Post-apocalypse As Ecological Palimpsest In Katie Hale’s My Name Is Monster (2019): From Collapse And Ashes To Resurgence And Continuance

Abstract

This academic paper has sought to delve into Katie Hale’s My name is monster (2019) as a work of fiction that might be interpreted within the conventions of the post-apocalyptic literary genre. This endeavour, thus, while framed with the formal, thematic and linguistic boundaries of the latter, is meant to study the end of the human civilisation the way the novel has envisioned it in a relevant parallel with the current planetary ecological crises which threaten life in a multitude of ways. There is also appeal, in a significant deflection, to nature’s capacity to resurge, at various proportions, back to life after being the subject of anthropogenic despoliation, either minor or major, with the ongoing, pervasive and tangible environmental catastrophes. The theoretical foundations upon which this article has rested, in the first position, encompass a wide range of insights connected to the post-apocalyptic genre borrowed from theorists including Claire P. Curtis, Heather J. Hicks and Mathias Clasen; furthermore, there is a conspicuous reliance, in the second, on C. S. Holling’s concept, he has dubbed ecological resilience showcasing that the novel’s delineated apocalypse is not perhaps the end, but rather a new beginning. Underpinned by these notions, I argue, that Hale’s text has confronted the twenty-first century readers and the author’s contemporaries with the ecological calamities humans have engendered on a planetary level while maintaining a positive outlook for the future if environment-oriented practices, modes of action and ways of life, both at individual and community dimensions, are to be fostered and implemented.