LM and Catastrophe

8/2/2019 LM and Catastrophe

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The Last Man & Catastrophe

Two clear narrative strands meet in Mary Shelleyʼs (MS) The Last Man (LM). First, the

drama of lastness which Lionel compares to Defoeʼs Robinson Crusoe . Second, the

plague narrative which, again, Lionel compares to its antecedents in Defoe ʼs Journal of the

Plague Year (1772), Boccaccioʼs Decameron (1349-51), and Charles Brockden Brownʼs

Arthur Mervyn (1799). Of course, MSʼs narrative differs from these textual predecessors

in becoming an extinction narrative. These not necessarily interdependent narrative

strands allow the author to explore catastrophe “in to” an individual, and “out to” a societal

- and even global/universal - level. By marrying the last-man-cum-survivor genre of

Robinson Crusoe with that of natural disaster, Shelley may have bequeathed to world

literature a very singular sub-genre that has proved to have lasting appeal, and seemingly

increasing relevance. For example, clearly inspired by the current swine-flu pandemic, theBBC television series Survivors explores and combines just these two subjects: a last-man

and a virus narrative, encompassing a very real threat of extinction. Hollywood pre-empted

swine flu with its release of I Am Legend (2007), another film adaption of Richard

Mathesonʼs novel,1 downplaying the analogies with vampirism evident in the original sci-fi/

horror plot. Moreover, The Last Man (2008) is a low-budget (presumably) comedy-horror

that retains character names and plot elements if little else. Indeed, Planet of the Apes

(1968), a dramatization of Pierre Bouleʼs La planète des singes (1963), while replacing the

plague narrative with nuclear holocaust, retains the other basic narrative elements. For

more recent literary developments, Margaret Atwoodʼs books Oryx and Crake (2003) and

Year of the Flood (2009) depict themes of lastness and extinction - the Waterless Flood of

virus/plague-based extinction replacing the biblical deluge. In short, Shelley managed to

effectively combine genres to create a lasting sub-genre; one which has had increasing

relevance in popular culture throughout the twentieth and into a twenty-first century

setting." There is immense dramatic potential inherent in the two narrative strands, the last-

man narrative and the plague narrative. Together they combine to produce a study of

catastrophe that compels attention. There are inarguable similarities between The Last

Man and Shelleyʼs science-fiction classic Frankenstein (1816). Lionelʼs lastness and

singular, life-saving immunity to the plague can be contrasted with Frankensteinʼs monster,

who embodies both lastness and firstness. Indeed, Lionel is, in writing his text for

supposed future generations both last and first; both Adam and his inversion - the last

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1 I Am Legend , Richard Matheson, 1954. The book was adapted as The Last Man on Earth (1964) and The Omega Man (1971).



man. An interesting distinction to be made here is that the monsterʼs plight in Frankenstein

is inflicted by a Romantic “mad scientist”, experiencing a eureka moment, and then, in

turn, unleashing the destructive power of science.2 Frankenstein is, in that sense, a classic

model for Romantic science. This contrasts sharply with the lack of all such three elements

in The Last Man . In fact, it is the destructive power of nature that is emphasized in LM,

pitted against the innocuous resistance of mankind and its knowledge. Whereas

Frankenstein dramatizes the wonder and terror of human discovery and, seemingly

inevitable, hubris, LM does not. Instead, science or natural philosophy is impotent beyond

its ability to observe, categorize and speculate. For example, in itemizing solar and natural

phenomena, there is only a sense of the observational role of natural philosophy. By

comparison, Victorʼs “science” - an act of revelation left undescribed - is a dynamic force

that drives the narrative. Similarly, Merrivalʼs highly speculative ideas concerning the

ecliptic and gradual change over thousands of years, are ridiculed and remain just that,

speculative.

" From the moment the capitalized word “PLAGUE” appears (139) - screaming out on

the page, if unspoken in the narrative - LM finally becomes the book for which the reader

has waited. The roman á clef of Volume I3 dissipates and the readerʼs mind is fixed, just

like Lionelʼs in “an indefinable anxiety to behold the catastrophe” (139). From this moment

on, the book launches its plague narrative, and with it the modern reader is swept along.Its premise, that of a pandemic accompanied by large-scale natural disasters, speaks the

vocabulary of the modern world. The success of the virus narrative and last-man narrative

hinge upon the equal promise of destruction and salvation. In so much as the narratives

are presented as inevitabilities, in both title and frame, catastrophe is guaranteed.

However, in the existence of an extant text and a world in which to discover it, there is the

promise of avoidability. It is the successful mixture of inevitability and avoidability that

underpins plot tension." From Chapter V of Volume II onwards evidence of natural disasters multiply.

Plague, and extinction through plague or pandemic, will be dealt with separately, while

here natural phenomena and the growing hostility of nature will be addressed. Chapter V

begins with “disorder” in “the elements” (181), and the reader, just as Lionel does, must

ask why there is this strange darkening of nature, which has “become dark, cold and

ungenial” (181). “Why dost thou howl thus, O wind?” apostrophizes Lionel “By day and by

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2 For discussions of Romantic science see Richard Holmesʼ The Age of Wonder (2007).

3 It should be noted that little, if no, attention has been paid to Volume I. The focus here being from theplague/extinction narrative onwards.



night for four long months thy roarings have not ceased” (182). Now, this seems a fair

question. Why is the world in LM subjected to such increasing extremes of weather? Even

allowing for poetic licence in this description, LM features natural disasters and climactic

aberrations which have nothing to do with the plague narrative. They are not immediately

nor directly attributed to supernatural means, neither by Shelley nor narrator Lionel.

Instead, it is the effects of human civilization that are destroyed. First, the “shores of the

sea are strewn with wrecks”, the medium of human exploration and expansion, the sea,

confounds mankindʼs mastery of it. Second, the “frail balloon dares no longer sail on the

agitated air”. Again, human mastery of the elements through technology and science is

thwarted in LM. Soon humansʼ “very cities are wasted by thee” (182), Lionel continues to

apostrophize. These extremes in nature then seem to have no causal relation to human

advancement, technology and science. They are not the result of hubris or the destructivepower of Romantic science.

" The destruction abroad is delivered at times in laconic fashion. Lionel labels as

“mischief” the destruction of the Ecuadorian capital, Quito, at the hands of an earthquake.

He notes that Mexico is “laid waste” by “storm, pestilence and famine” (184). The Black

Death of 1348 is recollected, where it is estimated that a third of the worldʼs population

was wiped out. He asks “Can it be true [...] that whole countries are laid waste, whole

nations annihilated, by these disorders in nature?” Neither Shelley nor Lionel imply anysupernatural connection between the growing turbulence in nature and the outbreak of

plague. If anything, this may seem unusual in the 1820s. To attribute patterns and laws in

the natural world and creation to a creator, namely God, would have been quite normal

and expected. Excepting the religious sect that flourishes in Paris, the decline in nature

and the world has an unusually secular and naturalistic feel in LM. The compelling vision

of darkness and a disrupted, hostile nature may owe a lot to the so-called Year without a

Summer (1816) that gave rise to Shelleyʼs first novel, Frankenstein (1818) and Byron

ʼs

Darkness (1816). Mount Tamboraʼs eruption in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) in 1815,

after a great deal of volcanic activity in previous years, led to climactic aberrations in the

summer of 1816 that are analogous to Shelleyʼs descriptions in LM.4 In spite of the fact

that both LM and Darkness envisage a naturalistic worldwide catastrophe, there is one

clear division in that Byron foresees in his “dream, which was not all a dream” an

apocalyptic end-time to both mankind and world, even universe: “Darkness had no need of

aid from them - She was the Universe”. Shelleyʼs vision incorporates climactic aberrations

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4 The eruption of Laki - the “Laki haze” - in 1783 led to similar climactic aberrations and increased death tollsthroughout Europe.



but no end for the natural world, only for the human one. In Byronʼs nightmarish fantasy

there is the cold comfort of an end-time encompassing both mankind and the universe.

Byronʼs poem echoes Erasmus Darwinʼs long, scientific poem The Botanic Garden (1791)

in which, referring to Herschelʼs papers on the ʻConstruction of the Heavensʼ (1785 and

1789), the poet picks up on a vision of a universe in differing stages of growth and decay.

A universe that, therefore, has an end:

" Star after star from Heavenʼs high arch shall rush,

" Sun sink on suns, and systems systems crush,

" Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall,

" And death and night and chaos mingle all!

Here the word ʻextinctʼ encompasses a plurality of worlds; an annihilation of not only

creatures and habitats, but of planets and star systems.

" When Adrianʼs entourage arrive at Dover, nature is in uproar in a “tremendous war

of air and water” (287). At the start of Volume III, Lionel had mocked - in self-deprecation -

the very absence of conventional apocalyptic signs in nature in a passage worth quoting in

full:

" Hear you not the rushing sound of the coming tempest? Do you not behold the clouds

" open, and destruction lurid and dire pour down on the blasted earth? See you not the

" thunderbolt fall, and are deafened by the shout of heaven that follows its descent? Feel you

" not the earth quake and open with agonizing groans, while the air is pregnant with

" shrieks and wailings, - all announcing the last days of man? No! none of these things

" accompanied our fall!" (247)

Lionel goes on to describe a pastoral idyll of the garden of England in spring. Although

there is a degree of unreliability in Lionelʼs narrative (i.e. that there are indeed natural

phenomena traditionally treated as portents of supernatural activity, or their results on

earth), this passage may be important as an indication of how to interpret the quite

incredible events to follow. Strictly speaking, a lot of the unusual celestial and natural

phenomena are yet to come. However, not only is Lionelʼs narrative retrospective, but also

the message seems clear: this is no traditional biblical end of time. Indeed, at Dover, in

Chapter IV, as the rear guard prepares to leave for Paris, there is grave turbulence in the

natural world. The “tempestuous world of waters” (287) attacks the literal and symbolic

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defences of England as “vast fragments of the near earth fall with crash and roar into the

deep” (287-288). The “greater part” deem this a “judgment of God” (288) as conventional

thinking should interpret both unusual and more frequent convulsions in nature.

" Then, in watching the sunset, where a forecast of the next dayʼs weather might be

elicited in folkloric sayings (red sky at night, shepherd's delight), an event akin to parhelia

(sundogs or mock suns) is observed in wonder by the group:

" When the mighty luminary approached within a few degrees of the tempest-tossed horizon,

" suddenly, a wonder! three other suns, alike burning and brilliant, rushed from various

" quarters of the heavens towards the great orb; they whirled round it. (288)

Parhelia, referred to as early as Aristotle and Cicero, were well documented scientificphenomena, appearing in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society during the

eighteenth century. However, Shelleyʼs account does not seem like a naturalistic

appropriation of sundog stories. The movement and circling - “the sun itself seemed to join

in the dance” - and uncertainty as to whether there are three mock suns, or just two as in

the scientific phenomenon, is unclear. MS seems to return to standard eye-witness

accounts in stating that “suddenly the three mock suns united in one, and plunged into the

sea” (288), but then adds “a deafening watery sound [...] from the spot” (289). Afterwards

Lionel tells us that “the sun, disencumbered from his strange satellites, paced with its

accustomed majesty towards its western home” where “the sea rose to meet it” in a “wall

of water” (289). In conclusion, this must be a deliberate misrepresentation of a sundog

phenomenon; indeed, the “apparition of these meteors” implies meteoric behaviour, or that

which can be attributed to other celestial phenomena. Shelley appears to be toying with,

on the one hand, the reliability of scientific accounts, while, on the other hand, gently

mocking the human predisposition to ascribe supernatural causes to natural, and more

specifically, celestial phenomena.

" Shelley then draws in the ideas of Copernicus and Herschel - a sharp redressing of

traditional cosmology:

" [...] it appeared as if suddenly the motion of the earth was revealed to us - as if no longer

" we were ruled by ancient laws, but were turned adrift in an unknown region of space. (289)

The revelatory emphasis of Romantic science touched on above surfaces here. The group

is given a sudden vision of scientific truth. The “ancient laws” referred to are the legacy

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from Greek natural philosophy of Ptolemaic cosmology, wherein the world, the heaviest

and basest element earth, lies at the centre of the universe. In such a scheme, all else

revolves around, or spirals out from, the earth. Although the spherical nature of the earth

was an idea not inimical to Greek natural philosophy, it was Copernicus that is credited

with “decentring” the earth in the universe, and revealing that the earth circled the sun. The

astronomer Herschel, in his paper ʻOn the Proper Motion of the Solar Systemʼ, showed not

only that the planets of our solar system revolve around the sun, but that the entire system

rotates around an unidentified point in the Milky Way, which, in turn, was rotating around

other galaxies. This is clearly echoed in Shelleyʼs idea of the earth being “adrift in an

unknown region of space”. Far from being the centre of a fixed universe, the earth is

moving through stellar space. The revelation, then, of this moment, is of earth ʼs lack of

specialness. Instead it is one of a plurality of worlds, and rather than being part of a static,permanent and fixed scheme, it is “adrift” in space.

" The tension between supernatural revelation and scientific observation continues in

images conjuring up Whistonʼs A New Theory of the Earth (1696):

" Many cried aloud that these were no meteors, but globes of burning matter, which had set

" fire to the earth, and caused the vast cauldron at our feet to bubble up with its measureless

"

waves;"

(289)

The distinction between meteors and “globes of burning matter” is an interesting one.

There seems to be a shift in vernacular from the inherently scientific meteor to the more

religiously apocalyptic “globes”. However, even these, as “burning matter”, are

predominantly scientific in character. The image of the destructive power of celestial

bodies crashing into the earth (or vice versa) causing global catastrophe evokes, as noted,

Whistonʼs seventeenth-century work attributing Noahʼs flood to the earth passing through

the tail of a comet. Indeed, Whiston linked comets and earthly catastrophes generally. In

this case, preparing to be “deluged”, the crowd plays out the division of the group into the

superstitious - “the day of judgment was come they averred” - and “those less given to

visionary terrors” (289). Scientific knowledge and method is pitted against superstition and

triumphs in this case. However, the pyrrhic victory only left all free of the fear of “immediate

catastrophe” (289).

" The biblical rhetoric picks up on an interesting image from Ecclesiastes 12 ; an

image that returns in the text as a motif of catastrophic change. In Chapter I of Volume III,

resonant with echoes of the discussion of Ecclesiastes on Manʼs position and fate, MS/

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Lionel first draws parallels to the biblical fall in that man is “like our first parents expelled

from Paradise” (252). Then the grasshopper image of both gradual and catastrophic

change is brought in where “every small and pelting inconvenience came with added

force; [...] we sank beneath the added feather chance threw on us; “the grasshopper was a

burthen”” (253). MS develops this idea, of the compounding effect of tiny changes in

circumstance, in Chapter II as the band of emigrants led by Raymond prepare to leave

England. Lionel lingers on the heightened significance of “an every day act” in the

swinging open of the white gate to Windsor forest, confessing that, “At times like these,

minute circumstances assume giant and majestic proportions” (258). This movement MS

observes, from the minute to the majestic, from microcosm to macrocosm, plays on the

significance, or lack of, of humans in the universe. Later, when Lionel goes to find Lucy

Clayton before the departure for the continent, he finds her working on “her motherʼs

shroud” (284), a “detail of woe” that tellingly links life to the human lot of mortality. Lucy ʼs

long-suffering mother gives in to “extinction” in one, swift and sudden demise: “Her life,

which had long been hovering on its extinction, now yielded at once to the united effects of

misery and sickness, and that same morning she had died.” (285) Again we find a degree

of worldly, scientific causality in “united effects” conspiring gradually, reaching a threshold

or tipping point, and then producing a dramatic or catastrophic end. Similarly, the events

leading up to Idrisʼ

death that directly precede the death of Lucyʼs mother, show how tiny

changes, seemingly mundane and insignificant events, conspire to produce catastrophic

and life-changing outcomes. They go back for Lucy at Idrisʼ behest; the carriage breaks

down; they go on in a cabriolet; they get caught in the storm... Lionel later laments his

inability to “perceive the many minute threads” of “the inextricable net of our destinies” in

which we are “inmeshed completely” (275). His choice of words hint at fatalism and belief

in a pre-ordained destiny. Indeed, he is trying to find meaning in an incomprehensible

situation. However, the series of events rather points to the potential catastrophic effect ofcausality. Later, after the Countessʼ death in Dijon, the dwindling band of humanity scales

Jura to cross from Switzerland into Italy, seeking an easier life. Their slow, Sisyphean task

is again linked to the Ecclesiastian grasshopper: “There are times when minor difficulties

grow gigantic - times, when as the Hebrew poet expressively terms it, “the grasshopper is

a burthen””. (323)

" The grasshopper motif is problematic in many ways. Firstly, the translation used

from the King James Bible appears inaccurate. The actual biblical image is - translating

from the hebrew - of the grasshopper dragging itself along instead of hopping as it

naturally should. This does not equate to MSʼs “burthen” - meaning that the tiniest of things

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can weigh you down. There is a clear shift in meaning here. But that does not affect

Shelley's use of the image meaning that the minor can encompass the major. In part, it is a

synecdochal vision of the universe where the tiniest component can undo the whole.

Moreover, a vision of change where seemingly insignificant, humdrum variations or

changes can cause wholesale change through an entire system. The biblical rhetoric is

both perpetuated and naturalized or secularized. Lionel refers to “the Hebrew poet” rather

than scripture. In fact, Koheleth (Heb. speaker) or Ecclesiastes , presents a bleak, stoical

cosmology that resonates with LM. The opening mantra of “all is vanity” (Eccles. 12:2) sets

the tone of the chapter, where human efforts go unrewarded, where toil leads nowhere,

where the universe seems to care little, and where man is at the mercy of chance. LMʼs

relation to Koheleth (Ecclesiastes ) then is twofold. Firstly, MS uses the only book of the

bible that, written post-Exile, presents a truly challenging and bleak worldview. A vision thatprovides a very different view of humanityʼs end in a slow inexorable decline. Indeed, there

is perhaps no need to “naturalize” the palpable decay and decline evident in Ecclesiastes

12:5. Instead, Shelley purely picks up on the arresting image of a world where “One

generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; and the earth abideth for

ever.” (Eccles. 12:4) Another connection is the idea that comes from this gradualist view of

decline, that, out of tiny changes, great change is born; in other words, catastrophic

change. This combining of Huttonian Gradualism and Cuvierian Catastrophism is part ofthe bookʼs treatment of time.

The Treatment of Time

LMʼs treatment of time is primarily a drama of “the last days of man” (247), and in that

sense juxtaposes traditional, religious last-days narratives with more modern, scientific

and secularized workings of the idea. In addition, and as a result, LM poses various

questions regarding the nature of time, and human ability to interpret it. Before Raymondʼs

vainglorious demise in single-handedly storming the gates of plague-stricken Istanbul in

Volume II, Lionel walks in the armyʼs encampment:

" “The arrival of several with fresh stories of marvels, from the fleet; the exaggerations

" bestowed on what was already known; tales of old prophecies, of fearful histories of whole

" regions which had been laid waste”. (155)

MS underlines humansʼ predisposition for superstition when faced with extreme events

and natural disasters. The text turns to “marvels”, “exaggerations” and “tales of old

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prophecies”. In one sense, this is the established vocabulary to deal with such

phenomena. The other growing tradition evident in LM is, of course, the secularized,

scientific tradition of observing and describing unusual events. In Chapter IV of Volume II,

for example, the two strands are juxtaposed. The “black sun” incident (177), at first

seemingly describing a total solar eclipse, takes on supernatural tones. Indeed, Lionel

declares that “little credit would have been given” the “strange story” had there not been “a

multitude of witnesses, in various parts of the world”. (177) However, as “Night fell upon

every country” we know that this is not a total solar eclipse as that would only be visible

from highly limited areas of the earth when it does, very rarely, occur. Instead, MS

deliberately embellishes the reports to gently mock the superstition of the human race. The

wave of dread created by the “sun of darkness” (178), “unknown shapes figured on the

ground” (177), is played against the opening of the chapter and the superstitious scienceof Merrival.

" MS notes that Merrivalʼs “earthly paradise” is based on an “ingenious essay” by

Mackey where “pericyclical motion of the earthʼs pole (and thus of the ecliptic), not the

wickedness of mankind, was the source of all myths of decline” (174). The shift in primary

cause, however, does not seem to alter the end result, as Merrival confesses that “an

earthly hell or purgatory, would occur, when the ecliptic and equator would be at right

angles” (174). Merrivalʼs well-meaning natural philosophy, bound up in myth, preserves a

religious end-time with both an earthly paradise and hell envisaged. It is mocked by

Ryland who pithily states: “Be assured that earth is not, nor ever can be heaven, while the

seeds of hell are natives of her soil.” (173) Moreover, the reader, knowing the predestined

outcome of the plague narrative and last-man fable, must join in in mocking such scientific

prophecy.

" As the group make their way through France toward Switzerland there are further

incidents that juxtapose the scientific and the superstitious. They are subject to“extravagant delusion” as “Every evening brought its fresh creation of spectres” (317).

Lionel himself admits to having “the utmost difficulty” in discrediting the supernatural. Mass

delusions such as that the sun “grew paler” gain credence, and, as Lionel problematizes

the credibility of sensory experience as of “little worth [...] when unsupported by concurring

testimony”, several incidents highlight this lurch back toward a primitive and superstitious

existence. Firstly, “a figure all in white, apparently of more than human stature” (317-8)

turns out to be an opera dancer in costume (probably on stilts though this is not made

clear). Secondly, the “Black Spectre”, Death personified, turns out to be a French

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nobleman stricken with plague. Again, the superstitious is first compelling but then easily

and rationally explained away.

" The restatement of the term “the last days of man” inevitably lends apocalyptic,

end-time strains to the narrative. However, in our case, the prophecy has already been

instigated as a fait accompli. The reader knows Lionel to be the last man. The reader

knows that the supernatural, Gothic elements are part of the human narrative and

understanding of what is superficially a secular drama. Lionel imparts the reactions of the

group, while himself remaining objective and seemingly unmoved by ostensibly

supernatural phenomena. Religious catastrophes and apocalypses tend to offer salvation

and redemption for an elect or chosen group, particularly within the Judaeo-Christian

tradition. Noahʼs flood is retribution for mankindʼs wickedness, but in destroying mankind,

God saves Noah. This, in itself, constitutes a last-man narrative; a remaking of the world,purging it of its wickedness. Indeed, a drama of lastness and firstness. The Flood narrative

is revisited in LM after the ramshackle fellowship enters the gates of Dijon, just eighty in

number. The “sorrowful procession” is contrasted to humanity which in turn is likened to a

flood, which “like a flood, had once spread over and possessed the whole earth”,

“generation after generation flowing on ceaselessly” (319). Now, the Flood is the

archetypal catastrophe in Western terms. Here humanity, destroyed by the Flood for its

wickedness, becomes the Flood sweeping over the face of the earth. In one sense, thisresonates with the naturalistic vision of the world in Ecclesiastes . Moreover, it might fit in

with a progressionist view of humanity developing from “puny streamlet” to “vast perennial

river” to “ocean; from “plaything of nature” to “gardener of earth” and “shepherd of her

flocks” (319) in a universe in constant movement toward perfection. But the flood is, at the

same time, an agent of divine retribution and a natural disaster (not unlike the plague).

Implicit in Lionel and MSʼs analogy is that mankind is akin to a natural phenomenon, a

form of plague or catastrophic event that grows incrementally then sweepingly effectscatastrophe. The two strands read together ambivalently. Is mankind some kind of plague?

A natural disaster that builds up gradually over a long time-period then ebbs away, at last

incredibly suddenly in a catastrophic end? Or is humanity a divine agent, like the Flood,

effecting Godʼs will? That manʼs dominion “seemed eternal” is the upshot of the rhetoric;

however, the image - of mankind as some kind of flood or tide that, just as it emerges,

must also become “dried up” - provides a far more naturalistic tenor that resonates with

ideas of deep time that were growing in influence.

" It is time - and specifically the theories concerning the age of the earth initiated by

James Hutton and later developed by Charles Lyell, after the writing of LM, in 1830-33 -

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that undoes natural theological schemes where there is a divine, primary cause in the

universe. Arguably, its spatial counterpart is Herschelʼs vision of a universe where our

world, solar system, galaxy is “adrift” in a cosmos riddled with worlds and, most probably,

other life. Indeed, MS asks “Will the earth still keep her place among the planets? will she

still journey with marked regularity around the sun” (320). Herschel inspired Percy Byssche

Shelley (PBS) to attack established religion and declare himself an atheist. Lionelʼs

speech (320) zooms in from universe to planet, through flora and fauna, rushing

centripetally inwards; and yet man, “paragon of animals” fades. Others tried to make sense

of apparent inconsistencies between a universe founded on reason and a universe

seemingly infinite in space and time. Cuvierʼs Catastrophism, a vision of a world

repeatedly drowned and remade, pointed perhaps to fragmentation, disintegration and

reconstruction. LM does just this in its narrative devices. The last-man premise, and theextant text in the frame, allows us to look both into the future and the past. These pasts

and futures are seemingly both inevitable and avoidable at the same time. Allen (94)

considers the idea of reversibility in LM. In doing so he discusses various points. Firstly,

the relation of reality to texts and vice versa in LM. The frame of LM, where fragments of

text are reconstructed into the narrative that the reader then receives, comes from a

movement of reality to text Allen contends. But, at the same time, the reconstructed text

then may or may not become a reality. This is another way of framing the aforementionedpoint of inevitability versus avoidability that creates plot tension. This leads into the second

point he considers in relation to reversibility: the collapse of linear time. This invertible

sense of flow from reality to text and text to reality collapses a sense of linear time. Linear

time is a cornerstone of both a progressionist worldview that envisages a universe

developing and flowing in the direction of (inevitable) perfection, and a natural theological

scheme where there is a distinct beginning and end frame - in creation and salvation. Allen

(95) questions whether we are all Cassandras in that we are doomed to see the future andinevitable catastrophe. This is a key theme in LM. Even though we know our fate, can we

change it? Lionelʼs speeches consistently leap from specificities to universalities as he

describes the human condition:

" I strove to escape from thought - vainly - futurity, like a dark image in a phantasmagoria,

" came nearer and more near, till it clasped the whole earth in its shadow. (201)

Two contradicting experiences and understandings of time provide plot tension: on the one

hand, the foreboding of Cuvierian catastrophe, annihilation, destruction; on the other, the

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mythical events. In doing this she presents a time continuum that is the antithesis both of a

traditional, natural-theological view of time and a secular, progressionist timeframe.

Instead, Cuvierian revolutions of catastrophe wipe the earth clean, an earth that stretches

on regardless in an infinite, Herschellean space and eternal, Huttonian time. In this cycle

of expansion and destruction, all is, as in Ecclesiastes , “chasing the wind”; indeed, Lionel

declares that:

" “[...] an uninhabited rock in the wide Pacific, which had remained since creation

" uninhabited, unnamed, unmarked, would be of as much account in the worldʼs future

" history, as desert England.” (295)

Plague & Extinction in The Last ManThe plague narrative constitutes the dominant plot-driving device in LM. It acts both as an

intertextual element that sets LM in a tradition of plague texts, and therefore in an

historical context of human continuity, and also as the agent to effect human degeneration

and extinction. These two latter ideas - which follow on from the epidemic or virus narrative

- are significant contextualizations in the scientific atmosphere of Shelley and her

contemporaries. On the one hand, Buffonian ideas of degeneration permeate the text; on

the other, Cuvierian themes of extinction. The historical idea that plague could wipe out

populations en masse was preserved in texts that Lionel mentions in LM. As noted above,

these themes, far from becoming unfashionable, are all the more relevant in the twenty-

first century.

" In Chapter VI of Volume II Ryland rejects his role of Lord Protector crying: “Death

and disease level all men.” (192) This statement underpins the significance of the

pandemic in LM. It is highly ambivalent in, at once, being both a utopian - it creates

equality among humans - and dystopian - it destroys human society - force. This

destructive, dystopian force is echoed in Rylandʼs cry of “Every man for himself!” (192).

Though once again, this statement brims with ambiguity as an Edenic state was a form of

every man for himself . The plague is termed an “epidemic” (183) and Lionel tells us that:

" Yet a feeling of awe, a breathless sentiment of wonder, a painful sense of the degradation

" of humanity, was introduced into every heart. Nature, our mother, and our friend, had turned

" on us a brow of menace. (183)

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Natureʼs ambivalence as regards humanity is embodied in the plague; a destructive force

that threatens extinction: “whole nations annihilated, by these disorders in nature?” (184).

The Black Death of 1348 is mentioned (184). It seems, as Ryland noted (q.v.), “[...] that

earth is not, nor ever can be heaven, while the seeds of hell are natives of her soil.” (173)

Indeed, Lord Protector Ryland epitomizes humanityʼs helplessness against “the ruin

caused by the convulsions of physical nature” (190). He declares: “All the world has

plague!” Adrian replies, ever in search of utopia (nowhere), “Then to avoid it we must quit

the world” (191). When Lionel speaks of “the enemy - the impalpable, invisible foe, who

has so long besieged us” (251) one wonders if he speaks only of the plague or of nature,

purifying itself of mankind.

" There are traditional stop-off points in plague literature that Lionel (and MS) discuss

in the book. On learning of “an infected person” at Bolterʼs lock (Ch. VII. Vol. II) Lionel

hastens to his aid, championing Christian compassion - “I am going to do, as I would be

done by” (203). Lionel (203) recalls De Foeʼs A Journal of the Plague Year (1772) and

Charles Brockden Brownʼs Arthur Mervyn (1799) in seeing the corpse. They may have

provided the vernacular to describe the effects of plague, but Lionelʼs experience far

outstrips the written word. This in itself is paradoxical as it is through the insufficient written

word that Lionel conveys his message to us. Lionel contradicts himself, shifting between

modes of firstness and lastness. In one passage he tells us directly that there is to be anew beginning for mankind:

" Yet we were not all to die. No truly, though thinned, the race of man would continue, and the

" great plague would, in after years, become matter of history and wonder. (204)

In the following chapter (VII) he refers once again to Brown and De Foe, adding

Boccaccioʼs Decameron (1349-51) which documents the Black Death in Florence. But he

recalls texts with a reverie that somehow blunts their edge. He dwells in a “vast

annihilation” and “voiceless solitude” (209) where any voice helps remember and re-enact

the past.

" In Chapter III of Volume III, Lionel himself exhibits signs of infection. In his own

words, “The first symptom of the disease was the death-warrant, which in no single

instance had been followed by pardon or reprieve.” (268) At first there seems “No gleam of

hope”, and yet Lionel recovers. Regarded as “deception” (268), Lionel ensures his

lastness by recovering from the plague, just as humanity is to be undone in order to be

reborn. However, there is little of the miraculous in Lionel ʼs recovery. His strength is

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redoubled after his recovery. His recovery is, of course, a necessary plot device in order to

deliver the last-man fable. The reader knows the protagonist must survive so that the

titular or textual prophecy is fulfilled.

" After Lionelʼs recovery, Idris too pledges to “throw off this degrading weakness of

body” (268). Of course, her fate is not to be last and first. Instead she degrades and dies.

LM abounds with such imagery of human degeneration, from Lionel ʼs finding of

Raymondʼs body in Constantinople, a “shattered mechanism”, “incapable and clod-

like” (164), to his anthill image where humans are “degraded” to insects: “Such were we on

earth” (248). Echoing the ecclesiastian worldview discussed earlier Lionel cries: “life is all

that we covet”, there being no fruits to “Human labour wasted” (248). He describes his

fellow men as “automatons of flesh” and “degraded” (248). In this reduction of humanity, it

is the human spirit (presumably the divine spark) that is lacking or lost. As external factorsdrive their existence into misery, characters display a form of Buffonian degeneration.

Faced with a harsh and hostile climate humans begin to degenerate from the “best work of

God” (205) to “automatons of flesh”. Shelley underlines this by drawing on The Iliad where

“Diseases haunt our frail humanity” (247); she points to, firstly, the degradation and

degeneration of humans at the hands of nature, and, secondly, the idea that the seeds of

destruction lie inert but hidden in nature; that nature might not only be our carer and all-in-

all but also our destroyer, careless of our self-appointed position as “lord of creation” (248).Raymond presages this degradation and natureʼs “ills” before his death in in Volume II:

" Earth is to me a tomb, the firmament a vault, shrouding mere corruption. Time is no more,

" for I have stepped within the threshold of eternity; each man I meet appears a corse, which

" will soon be deserted of its animating spark, on the eve of decay and corruption. (149)

Raymond foresees how the pandemic leads to a breakdown in synecdochal human

structures: disintegration and disunion, a dying and decomposing of both the individual

human body and body politic. It is a destruction of the part and whole where all are equal

in u- and dystopian degeneration and death.

" In Chapter II of Volume III, Adrian prepares to lead “the numbered remnant of the

English nation” into exile “there to die, one by one, till the LAST MAN should remain in a

voiceless, empty world.” (258) This narrative line leads to Cuvierian extinction, set against

the traditional myth of annihilation as visited on mankind by divine retribution for its

wickedness and the worldʼs corruption. However, the “voiceless, empty world” of Shelley

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echoes an Ecclesiastesian view of infinite time and space, rather than that of divine

retribution the reader recognizes from the Book of Genesis. Moreover, Noah saves his

family - therefore being no strictly defined tale of firstness and lastness as in LM - making

the Mosaic account not a narrative of extinction. Of course, the idea of voicelessness

alludes both to humanityʼs narrative (both actual and textual) and the creation-destruction

implicit in Godʼs Word. Tellingly in LM, a world bereft of manʼs voice seems similarly

stripped of divinity. Shelley plays on the Cuvierian idea of extinction. For example, in the

episode where Idris determines to turn back in order to save Lucy Datchet (Vol. III, Chap.

III) - a decision which leads to her own death - “extinction” is explored at an individual

level. The intricacy of causality, “the many minute threads”, “the inextricable net of our

destinies”, “inmeshed completely” (275) underline an inevitability in death. Moreover, a

single humanʼs ability to check fate is marginalized. This “extinction”, this inevitable

destruction, is traced out from the part to the whole, the individual to the race. LM is an

extinction narrative. However, it is one tempered by the interrelation of the textual and

actual. Allenʼs idea of reversibility (q.v.) applies again. The reader is provided with an

incomplete textual extinction where both frame and protagonist refer beyond extinction to

both textual and actual (us) readers. This enmeshed ambiguity dodges the bullet of

Ultimate Cause that philosophically underpins the book. Is the universe held together by

reason or divine will? It seems that the Romantic drive to the unexplainable holds sway.Most importantly, the reason to be found or read into the extinction narrative is the human

voice, and the human voice alone.

Cosmology & Synecdoche in The Last Man

So where does the plague/extinction narrative leave mankind apropos nature, the world

and the universe? This “lord of creation” that vacillates between dys- and utopia,

progresses toward perfection and degenerates toward “animal machine” (236), is both

lauded and lampooned at a subtly satirical level. When MS, through Lionel, ventures that

“nobles, natureʼs true nobility, who bear their patent in their mien, who are from their cradle

elevated above the rest of their species, because they are better then the rest” (176) then

the reversibility of the text reminds us that these nobles will later be dying helpless without

their servants. The statement is satirically ludicrous - it is an in-joke, a nod to a savvy

audience that shares the inverted time perspective of author and protagonist. The reader

knows that, although individuals and individuality are praised, ultimately, all are rendered

equal before plague and extinction. This is the realization of a utopian ideal in dystopia,

catastrophe and extinction.

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" Society is inverted at the beginning of Volume III. The poor enter the houses of the

rich (248). The rich die on the “threshold of poverty” (251). A striking image of a poor

woman dead in “garb of splendour” before the mirror and on the toilet in a rich familyʼs

house illustrates this. (250) “We were all equal now” - is repeated twice like a mantra - “but

near at hand was an equality still more levelling [...] a state where beauty and strength,

and wisdom, would be as vain as riches and birth.” (249) This is death and the prospect of

extinction. Ironically, the utopian emerges from the dystopian: “the products of human

labour [...] were [...] far more, than the thinned generation could possibly consume”.

Shelleyian radicalism seeps through: the rich out-consume their needs, but gone, they

leave a surplus behind beyond imagination.

" Differing structural models are brought up and discarded throughout the book. The

narrator quotes from Burkeʼs Reflections “perpetual decay, fall, renovation and

progression” and declares, “Strange system! [...] that thus man remains, while we the

individuals pass away” (180). This Burkean political organicism - “a permanent body

composed of transitory parts” - falls, just as all other models or systems in LM. All human

societal structures fall, echoing the bleak and moribund worldview of Ecclesiastes . The

question of whether this is a self-regulating principle of nature that is part of a natural cycle

- as discussed by Cuvier - remains unanswered. Faced with potential catastrophic

extinction man is dispossessed:

" What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least among the many that people infinite

" space? [...] man shrinks into insignificance, he feels his tenure of life insecure, his

" inheritance on earth cut off.” (182)

The proposition of there being other worlds and peoples in space was well spread at this

time - and inimical to a Christian worldview. In this sense, humanity risks more than just

disinheritance on earth, but also insignificance among a multitude of worlds and galaxies.

The shift from a natural-theological worldview that sees nature as proof of divine design is

complete as Lionel declares, “we looked on the fabric of the universe no longer as our

dwelling, but our tomb” (211). The rhetoric and vernacular of Natural Theology and

religious belief remains; however, it is increasingly undermined: “once man was a favourite

of the Creator”, “is man lord of the creation?” Lionel concludes apostrophizing:

" Lie down, O man, on the flower-strown earth; give up all claim to your inheritance, all you

" can ever possess of it is the small cell which the dead require. (248)

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The shift in nature goes through every level of the universe. On earth - “She could take our

globe...” (183) - nature is hostile and mocks manʼs “dominion” by demonstrating power

over man. This vast indifference mocks fallen and degenerate mankind: “Nature was the

same, as when she was the kind mother of the human race; now, childless and forlorn, shewas a mockery; her loveliness a mask for deformity.” (257) While there a many images of

society and nature disintegrating - “the corn [...] lay in autumn rotting on the ground” (216)

- “death fell on man alone” (216). Man seems to be rotting away leaving nature purified:

“the ploughman had died beside the plough” (250). The relation between man and nature

is inverted, though in sum, manʼs mooted power over nature seems just human rhetoric.

" The synecdochal structure of human society breaks down into a form of animal

naturalism, into the “animal machine”. After tall tales are told as Raymondʼs soldiers

prepare to storm Constantinople, the cohesive, societal force that gels the men together

simply falls away and they seem reduced to a more primiitive and naturalistic state:

" Each individual, before a part of a great whole moving only in unison with others, now

" became resolved into the unit nature had made him, and thought of himself only. (155)

At once a Romantic primitivization into a state akin to the noble savage - an Edenic utopia

where man is an individual alone - and yet also a dystopian disintegration of the bonds

that hold human civilization together. Indeed, at the end of Volume II, Lionel entreats them

to leave England in search of “some natural Paradise” (243). However, it is only after the

evident disorder throughout society. Man as individual performs “animal functions” , but as

“lord of created nature [...] existed no longer” (251). MS explores manʼs relation to

creation/nature which is inverted by events/narrative/plot. In spite of this, manʼs exalted

position is constantly reaffirmed, only to be consistently collapsed. Shelley continuously

reaffirms a natural theological worldview, and that of religious orthodoxy, but only in

overturning said cosmological order. Her naturalistic view of nature is strikingly askew from

broader accepted views.

" In sum, human insignificance in time and space are presented factually. the

precariousness of human existence, the natural drama of firstness and lastness, the

continuous threat of extinction through plague and various other media, is dramatized in

LM. Human relation to time and space, to nature and universe, are depicted in terms that

only find biblical resonance in the bleak, moribund and highly unrepresentative

Ecclesiastes . Scientific evidence is used throughout in both playing up to, and

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undermining myth. Cuvierian themes of Catastrophism and extinction exploited to compel

audience attention. The result reads like prophecy. It is also an ecological diatribe

championing human individuality and humility. Idris, in the throes of a purely natural death,

perhaps summarizes mankindʼs rule in terms of individual and species in the great scheme

of things: “One moment, only one moment” (266).

Bibliography

Allen, Graham. Critical Issues: Mary Shelley . Palgrave MacMillan. Basingstoke: 2008.

Beer, Gillian. ʻDarwin and the Uses of Extinctionʼ, in Victorian Studies , 51:2 (2009), pp.321-330.

Canuel, Mark, ʻActs, Rules, and The Last Manʼ, in Nineteenth-Century Literature , 53.2(1998), pp.147-170.

Holmes, Richard. The Age of Wonder. How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. Harper Press. London: 2009.

Kilgour, Maggie. ʻ“One immortality”: The Shaping of the Shelleys in The Last Man ̓ , in European Romantic Review 16:5 (2005), pp. 563-588.

Melville, Peter. ʻThe Problem of Immunity in The Last Man ̓, in SEL 47:4 (2007), pp.825-846.

Shelley, Mary. The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley Volume 4: The Last Man.Pickering. London: 1996.

Sterrenburg, Lee. ʻThe Last Man : Anatomy of Failed Revolutionsʼ, in Nineteenth-Century Fiction , 33:3 (1978), pp. 324-347.

Sussman, Charlotte. ʻ“Islanded in the World”: Cultural Memory and Human Mobility in The Last Man ̓ in PMLA 118:2 (2003), pp. 286-301.

Vine, Steven. ʻMary Shelleyʼs Sublime Bodies: Frankenstein , Matilda , The Last Man ̓ in

English 55:212 (2006), pp. 141-156.

Wagner-Lawlor, Jennifer A. ʻPerforming History, Performing Humanity in Mary ShelleyʼsThe Last Man ̓ in Studies in English Literature 42:4 (2002), pp. 753-780.

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LM and Catastrophe

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