Description
In A Sense of Apocalypse, Marcin Mazurek argues that our cultural understandings of apocalypse can be largely subsumed within two metaphors. This study investigates the validity of Mazurek's argument through an examination of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Hughes Brother's The Book of Eli through the scope of metaphor theory. Parable of the Sower prophetically envisions California as xenophobia, systemic corruption, declining ecosystems, and corporate takeovers threaten to destroy it. The novel's lead character, young Lauren Olamina, survives the destruction of her state by forming a diverse enclave of people bound together by a belief that out of destruction a utopian space might be created; thus, Butler constructs their future, though unknowable, as actionable. The Book of Eli adheres to an eschatological, predetermined, Abrahamic interpretation of the apocalypse. Eli is posited as a "quasi-messianic figure" operating within a framework established by the Book of Revelation. Given the parameters of an established mythology, The Book of Eli fails to present any actionable means of addressing the imminent apocalypse; instead, it assumes a fatalistic stance within the apocalypse it constructs. The disparity between these two metaphoric understandings, apocalypse as actionable or revelatory, in addition to the prevalence of the latter form in an extended examination of other 20th and 21st century apocalyptic representations, reveal a social tendency to experience the apocalypse as beyond human agency rather than as a potential state in which human intervention matters.
Metaphors of Apocalypse in Parable of the Sower snd The Book of Eli
In A Sense of Apocalypse, Marcin Mazurek argues that our cultural understandings of apocalypse can be largely subsumed within two metaphors. This study investigates the validity of Mazurek's argument through an examination of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Hughes Brother's The Book of Eli through the scope of metaphor theory. Parable of the Sower prophetically envisions California as xenophobia, systemic corruption, declining ecosystems, and corporate takeovers threaten to destroy it. The novel's lead character, young Lauren Olamina, survives the destruction of her state by forming a diverse enclave of people bound together by a belief that out of destruction a utopian space might be created; thus, Butler constructs their future, though unknowable, as actionable. The Book of Eli adheres to an eschatological, predetermined, Abrahamic interpretation of the apocalypse. Eli is posited as a "quasi-messianic figure" operating within a framework established by the Book of Revelation. Given the parameters of an established mythology, The Book of Eli fails to present any actionable means of addressing the imminent apocalypse; instead, it assumes a fatalistic stance within the apocalypse it constructs. The disparity between these two metaphoric understandings, apocalypse as actionable or revelatory, in addition to the prevalence of the latter form in an extended examination of other 20th and 21st century apocalyptic representations, reveal a social tendency to experience the apocalypse as beyond human agency rather than as a potential state in which human intervention matters.