IN A DARK TIME: THE APOCALYPTIC TEMPER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE IN THE ATOMIC AGE (VONNEGUT, COOVER, PERCY, PYNCHON)
Abstract
The apocalyptic temper is constant in our literature since the first generation Puritans' conviction that history approached its end. The present study will first examine how that apocalyptic temper has faded since that era as the idea of God faded, how the Consummation became a literary metaphor and an aesthetic effect. American novelists in the atomic age, however, have responded to the new technology of death by reviving the rhetoric and passion of the traditional apocalyptic temper as they adjust, much as the Puritans did, to the possibility of imminent, very real ending. The present study advances sound critical work already done on the apocalyptic tradition in American literature by moving the tradition into the urgency of the atomic age. Far from the stuff of science fiction and political thrillers, the apocalypse has become the dominant metaphor of mainstream American writing. Using the novels of Vonnegut, Coover, Percy, Pynchon, Gaddis, and DeLillo, the present study examines how writers have tapped the energy of the traditional apocalyptic genre to address a community of the powerless, despairing of hope, confronting a dark history. Despite an obvious concern for the subject of death, expanded by the atrocity of Hiroshima to include not merely individual death but civilization's as well, these writers reject the meaninglessness of life implied by technological destruction and fervently offer the difficult reassurance that life in such times retains its dignity and its purpose. The contemporary so-called "academic" novel then is more accurately a community novel, with writers facing the question of a shared demise and rediscovering the religious urgency of the apocalyptic genre as a strategy for dealing with the threat of the nuclear present and for offering the resilient message of comfort and compassion in a dark time.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
American literature
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