The New World of the Post-Apocalyptic Imagination

ABSTRACT\ud THE NEW WORLD OF THE POST-APOCALYPTIC IMAGINATION\ud by\ud ?? Karl Becker 2010\ud Master of Arts in English\ud California State University, Chico\ud Spring 2010\ud In light of a recent explosion of post-apocalyptic narratives in popular film\ud and literature, this thesis approaches an analysis of the genre as a means of expressing\ud deep-seated anxiety about modern consumer practices and their perceived eventual outcomes.\ud The project explores the literary tropes that illustrate materialist practices in\ud American culture in both post-apocalyptic works of fiction and early European encounter\ud literature, particularly the interaction between the indigenous inhabitants and explorers\ud of the New World and their post-apocalyptic antecedents. By examining narrative\ud elements of the 2007 film adaptation of Richard Matheson???s 1954 novel I Am Legend\ud and Cormac McCarthy???s 2006 novel The Road, this thesis will discuss the postapocalyptic\ud genre as a modern transposition of pre-colonial encounter narratives. The\ud discussion will reveal that many of the motives underlying the Conquest of the Americas\ud shape post-apocalyptic narratives, even where they perform different functions.\ud vii\ud While the post-apocalyptic genre attempts to communicate hypothetical outcomes to\ud modern consumer practices, they prove also to fulfill a consumer fantasy as it is perpetuated\ud by images of destruction, depopulation, unlimited materialism, and nightmare\ud inhabitants that recall details from America???s imperial past.CSU, Chic