The current study presents the comparison of the apocalyptic imagery in Paul Aster’s “In the Country of Last Things” and Jonathan Foer's “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close'. Moreover, the study illustrates how both writers use apocalyptic imagery to present the moral, social and political corruption in America during the twentieth century. Furthermore, secondary resources are used to illustrate how both novels present apocalyptic imagery in a postmodernism setting. For endurance in an anonymous metropolis and post-apocalyptic, this study purposes at understanding the postmodern victim's struggle. Apocalyptic is describing or representing the end of the world and total demolition or immensely bad future circumstances (Aamodt et al., 2002). Accordingly, in which the Earth's scientific evolution has distorted or is subsiding, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of horror, science fiction or science fantasy (Aamodt et al., 2002). To avert an apocalypse event, the stories might involve these subjects deal with the outcome and significances of the event itself, or it might be post-apocalyptic which may be established after the event (Aamodt et al., 2002). Although in a non-technological forthcoming world, post-apocalyptic stories frequently proceed place where solitary dispersed rudiments of technology and society remnants (Aamodt et al., 2002).
Discussion
Apocalyptic imagery is a steady practice often used in post-modernist writing, to improve a person’s knowledge. By the adversities that incurred so conspicuously throughout the twentieth century, humankind was endangered and to signify a society where ethical and political corruption was at its core, the only practice of a post-apocalyptic appeared compulsory in the situations (Bendle, 2005, p.1). Within the novel’s title, the “last things” that are included, regard not just to the disappearing and distraction of reminiscences, but also to the fading objects and technology and the words related in specifying them. During the post-modernist era, this was a mounting worry across America (Bendle, 2005, p.1).
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Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things
The story was published in 1987 about the fight to endure in a dystopian galaxy, the loss of a recognizable and known world. In a post-apocalyptic unidentified metropolis, the action is set (which absurdly, is both physical and fictional) (Merlob et al., 2007, p.25). Where the deficiency of order, aggravated poverty, and vagrancy establish an almost uninhabitable world, were to survive by scavenging, dying and regaining the vanished autonomy and to murder are the only goals of the individual (Merlob et al., 2007, p.25). The central character of the book, Anna Blume, sets out a mission, to find her missing brother, to a weird place. William, his missing brother in a vortex of dehumanization, viciousness, and terror, only to fail and be trapped. However, the moral honesty and stability were being managed to maintain by Anna and her friends as they anticipate “the extreme derangement”, on the edge of failure and ruin of a civilization (Merlob et al., 2007, p.25). As these survivors’ attempts to leave the “famous City of Destruction”, this novel closes (Merlob et al., 2007, p.25).
The title of the book itself is an invitation to read it as an example of the apocalyptic fiction of “the dystopian or post-holocaust tradition of science fiction”. The author warns us that we are about to enter the “famous City of Destruction”, from the very beginning which lies outside “the gate of dreams”, thus highlighting the probability of no reappearance (Merlob et al., 2007, p.25). By the confines of the environment in which characters place themselves, the lives and aspirations of Auster’s characters are determined (Auster, 2014). Auster depicts the city as restrictive and impersonal. Within this oppressive regime, his characters struggle to survive and endure numerous hardships (Auster, 2014). Adapting to a new identity for the livings in the world. In a distant and apocalyptic dystopic city, Anna Blume undergoes an urban nightmare. The places of preserve, space, language and their impact on the character, as well as tempestuous metropolitan, are the element themes in the novel (Auster, 2014). Auster presents the factors of brutality and human misery experienced by Anna, as well as the metropolis at the bounds of variation, disaffection, and confusion. She came to write this in her blue notebook that 'One by one, everything is disappearing and never coming back” and also “Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it” (Auster, 2014). An unpredictable and uncertain environment was witnessed by Anna and i.e. at the convergence of contending communal forces, which continuously rein scribe and remove social relations. She cannot develop an intellect or sense of who and where she is, as entirety the whole thing around her is insecure, even her isolated feelings (Auster, 2014). With intellect of meaning, she was frustrated to capitalize the city, which becoming another pointless effort, as in a place constantly devolving, there cannot be any meaning (Auster, 2014).
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