’re evil? But since God says it is right, it must be so. Since God is giving the orders, his followers have no responsibility. They are simply the knives used, not the brain that directs the action. They take no responsibility because that is God’s role as their father.

It is a tempting arrangement, which will result in the stunting of personal growth. If a person cannot grow up and question her parents, take responsibility of her own actions, learn to say no, or at least, ask why, then she remain a child her entire life.

Glorious Appearing reads like it was written by a military reject who overdosed on Sunday television sermons and Wikipedia—full of descriptions of blood and battle with a touch of evangelical fervor and a hint of middle-school computer nerd-ism. It lacked depth, emotion and loses all entertainment value when you realize that, since the armies of Carpathia can’t harm the defenders and all previous wounds are healed, there is no challenge.  All conflict will be resolved by a true deus ex machina move with very little need for thoughtful resolution.

That being said, I will admit that the book made some good points. The only one that interests me would be Leah Rose’s comment about the coming of Jesus being far louder the second time around. (132) If my Catholic school memories do not deceive, then Jesus crept into the world, unnoticed but for a few shepherds and magi, beneath a bright star amidst hay bales in a barn. The second coming of the Son of God sounds much more pronounced and extravagant. Everyone’s invited to the inaugural birthday bash as long as you put yourself on the guest list before the big day, Daddy’s going to put a birth announcement in the sky. His coming will be impossible to ignore.

But why is this time so different from the last? Is it a forewarning of the sheer number of dead that this rompe on the earthly plane will produce? Perhaps it is because the death certificate will read differently? Instead of “One person was crucified as an example,” it will say, “Everyone’s dead together.”

Most cultures possess some form of death tradition. By death tradition, I include all deathbed rituals, after death ceremonies, beliefs, and traditional practices. A prominent example is the Last Rites of the Catholics, a deathbed ritual in which the dying is absolved if hers sins, clearing their path to Heaven. Another is the ancient Egyptian practice of mummification, by which the body of the dead is preserved for its repossession by the soul. Personally, I have memories of going to cemetery plots every few years and burning what amounts to Monopoly money with my great grandmother’s name on it and pouring rice wine over her grave, in hopes that it reaches her in the Chinese afterlife.

However, I have never heard of the Kaddish. For me, one of the most haunting scenes of Kushner’s “Angels In America” is Ethel Rosenberg possessing Louis, and saying this Aramaic mourning song over Roy Cohn’s dead body. A quick Google search produced a translation of the prayer, which is written in classical Old Testament style.

But Rosenberg added something extra to the Kaddish. The translation I found (obviously) did not include “You sonofabitch.” Her bit of improvisation broke the spell the recitation of the Kaddish wove. The Kaddish, as all are death rituals, is rarely done for the dead. What can harm or help those who have shaken off their mortal bonds and earthly aesthetics? Will rotting hurt those who can feel? Can wine sate those who no longer thirst?  Neither Ethel nor Louis is saying the Kaddish for Roy’s sake. Ethal is saying it for herself and Louis is saying it for Belize who, despite her disdain for the corrupt powerbroker, had pitied Roy. The Kaddish was for their sake.

Death rituals help people cope with death. Perhaps the idea of an afterlife, to which those in this world can contribute, soothes the soul.

KADDISH TRANSLITERATION
Yis’ga’dal v’yis’kadash sh’may ra’bbo, b’olmo dee’vro chir’usay v’yamlich malchu’say, b’chayaychon uv’yomay’chon uv’chayay d’chol bais Yisroel, ba’agolo u’viz’man koriv; v’imru Omein.
Y’hay shmay rabbo m’vorach l’olam ul’olmay olmayo.
Yisborach v’yishtabach v’yispoar v’yisromam v’yismasay, v’yishador v’yis’aleh v’yisalal, shmay d’kudsho, brich hu, l’aylo min kl birchoso v’sheeroso, tush’bechoso v’nechemoso, da,ameeran b’olmo; vimru Omein.
Y’hay shlomo rabbo min sh’mayo, v’chayim alaynu v’al kol Yisroel; v’imru Omein.
Oseh sholom bimromov, hu ya’aseh sholom olaynu, v’al kol yisroel; vimru Omein.

May the great Name of God be exalted and sanctified, throughout the world, which he has created according to his will. May his Kingship be established in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of the entire household of Israel, swiftly and in the near future; and say, Amen.
May his great name be blessed, forever and ever.
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, honored elevated and lauded be the Name of the holy one, Blessed is he- above and beyond any blessings and hymns, Praises and consolations which are uttered in the world; and say Amen. May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life, upon us and upon all Israel; and say, Amen.

America is a nation of immigrants. People from all over the world come here for a myriad of reason, but they all have one thing in common: travel. Immigrants have to make a journey to get here. (Unless you are Native American, in which case this essay would not apply.)

Once upon a time, the journey to America was a life-changing event. Irish immigrants during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mostly poor laborers, considered such a move to be almost an exile, and rightly so. The voyages onboard ships were too expensive for casual visits, and for a long time, crossing the Atlantic was a dangerous endeavor, for a variety of reasons. One would most likely never see their kinsmen again, if they left for America, unless the rest of the clan moved as well.

This great move was what came to mind as I read the Act I, Scene One of Tony Kushner’s “Millennium Approaches.”  During the funeral of Sarah Ironson, Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz said, “such Great Voyages in this world does not exist anymore.” (16) He was referring to Ironson’s journey from Russia, and for a while, I agreed. The physical hardships of being on a boat full to capacity with people, combined with possible malnutrition and less than sanitary conditions—these are things that one rarely sees today.

Yet, as the play unfolds, the modern hardships of life appear, like lesions on previously unmarked skin. The stress of trying to be ethical while making a living is no less severe than crossing the Atlantic in the steerage. Today’s diseases, like AIDS, will weaken your immune system just as much, if not more than a lifetime of malnutrition. Valium, among other drugs, will destroy one’s will to face reality. Everyone’s life is difficult, but in different ways.

In essence, we are all making a Great Voyage. But where does that voyage lead?

Apocalyptic Scrapbook

I propose to create a scrapbook of newspaper articles dealing with apocalyptic thought. By tracking the development and adaptation of apocalyptic thought throughout the Vietnam War in mass media, one might find greater insight into the evolution of modern endism during wartime. I am hoping to find a clear evolution from the end of the world theories of yesteryear to the nuclear apocalyptic thinking that dominates society.

The presentation of the concept will be a scrapbook full of annotated newspaper clippings.  To do this, I will comb through the New York Times archive of past articles, conveniently collated in an online database, and see how the end of the world is portrayed. The clippings will appear in chronological order, which will help the reader see the gradual change in mentality toward the apocalypse. I will include a timeline of major events during the Vietnam War as well. Hopefully, seeing the date of the edition and the current events of the time will help in locating the source of the trends in apocalyptic thinking.

The Vietnam War was the first war fought by the United States after the creation of nuclear weaponry. With the Doomsday clock five minutes to midnight and the pictures taken of Hiroshima still ringing in the public consciousness, the media had ample opportunity to explore the possibility of Armageddon. Thus was the concept of nuclear Apocalypse was born.

I believe that theories on how the end of the world will come about stem from the fears of the time. In the first millennium, famine was an ever-looming specter, and the end of humanity could easily come from starvation. This fear is given apocalyptic status in the Bible as the black horse from Revelations. (Revelations 6:6) The idea that visions of the Apocalypse form from the current events is exemplified in the nuclear holocaust scenario, which is derived from the development of atomic weaponry in the world during the Cold War era, and really given life during the Vietnam War.