Tracing Corruption, Crime and Violence in Eric Barnes’s The City Where We Once Lived (2018) and its prequel Above the Ether (2019)
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Date
2022
Authors
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Université Mouloud Mammeri
Abstract
This research investigates corruption, crime and violence in Eric Barnes’s The City
Where We Once Lived (2018) and its prequel Above the Ether (2019). It studies how man’s
abuse of nature led to a post-apocalyptic world, which is induced by climate change.
Different natural disasters such as storms, earthquakes and floods hit the world. The
dissertation discusses corruption, crime and violence in relation to environmental issues. It
relies on Claire P. Curtis’s Postapocalyptic Fiction and the Social Contract: “We’ll Not Go
Home Again”, Shela Sheikh’s concept of violence and Gregers Andersen’s Climate Fiction
and Cultural Analysis: A New Perspective on Life in the Anthropocene. Barnes’s works are
chosen for the powerful messages they hide and their impressive impact on the reader’s mind.
This study aims first to explore the impact of climate change and the post-apocalyptic world
on characters. Our investigation of the issue under study has led us to some findings. Both
novels show how post-apocalyptic horrible environment cause the absence of the government
and the corruption of its leaders and commissioners. We find the total absence of law and
police to restrict people. These events push the characters, in both novels, to feel insecure
because there is no power to protect them. Consequently, these acts of crime and violence
push people to be violent in order to defend themselves. Both novels focus on the use of
violence as a self-defence mechanism to survive and the benefit of working as one community
to escape the terrifying post-apocalypse.
Description
52 p. ; 30 cm. (+CD-Rom)
Keywords
Corruption, Crime, Violence, Ecocriticism, Post-apocalyptic genre
Citation
Literature and civilization