Talk:Earth Abides
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Earth Abides was a good article candidate, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. Once the objections listed below are addressed, the article can be renominated. You may also seek a review of the decision if you feel there was a mistake.
Date of review: No date specified. Please edit template call function as follows: {{FailedGA|insert date in any format here}} |
[edit] Failed GA
This article failed the GA noms due to lack of references. Tarret 00:10, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
- References are only part of the problem, as someone should step in to give this article (a) a chapter-by-chapter synopsis and (b) a more focused analysis. My recall of the novel is that Stewart used chapter openings to show the step-by-step erosion of man's artifacts (highways, etc.), and that parallels the disinterest of tribal youngsters in rebuilding civilization. Pepso 14:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
- Descriptions of the disintegration of the world of modern man are given as italicised "asides" rather than chapter headings. I'd be quite happy to go into some depth about this novel but I fear it would be "original research". Here is a 1st attempt:
The vast majority of mankind is killed by a plague, carried around the world swiftly by airplanes. There are too few people left to maintain basic services such as electricity and water other than where they are fully automated. The hero, Ish, lives north of San Francisco near the Golden Gate bridge and is saved from death by having been recently bitten by a rattlesnake on a backpacking expedition taken to research local flora and fauna. Ish therefore learns about the Great Disaster (as it is referred to by characters in the book) after it has happened. Ish meets various survivors but shies away from maintaining contact for various reasons - the others are permanently drunk or hostile. He drives a car across the USA, mainly to study the effect the disaster has had on surviving humans and on the ecosystem of the country. He reaches New York City, then returns. He meets a woman, Em, who later turns out to be of mixed race. Ezra, an older man, later joins the group which eventually reaches 7 adults. Children are born and the "tribe" leads a scavenging existence on leftover food and other resources. The book "fast forwards" 20 years to a crisis in which a stranger, Charlie, suspected of carrying disease, joins the group (he returns with two of the younger generation who had made an expedition eastwards to search for other survivors). The older generation decide collectively to execute Charlie, but too late to prevent the feared epidemic which kills 5 people including Ish's favourite son. The years roll by, and the older generation start to die off. Ish is becoming disillusioned by his failure to educate the younger tribe members about the lost civilisation whose ruins lie around them. Eventually he becomes somewhat reconciled to this and decides to teach them how to make bows and arrows, which will ensure they are at least able to hunt game once rifles cease to work. Ish now has semi-divine status - not something which he, as a rationalist, enjoys. Ezra is the last of his peers to die, leaving an isolated and frail Ish alone in a tribe whose values and aims and language are foreign to him. Ish suffers a stroke when moving into San Francisco to escape the after-effects of a forest fire, and hands his hammer, the symbol of his authority, to his great-grandson Jack, who has shown leadership qualities and intelligence. In the final scene, the dying Ish reflects that man is a temporary feature in the landscape - "men go and come, but Earth abides"
The book reflects on the nature of human civilisation and the modern, mechanised and automated world. How long would it take survivors of such a disaster to revert to savagery? Would the fact that the world would probably contain enough packaged food to last many years, and a supply of guns to make hunting easy, hinder the motivation of survivors to set up a genuinely sustainable economy? Would such a society be a bucolic paradise - or would conflicts within the tribe and with strangers inevitably force us to set up a State capable of enforcing the will of the community, even to the extent of killing those who are seen as a threat? Has humanity distorted the ecology to such an extent that it may take decades or centuries to return to a natural balance? The book surmises that the world would be subject to periodic plagues of insects, rats or domestic animals in the absence of predators previously eliminated by humans. How much of the vast body of knowledge accumulated by humanity over the last 10,000 years (of which Wikipedia is of course a partial repository) would be of any use to the survivors of a massive disaster such as a plague or nuclear war? Or would, as Ish decides, the single most useful item of knowledge that the survivors could pass on to the next generation be as basic as how to make a bow and arrow?
The book has been criticised as being somewhat dull amd downbeat compared to later apocalyptic visions in print and on the movie and TV screen. The survivors seem paralysed by the disaster and incapable of planning effectively to overcome the difficulties of their situation. However this may be actually quite realistic - a randomly selected group of urban and suburban people from a Western country quite probably would act in this way. We probably would miss our home comforts so much (even more so today) that a collective depression would set in even once we had got over the immediate shock of the disaster. Our current motivations are to do with status, fame, wealth, leisure pursuits, our legacy to the future (which we assume will be a long one and one of continued progress). With these gone, and replaced by a barren lifestyle based on raiding supermarkets for old cans of food, who could blame us for being a little demotivated? Maybe tough outdoor types used to a solitary existence could cope better - but if only, say, 1 in 100,000 survive, which is roughly the survival rate indicated in the book - say 3,000 people in the whole USA and 60,000 in the world as a whole - how many mountain men will be left?
Exile 23:45, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
- Very good synopsis. Made me want to reread the novel after these many years. Still would like to see more mention of the ecosystem breakdown, water faucets that run dry, grass growing in the highway cracks, etc. Pepso 00:11, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
- The above is very well-written, and the parts of it that deal with the plot of the book would do well in the article. But about two-thirds of it does seem to be original research, and what this article needs is less unsourced commentary, not more of it. My personal feeling is that if you find yourself using question marks repeatedly, you are no longer writing a plot summary; you are writing a blurb. Per above failed GA nom, I have tagged the article as needing sources. Sorry to be a downer, for what it's worth the article as it stands (and the above) has convinced me to add this title to my reading list. -- Antepenultimate 00:22, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Ish and Em
It is my feeling that the names of the main characters, Ish and Em, are a reference to the the two first humans of Norse mythology, Ash and Elm (or Ask and Embla as rendered on this site). Boris B 20:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
