Post-pandemic Worlds In Literature: A Comparative Analysis Of 'station Eleven' And 'the Road' As Reflections Of Covid-19
Keywords:
COVID-19, apocalyptic fiction, cultural memory, resilience, narrative ethics, trauma, pandemic literatureAbstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has reignited scholarly interest in how literature reflects and prefigures collective crises. Despite this, there remains limited exploration of pre-pandemic fiction as retrospective cultural commentary. This study addresses that gap by investigating how two pre-pandemic novels—Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014) and The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)—unintentionally resonate with the experiences, emotions, and societal transformations brought about by the COVID-19 crisis. Employing a comparative textual analysis, the study examines thematic and narrative parallels in the depiction of collapse, survival, memory, and moral continuity. Station Eleven offers a vision of resilience grounded in the endurance of culture and art, portraying a post-pandemic society that clings to theatrical performance, storytelling, and archives as means of preserving humanity and meaning. In contrast, The Road presents a bleaker vision, emphasizing survival through the father-son bond, where moral endurance persists in the absence of social structures. The former envisions reconstruction through communal memory and creative expression; the latter explores personal ethics in the face of total devastation. Together, these novels illustrate two distinct yet complementary frameworks for processing trauma: one collective and cultural, the other intimate and ethical. By analyzing these texts in the context of post-COVID reflection, the study highlights literature’s potential to act as a site of cultural foresight and emotional resonance. This research contributes to literary and cultural discourse by foregrounding fiction’s role in shaping interpretive frameworks for crisis, ultimately enriching our understanding of narrative as a tool for meaning-making in uncertain times.
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