Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers in Textual Seriality: Trauma, Resilience... Resolution?

Abstract

This excerpt from the prologue of The Leftovers introduces the traumatic event that propels the narrative of Tom Perrotta's novel The Leftovers (2012): two per cent of the world population suddenly disappeared on that fateful day of October 14 th creating immediate chaos. The novel focuses on the community of Mapleton and relates how its residents cope with the memory of the rapture three years after it occurred. An omniscient narrator gives insight into the characters' intimate journeys, raising philosophical questions about the meaning of individual and community life. The protagonists embody different life choices, suggesting the long-lasting imprint of the past over the present: Laurie Garvey has decided to join the Guilty Remnants, a community whose members are determined to honour the departed, while her husband Mayor Kevin Garvey strives to preserve social order in Mapleton. Although the novel's narrative structure borrows from the best-selling evangelical apocalyptic literary series entitled Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, which sheds light on the chaos that follows the rapture of those individuals chosen by God to be saved, The Leftovers departs from this tradition by highlighting the paths of survival on which the characters engage individually. Left Behind characteristically opens with a scene of rapture that prompts the unsaved to convert to Christianity as they face ensuing chaos in the forms of plagues, earthquakes, and wars 2. By contrast, The Leftovers articulates a secular response to the rapture and its adaptation into a television series prompts viewers to question the sacred texts and to ponder metaphysical questions that are in tune with contemporary cultural anxieties. 2 Drawing on Robert Stam's understanding of adaptation as a transformative process, this presentation aims at underlining how words turn into dramatic visuals in The Leftoversa television series that associates writer Tom Perrotta as co-creator alongside Lost

Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder in the Leftovers

“…Mittel 2015). Narrative reconfiguration, the new threads and violent confrontations resulting from the repressed grief underscore the sense of loss (Joseph & Letort 2017: 2) that pervades the story.…”