3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Imagining our end: South african apocalyptic fiction(2018) Pitt, Daniela DinaABSTRACT “End-time” narratives have created interest and appeal in a variety of contexts. They serve different purposes, whether to entertain in their depiction of catastrophic disasters, or to afford the opportunity for deeper, and more serious engagement, with preoccupations relating to anxieties in differing contexts, such as socio-political and environmental. This study explores how “End-time” narratives serve a more ethical discourse in a turbid political climate in South Africa, between 1972 to 2006. In this study, I offer close contextual readings of five South African novels that span the period from the apartheid era to post-democracy. The central concern in this study is the stylistic choice made by each of these writers in selecting apocalyptic rhetoric in a narrative which is set in a future, imagined South African space. The five South African fictions selected for this study (Promised Land by Karel Schoeman, July’s People by Nadine Gordimer, Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee, The Mask of Freedom by Peter Wilhelm and Horrelpoot by Eben Venter) each portrays a dystopic imaginary present, and offers the reader an “unveiling” of historical truth and thus a possibility of deferred eschatology. These novels form part of a body of South African literature that represents the critical self-consciousness of white writers as oppositional voices to the historical setting within South Africa from 1972 to 2006. I suggest that the apocalyptic in these texts is allegorical and that, by subverting its form, writers insinuate the limitations of the apocalyptic. In each instance, the anxiety surrounding eschatology opens up the urgent need for a new discourse and national narrative, offering a qualified hope for a feasible albeit, challenging future.Item The role of narrative in post-apocalyptic representations of the social contract(2018) Duncan, NicoleThe moral decline in today’s society has resulted in a resurgence of both apocalyptic and postapocalyptic thought. With human beings’ careless behaviour, of both our physical and moral world, the destruction of humanity has become pertinent once again. As a result, there has been an increase in post-apocalyptic fiction; future imaginings of what the world can possibly be like after an apocalyptic devastation. Post-apocalyptic fiction writers portray future societies with the didactic intention of evoking change in current society. This dissertation considers the role narrative plays in these works of post-apocalyptic fiction; with a specific focus on how narrative influences the rebuilding of society following an apocalyptic cataclysm. The four chosen texts, A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) by Walter M. Miller Jr, Riddley Walker (1980) by Russell Hoban, The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy, and The Book of Dave (2006) by Will Self., are postapocalyptic works of fiction that explore the role narrative plays in representing the social contract theory. Mark Turner, author of The Literary Mind (1998), noted that “narrative imagining - story - is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, or predicting, of planning, and of explaining” (Turner 4). It is my argument that narrative is so powerful that it provides the starting point for the reconstruction of humanity following an apocalypse. An apocalyptic event presents humanity with a tabula rasa upon which to rebuild civilization. In order to reconstruct society, there needs to be a basis from which to draw. Narrative provides a site of ethics. Storytelling demonstrates good versus evil and, therefore, is able to represent a moral code. Although narrative has both constructive and destructive potential for humankind, as it can be misinterpreted, it is ultimately up to humanity to use fragments of the past to rebuild society.