LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Sample Student final exams 2007

Ashley Schaller

Essay 2

Intensive Refocusing of Apocalyptic Narratives

What If It’s Not Our Apocalypse?

Apocalypse is a dismal, yet enthralling topic. We say we can’t imagine, and then imagine anyway, our world abruptly ending in the most dramatic and destructive ways possible. This future narrative appears several times in pop culture and history, confirming its popularity. Action movies create high suspense and tension by placing our planet’s fate in the hands of the latest actor hunk in Hollywood. Captivated crowds gripped their uncomfortable armrests as Tom Cruise battled a dramatic alien invasion in the blockbuster hit War of the Worlds. While not everyone is expecting blinking space ships and bug eyed aliens to be the cause of humanity’s demise, a significant percent of the earth’s population believe in a specific religious ending. Revelation wins the Most-Read-Book-in-the-Bible Award because of its apocalyptic nature and unique imagery. After all, who isn’t intrigued by horse-shaped locusts with gold crowns and sharp teeth or seas of thick red blood sent to consume the sinful humans on earth?

The point is apocalypse is on the brain and generally, the storyline is quite egotistical. Some event occurs on our planet earth—as if we can really own something that huge—and all humans die, thus ending humanity and all intelligent life anywhere; and even better, the apocalypse is often sent because of something humans did—as if we are the most powerful and influential people in this and every universe. I think we may have it all wrong. Maybe we are a part of someone else’s apocalypse—only a tiny piece of another existence’s fate, a single plague manipulated by another groups’ god.

      For theory’s sake, we will look at the situation from the aliens’ point of view and discover how we may only be pawns in a different version of the apocalyptic story. Let’s say billions of years ago, eight foot purple aliens dominated the galaxies and mapped out and cultivated a large percent of the universe. They employed some planets for industry and others for living quarters, similar to our metropolitans and suburbs. Then the aliens found little old earth bouncing around among the stars, with its beautiful trees and cool, clear water, and decided to turn it into their own personal Eden, maybe that’s what it was created for after all (Genesis). As the popularity of this resort increased, the aliens as a whole began to shirk their responsibilities. They skipped work at the factory, abandoned household duties, and squandered their productivity away for day after day of stress-free, commitment-free lounging and play. Their higher power—of course everyone has a higher power—watched them destroy the universe with their idleness and decided a punishment must be sent to the aliens in order to coax, or should I say coerce, them back to their previous lifestyle before the universe is completely destroyed. This is the part where we, very briefly, come in.

            The higher power plucks all aliens off the earth and forces them to watch as it uses humans like locusts to ruin the former paradise. We begin to destroy the planet in our ignorant little ways of over-population, over-consumption, and our own laziness until the entire earth is destroyed and the aliens no longer have a paradise to waste time in. Humans serve the same function any natural disaster could, a meteor or flood perhaps, and in that respect we should feel lucky to be included in the story at all. Unfortunately for us, in this story when our job is done, so are we, left to be squashed like insects, a mini-apocalypse unnoticed, as the rest of the universe continues just fine without earth or human beings.

Not too often do we see ourselves as mere bugs. While the aliens’ apocalypse is a movie a few people might line up to see, it won’t draw the preorder-your-tickets-weeks-before crowds that our “typical” apocalyptic narratives do. We like seeing humans as the main population because the fact it’s our lives that could be ending causes tension and stress, fear and excitement. We need narratives that would matter to us if they occurred. Whether it’s a prophecy determined by God or an idea for the latest film, as long as humans are the ones affected, apocalyptic narratives are sure to capture our attention and start us thinking “what if?”.