jedioffsidetrap’s Reviews > Earth Abides > Status Update

Lights slowly begin to dim over days: He did not want to go to sleep. He felt as if he was sitting up by the deathbed of his most treasured & oldest friend.

116: then…He peered through the darkness at the city, he could see no light…this the was the end.

The desire for activity which had expressed itself in his eastern trip had now faded out. He slept a great deal. He also found himself sitting for long periods, conscious but in sheer apathy. Such lapses however frightened him & he always forced himself into some kind of activity.

103: His chief interest remained the careful observation of what was happening to the world after the removal of man’s controls.

Drive back thru PA to OH

“By now gas pressure had failed almost everywhere” but he had proquired a 2-burner gasoline stove for cooking; tinned goods remained basis of diet, foraged veggies/fruit

IN, IL, IA… came upon ppl now generally in 2s & 3s, the isolated molecules were beg to find one another; no one wanted to come, he didn’t want to stay

They would pay the penalty which in the history of the world…had always been inflicted upon organisms which had specialized too highly…they could no longer adapt themselves to new conditions. They were almost at the opposite end of the scale from those negroes in AR who had so easily gone back to the primitive way of living on the land.

Cries as he leaves Milt & Ann behind…

Finally accosted by Milt, he & Ann living in luxury apt; play records, drink warm gin; had heard/seen cars go by in parkway but no ppl (?); ask him to stay & most pleasant ppl he had met but no “he would strike back for the west again.”

He liked them & pitied them. How could they survive winter in city though w/no central heat-“they were city dwellers & when city died they would hardly survive w/o it

Very nice eco aside regarding slow decay of cities…

“…in overcrowded Manhattan the disease had probably raged even more severely…also the secondary kill might have been more severe in a wholly urbanized population.”

Drives thru Manhattan not k treated in stragglers but some larger center but sees no one & not even bodies? That seems unlikely…

Nice eco aside 86 on how Central Park grows out

On to PA

“The surviving ppl he found were generally singles occasionally couples. They were anchored firmly in their own places. Stimes they seemed to wish he would stay there w/them but they never wished to accompany him. He still did not find any of them w/whom he wished to share the future…”

Then to NYC…”why he had headed to NY even unconsciously. This to every Am was the center of the world.”

Memphis; shoots calf & mother, hacks out liver; staying at a cabin realizes he’s bored, reads 6-mo old magazine

Eco aside: “Omce the fences are broken both in fact & symbol then there are no more blocks & chunks of land & sharp changes but all is hazy & wavy & fades from one into the other as it was in the beginning” —returning to a state of nature

Considers enslaving them, holy shit:

“I might be a king in a little way if I remained. They may not like it but from long habit I think they would accept the situation—they would raise vegetables & pigs & chickens for me & I could soon have a cow or two. They would do all the work that I needed to be done. But the idea was only fleeting…began to think the negroes had solved the situation better than he.”