Delusions of Security - Final Paper Abstract

In her essay “Who Owns ‘Human Nature’?,” Marjorie Garber argues that humanists—which includes literary writers— have shied away from exploring human nature directly and have left this concept to be defined by scientists. She numbers various reasons why this may be the case, including what Garber calls “pluralization,” or the fear of the universal (Garber 435). Forming generalizations drives this fear and thus, she says, humanists prefer to leave such magisterial claims on “human nature” to scientists. However, writers, whose story’s characters are human beings, are exploring “human nature” through the experience of that individual, of which Garber writes: “It necessarily involves combining the perspectives of inside and outside. The experience of the blindness produced by fully inhabiting a partial perspective is still the experience of ‘human life’” (Garber 435).

Subtly exploring the essence of “human nature,” authors of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature like Octavia E. Butler in Parable of the Sower and Cormac McCarthy in The Road focus on the experience of a couple characters, placing them in an extreme, yet possible situation—an apocalypse and its aftermath. Thus, these humanist authors explore “human nature” as these literary characters face the most frightening aspect of apocalypses: the breakdown of security in social systems whose function we often, blindly trust. There are simple structures and complex systems that seemingly allow our society to function: authorities and structures that provide security, family security, and ethical and religious security. To an extent, every one of these is explored in both books by both authors, shedding insight into the “nature” of humans to trust these delusive systems. Control, comfort and trust in these form of securities—post-apocalypse—clearly becomes an undeniable illusion and thus, the world no longer can function, as we know it. An apocalypse—defined as the breakdown and utter destruction of life as we know it and thus, the security systems that maintain that—allow us to realize the lack of control humans have over the idea of security and how these barriers are neither as defined nor as secure as they seem.