“Numbing of the Heart”: Negotiating with Humanity in the Wake of the Pandemic in Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague
Main Article Content
Abstract
As the world progresses in its fight against COVID-19, the human civilization finds itself fighting against more than just a mere pathogen. Besides being an unprecedented health emergency, the pandemic has caused breakdowns in many other fronts as well. One of the very alarming issues is the incidents of inhumanity, callousness and deliberate cruelty by people towards their fellow-sufferers, which may incite far-reaching complications in the human society. In the worst case scenario, civilization could go either way- to become more united than ever or to fall to pieces with the extinction of human values- depending on our response in the wake of the pandemic. Plague and pestilence have ever been a popular topic in literature. Here, I take the case of Jack London's The Scarlet Plague for a study of the reversion to cruelty of all humans in the face of the plague and also what are the exceptions that have been admitted by the author to suggest how the retention of the ideals of human bonding and empathy can help us stand a chance in the hour of doom. This short novel has particular relevance to the present scenario for its temporal resemblances to the present outbreak, for London's preoccupation with naturalism in his fantasy and for his reliance on the latest scientific discoveries in virology and other modern technologies. The novel is also full of tropes that suggest that the germs of destruction are borne by the sociological framework and the ideologies that go into the foundation of the society.
Downloads
Metrics
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
References
“Addressing Human Rights as Key to the COVID-19 Response.” World Health Organization. 21 Apr. 2020. .
Awasthi, Prashasti. “Social Media Simmering with Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation: Report.” The Businessline, 13 Aug. 2020. .
Berkove, Lawrence I. “Jack London and Evolution: From Spencer to Huxley”. Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Jack London. Bloom, Harold (Ed.), (PDF). Infobase Learning: New York. 2011, pp.127-139.
Block, Melissa. "'A Matter Of Common Decency': What Literature Can Teach Us About Epidemics.” NPR, 1 Apr. 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822376057-001
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/01/822579660/a-matter-of-common-decency-what-literature-can-teach-us-about-epidemics>.
Esteves, Junno Arocho. “A United Humanity Will Rise from Pandemic-Stricken World, Pope Says.” Crux, 20 Mar. 2020. .
Gomel, Elana. “The Plague of Utopias: Pestilence and the Apocalyptic Body”. Twentieth Century Literature, vol.46, no. 4, 2000. pp. 405-433. JSTOR. 4 Sept. 2020. . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2000-1003
Haith, Chelsea. “Pandemics from Homer to Stephen King: What We Can Learn from Literary History.” The Conversation, 16 Mar. 2020. .
Kalin, Ibrahim. “We Must Keep Our Humanity in the Time of Coronavirus.” Coronavirus Pandemic | Al Jazeera, 8 Apr. 2020. .
London, Jack. The Scarlet Plague. The Macmillan Company, 1915. Project Gutenberg. <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21970/21970-h/21970-h.htm>.
Matthews, Joe. "What Jack London got right about COVID-19, 110 years ago/COMMENTARY.” The Baltimore Sun, 13 Apr. 2020.
Reich, Wilhelm. The Murder of Christ: The Emotional Plague of Mankind. The Noonday Press, 1966.
“Reported Cases and Deaths by Country, Territory, or Conveyance”. Worldometer. Accessed on 28 Aug. 2020. <https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ >
Riva, Maurizio & Benedetti, Marta & Cesana, Giancarlo. (2014). “Pandemic Fear and Literature: Observations from Jack London's ‘The Scarlet Plague’”. Emerging Infectious Diseases. Oct. 2014. <http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid2010.130278>. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2010.130278
Rossetti, Gina M. “After the Plague: Race and Survival in Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague.” Apocalyptic Projections: A Study of Past Predictions, Current Trends and Future Intimations as Related to Film and Literature, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 61–77, .
Sabpaitoon, Patpon. “Pandemic of Abuse: Lockdowns Have Made It Harder for Children and Others to Get Help, with Consequences That Will Last the Rest of Their Lives.” The Bangkokpost. 27 July 2020. .
Sharma, Niharika. “Indian Doctors Fighting Coronavirus Now Face Social Stigma.” Quartz India, 25 Mar. 2020. .
Slater, Joanna & Masih, Niha. “In India, the World’s Biggest Lockdown Has Forced Migrants to Walk Hundreds of Miles Home.” The Washington Post, 28 Mar. 2020.
Stovall, Tyler. “How Literature Can Capture the Essence of Life in a Pandemic.” San Francisco Chronicle, 20 May 2020. .
Temko, Ned. “No Jobs, so What Future? Half the World’s Workforce on the Edge.” The Christian Science Monitor, 6 May 2020. .
“The Social Impact of COVID-19.” DISD, 6 Apr. 2020, .