In “Fire and Ice,” Robert Frost weighs contrasting apocalyptic visions and finds that either “would suffice.” As the poem was published in 1920, it is easy to read it as a modernist reaction to the devastation wrought by the Great War and the subsequent loss of faith in all of the old certainties. Frost’s descriptions are vague and just terse enough to leave us with a sense that the destruction he contemplates is inevitable and not really all that monumental. The world is ending—oh well. Look at the lines “for destruction ice / is also great / and would suffice.” Consider the off-hand delivery there, and the litotes of “would suffice”: although the speaker is not necessarily cheering for the end of the world, he is not at all disturbed by the impending destruction.
To file Frost’s poem neatly under the modernist heading and walk away is a mistake, however, as the train-wreck fascination of the apocalypse most certainly is not a byproduct of the modernist era. In 1885, the agricultural reporter and novelist Richard Jefferies published his strongest novel, After London, an unjustly neglected post-apocalyptic story of a mysterious “Event” that destroys all technology and plunges England (and, presumably, the rest of the world) into a sort of post-medieval existence. The countryside has returned largely to wilderness, with the exception of the area around London, which has become a vile, poisonous swamp; though the symbolism here is a bit heavy-handed, Jefferies’s descriptions of the return of nature fit neatly into a near-universal trope in post-apocalyptic fiction. As a result of the catastrophe, the social order has reverted to a sort of feudalism, with some vestiges of modernity peeping through from time to time. The protagonist, Felix Aquila, embarks on a quest to break free from some of the restraints of the new social order, and his name provides some indication of the direction his yearnings prompt him. He is the “happy” or “lucky” individual, standing apart from his fellows by his wit, his drive, and his resourcefulness, and he is also the eagle, the aquiline symbol of empire. Thus, Jefferies, like many post-apocalyptic novelists, creates a world that embodies paradox: such novels are simultaneously profoundly reactionary and radically progressive. They seek to return to an older order before technology or modernity brought myriad social ills, but they also seek to reform (in both senses of the word) the world by radically removing the entrenched structures of society.
Jefferies’s high Victorian fantasy seems to have set the stage for H.G. Wells and others who would present a doomed future, but it is useful and instructive to think about the origins of eschatological projection in the western imagination. The book of Revelation, beloved of cult leaders, horror writers, and evangelical Armageddon fanatics, contains an early archetype. This archetype proves to be yet another iteration in a long line of Biblical prophecies of doom, however, and it would not be all that much of a stretch to suggest the Abrahamic tradition is constructed of a series of apocalyptic purges that would lead one to believe that the god of the tradition is a petulant, angry creator who cannot seem to get things right so he periodically smashes his mighty fist down on creation with a scream of rage.
Let’s begin with Genesis, a fitting place to start. The first apocalypse is not the Flood but the expulsion from Eden. It has all of the traits, in embryonic form, that mark many of the subsequent post-apocalyptic stories. Life for the protagonists seems perfect until they overstep their bounds and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree has reappeared in countless stories as scientific or technological progress—atomic bombs in countless stories, a genetically-engineered superflu in Stephen King’s The Stand, a cancer-curing virus in the latest filmed version of I Am Legend. The world as our heroes know it is destroyed, and they must fend for themselves and live by their wits or the sweat of their brows.
The underlying reason for the punishment and destruction of humanity is always the same. In the Bible it is sin, but that sin is the same as the hubris that infects others and urges them to commit the acts that lead to chaos. In the works where the causes of the catastrophe are not clear, as in the case in After London, the mysterious calamity appears to be some sort of cosmic or divine retribution. In science fiction stories where the destroyer is an alien force, the symbolism is consistent with divine anger: a punishing force comes from the infinite beyond. Whatever the cause, the punishment always seems to come as a judgment, forcing the survivors to reassemble their lives on a new ground.
Judgment is, of course, central to many of the Biblical apocalyptic stories. The destruction of the earth not in fire or ice but in water happens because god is greatly displeased with his creation, so the unjust must be utterly destroyed in expiation. Blood sacrifice for redemption then forms the dominant theme in the Bible, from Cain and Abel to Abraham and Isaac to Jesus’ crucifixion to the mad prophecies of John in Revelation.
More later…
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The Hobgoblin of Little Minds 
