Analysis of End of the World Narratives in ENGL 1202

This essay delves into the theme of end-of-the-world narratives, examining survival circumstances and the portrayal of humanity in apocalyptic scenarios. The essay analyzes key works such as Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road,' Robert Kirkman's 'The Walking Dead,' and Richard Matheson's 'I Am Legend,' exploring how these narratives depict the collapse of society, the struggle for survival, and the impact of such events on human nature. It discusses the subgenre of science fiction and horror, focusing on the causes of apocalypse, the loss of moral convictions, and the role of hope in the face of disaster. The analysis covers the evolution of human traits, the depiction of dystopia, and the exploration of themes like resilience and the theological scope of survival, offering insights into the fictional representation of the end of the world and its impact on the readers' imagination.

Running Head: END OF THE WORLD NARRATIVES
END OF THE WORLD NARRATIVES
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction:
The very concept of a judgment day, foreboding the end of existence in the world, is
alarming and sensational. In the world of literature, ‘doomsday’ has often been a subject of
interest among authors, readers and filmmakers. End of the world narratives deal with such
apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios where the characters find themselves in the midst
of situations where their death is inevitable. Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic themes have
been explored in various forms of narratives, like The Walking Dead by Kirkman, The Road
by Cormac McCarthy and I am a Legend by Richard Matheson. The primary focus of this
essay is to evaluate the survival circumstances in these end-of-the-world narratives where the
readers possess no knowledge about the cause of such an apocalypse and the characters are
left at the mercy of their fates.
Discussion:
The end of the world narrative is subgenre of science fiction regarding the society,
science fantasy of horror where the technological advancements of the Earth is collapsing
itself or is going to be collapsed due to apocalyptic events such as climate change, nuclear
holocaust, volcanic eruption, artificial intelligence apocalypse or some infectious events that
will wipe out the human race slowly.
To define the end of world narrative, the study describes it as a disaster having its
own uniqueness, intensity, scale and a vast parameter of consequences dealing with the fact
that it will be totally unprecedented. The disaster can be understood by the radical exceptions
of the events the human race have experienced before.
Destruction and regeneration is the basic law of nature, but oftentimes this natural
order is disrupted in the dystopia of post-apocalyptic narratives. In The Road, Cormac
McCarthy shows the struggle between man and the unknown. Adaptation of such narratives

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speculates a disaster which has either happened already or is inevitable in the course of time.
In the storyline of The Road, there was a human being who stands out with his unblinking
eyes and devastated body to challenge the doomsday happening all around. At the end of the
novel, the son is stranded beside the corpse of his father until another band of survivors takes
him in. The purpose of this survival story is based on the Darwinian evolutionary theory
about ‘survival of the fittest’. In this novel, the father makes his son fit for survival by
equipping him with the knowledge of how to use a gun. In course of the journey, the leader
come across many hurdles to cross in order to be safe. He falls down in front of the ways of
the fall of the world, but rises back on his own to reach his goal, to save his rightful successor
in the end.
The end of the world narratives are coherently impossible, though it holds a large
amount of fascination and horror on the mankind as there were always stories like these in the
past and human race has dealt with them in their past. These imaginary tales cannot be true to
its point of time, all knows that, but the trivial part that attracts the people about the theme of
these narrative is the inevitable events that will take place in the eyes of the readers that will
amaze them through the pages or in the screens as a movie. The aim that as deployed by the
end of the world narratives will be further analysed and explained in course of this paper.
In a hypothetical post-apocalyptic scenario, the dead must be killed and the living
must be feared. This is the central theme of the popular graphic novel by Robert Kirkman,
The Walking Dead. The dystopia of zombies seizing control encompasses the idea of man as
a fugitive in a society of moral and ethical degeneration. Presenting a postmodernist
viewpoint, The Walking Dead depicts the paranoia of uncertainty among the survivors of a
zombie apocalypse (Hagman, 2017). The events that occur in these narratives, do not have a
place in the history and does not disrupt the frequency of the incidents that is going to happen
in the near future which will place the world in front of the doomsday, and the protagonist of

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the narrative will save his day to make a mark on the history of the humanity. Although the
novel seems to be centered on the theme of survival, the real purpose behind this survival-
based end-of-the-world narrative is the depiction of humanity and traits in human nature
when faced with adverse situations. Resilience theory evaluates the capacity of man’s
behavior in challenging events. In this aspect, the novel depicts how hardships can alter moral
convictions in people and corrupt their ideals.
This theme of the end of the world touches upon the consequences of the events. The
writers should find a balance in representing the doomsday incidents and to find a balance
between the representation of the fiction and the end of the world where a catastrophe
happens between the absolute and the formation which cannot be limited into the
consequences. To analyse the issue from a different perspective, if the disastrous situation
was indeed total, there would not have been the one left who is capable to represent the
narrative. Therefore, no end of the world fiction is a reality. The destructive range of the
disaster is bit reduced, in order to guarantee a reasonable beginning.
The end of the world theme deals with the emotions in the narrative parts where
generally a man is represented as a last human on the earth as in I am Legend by Richard
Matheson. In the story line, the shock, horror, excitement, terror and most importantly the
hope that the protagonist recovers from dealing with the surrounding presents the apocalypse
of the planet, being accompanied by no human but just a dog. Here, the drastic change of the
neighbourhood in a narrative describes the way, the world will be falling to pieces, where the
protagonist will stand and challenge the inevitable to make his own path towards what he
seek or what he is finding in order to his satisfaction of the will (Nuttall, 2015).
On a large scale of the depiction of the end of the world, it is greatly fictionalised in
the mind of the reader to imagine a world that is fictional and generally represented with a

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future world to depict the scene in the eyes of the readers to make the indicative scene worthy
of the disaster. The catastrophe is supported by the history of the great tide as the Bible
suggests, in order to purge the humanity, here the event is reversed as well to sense more
fictionally than logically. The concept of Aquinas hope states the theological scope for man
to persist in times of hardships with the hope that everything will turn out to be better through
Divine assistance. This hope for survival is central to the themes of end of the world
narratives, and is depicted in novels like The Road and I am Legend (Pudney, 2015). The
position of the natural disaster in the narrative connects the apocalypse as a suggestive of a
double function related to the notion of the origin of the incident. At the same time, the
inevitable events occur and points to the genesis of the disastrous world and the evident
specifications of the catastrophe, the sudden and invisible changes the protagonist
experiences also mark the inevitable and what is about to happen.
The most glorious depiction of nature and the opposition to the residues of the
disastrous world which points to a nostalgic world of medievalism. In fact, the medieval time
revives the recurring element in the fantasy of an authentic pastoral world. The man in, I am
Legend here describes the way of a man left alone with a company just a dog is nowhere to
go but live in a city where he feels he is the last man in the world. The temporal inversion
here provides a solution of a problem representing the future where a human evolution
happens and changes the way how the inversion of the consequences give a dystopic quality
and hopeless scenarios presented by the writers.
Conclusion:
This research paper completely analyses the theme of the end of the world narrative and
describes briefly the ways of the science fiction and fantasy narrative and how it deals in the
genre of the science fantasy and fiction to make an impression in the mind of the readers to

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give the readers enjoy while reading it. This analysis justifies well the requirement to
familiarize the topic ‘the end of the word’ in course of its genre as a successful form of
literature in its time period by imagining the inevitable, to make visible the future of the
humankind in a different light. The paper is conducted and described in a way to make the
statements visible in the light of the analysis of a thesis paper, where the reader himself is
unaware of the events happening around. Therefore, it completely justifies the intent and the
purpose of this paper.

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References:
Nuttall, L. (2015). Attributing minds to vampires in Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. Language and
Literature, 24(1), 23-39.
Hagman, G. (2017). Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse: Trauma and Transformation in AMC’s The
Walking Dead. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 37(1), 46-56.
Pudney, E. (2015). Christianity and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. English Studies, 96(3), 293-309.