The Mechanism of Survival in Post-Apocalyptic Pandemic Narratives: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction is a subgenre of science fiction in which a global crisis takes its toll on the human population, leaving only a few with the luck of surviving the scene. However, survival slowly develops into a determining power as the remaining people try to reconstruct a new civilization with the use of different strategies and mechanisms of survival. This study is then based on post-apocalyptic texts, particularly ones that are concerned with pandemics, and carefully examines and compares two ground-breaking narratives of post-apocalyptic fiction: Stephen King’s The Stand (1978) and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014). It attempts to explore the two narratives in terms of the strategies and mechanisms of survival as the two novelists recapture the survivors’ experiences and their struggle to survive the ongoing post-apocalyptic setting.