James Durney

April 7, 2008

Apocalyptic Motivation

By the time any story of apocalypse has begun the end is already beginning, quite

literally. It is obvious in The Road that the end has already been. In Apocalypto and The

Day After, we get a glimpse of life pre-apocalypse before that life is torn asunder. It’s

possible to see the plausibility of prevention, but I don’t think any of these apocalyptic

authors intend on encouraging active prevention. I believe they intend on encouraging

active living. With actively living a good life, not only would we be free of guilt given a

world-ending event, but we would passively be preventing the climactic event.

The beginning scene of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto opens with the protagonist: a

small band of tribal hunters finding food for their families. The hunters laugh and joke

with each other as does the entire tribe. On the hunters' way back to their home they

meet another tribe who says that they have been ravaged and need to pass through the

protagonists' forest. This is foreshadowing to the fate of the hunters with whom we have

just become familiar. The next morning Jaguar Paw, one of the hunters, awakens early

and sees invaders, the antagonists, moments before the invaders begin their attack. Many

members of the original tribe are killed including the father of Jaguar Paw, who tells him

not to be afraid; seconds later his throat is cut. The only three to escape immediate

hazard are Jaguar Paw's son, wife, and unborn child.

The survivors of the attack are forced to march through the forest while tied to

long bamboo by their necks. The captors display their brutality during the march when

they neglect to help a group which almost falls of a cliff. After the group pulls
themselves into a safe position, the prisoner who caused the peril is thrown from the cliff.

Part-way through their journey a young female child approaches the group and gives a

prediction of doom to the captors. Near the end of the march we pass through areas of

slave labor, poor health, people coughing blood, then into a market area where the

women are sold as slaves. Finally the warriors arrive on the square, flat top of a massive

pyramid-like temple. Here we discover that the strong, male, tribespeople are being

sacrificed in an attempt to appease the gods. A couple of the warriors are sacrificed in a

brutal ritual where there heart is torn from their chests while still beating; the heart is then

burned. The head is then cleaved from the body and thrown down the steep temple steps,

followed by the body.

Fortunately for the main protagonist, Jaguar Paw, a solar eclipse happens

moments before his chest is relieved of a heart. The eclipse is a sign to the people that

the gods are sated, and the sacrifices are no longer necessary. The danger is lifted from

the group of hunters for only a short time; soon they find themselves in just as imminent

a crisis. Two at a time the hunters are let run towards the forest, while the antagonists

hurl projectiles and fire arrows at the runners. When Jaguar Paw's turn comes he decides

to use some strategy; he serpentines down the corridor, running from side to side while

moving forward. This strategy works for Jaguar Paw, unlike the other man, which is one

of the men from the tribe that had been ravaged prior to Jaguar Paw's. With the help of

one of the previously fallen men, not yet dead, the man set at the end of the corridor is

killed and the path into the forest is unobstructed.

The antagonists would most likely have pursued anyways, but the fallen man is

the son of the leader; now it's a personal vendetta. The chase starts in the corridor,
through a corn field, over a dumping ground of countless bodies. They then proceed into

the forest. Jaguar Paw distances himself from his pursuers enough to climb a tree and

hide. As a result of a wound he received earlier he is bleeding and that is enough to give

away the fact that he's hiding in the trees. The antagonists turn around, spread out, and

begin looking up into the trees. Simultaneously, Jaguar Paw is expelled from his cover

by a black jaguar; the jaguar becomes his immediate threat. This threat is turned into a

weapon when it attacks one of the captors and kills him. The rest of the captors are

slowed in dealing with the jaguar and even scared by the event fitting into the young

girl's prophetic forecast. All the while, Jaguar Paw's family is stranded at the bottom of a

cistern.

A major boon for the hunted protagonist is being in his own element; the change

in elements is beautifully represented in the scene in which Jaguar Paw leaps from the top

of a, deadly tall, waterfall. After Jaguar Paw resurfaces, unscathed, from his heroic stride

into oblivion, he makes clear that he is in his forest, that he hunts it, and his sons will

hunt it. “My sons and their sons will hunt here after I am gone!” (Apocalypto) The

pursuers, not killed by the fall, tread into a forest where the prey is able to turn-the-tables.

One of the captors is taken out with darts, poisoned from the back of a frog. Even the

leader, of the antagonists, is taken out by the trap seen at the beginning of the movie, used

to skewer wild hogs.

The end of Apocalypto resolves the immediate conflict by completely

overwhelming it with the fulfillment of the prophecy. The captors become only

tribesmen, in the dwarfing enormity of the multiple Spanish ships, the ones who "will

cancel the sky, and scratch out the earth" (Apocalypto). Jaguar Paw and his family make
the decision to keep running; this time, they're running from a much different threat. The

ending is a shift from the avoidance of a personal, microcosmic apocalypse to the

inevitability of a social, macrocosmic, apocalypse.

The Day After,1983, begins with an establishing shot of the peace and purity

contained in, quiet, Middle America. The movie then delves into the lives of the

protagonists, a few inhabitants of Middle America, showing us a more personal side of

the peace and purity. The threat of nuclear attack by Russia is presented early in the

movie, but has little effect on the lives of the majority of characters. Eventually, a

nuclear attack becomes less a possibility than a, hot, flesh-searing, reality.

In the process of America realizing the inevitability of attack, society begins to

degrade into chaotic anarchy. The severity of the threat is viewed differently by different

characters, and some don't see it at all. As the media, from TV to the radio, is flooded

with news of an attack by Russia, people begin to scramble in preparation. The situation

is made clearly imminent when a large number of nuclear missiles are seen launched,

from the serene landscape.

The main emotions in the made-for-tv-movie The Day After are first shock and

horror, then finally sadness. Given the witnessing of the inciting incident, evokes more

anger than sadness. As the fallout snows down upon the world, the weight of the

situation begins to manifest. The depression really sets in when the survivors of the

bombs begin to suffer the effects of radiation, from burns to blindness and death. The

evidence of a catastrophe is everywhere, from the fallout and dead animals scattered in

fields, to the burnt, blistered skin and hair loss of nearly every man, woman and child.

The events in ABC's The Day After are largely unavoidable. The futility of
escape from nuclear attack evokes depression. In such a huge scale as nuclear war, there

would be very few places to hide, and fewer actions to remediate of the situation. The

movie ends before humanity has run through the stages of its loss; most people are angry

or still in shock. When the course of loss has run its course and victims have finally

accepted the event, the only thing left to do is enjoy every moment left, not a small feat.

The format of Cormac McCarthy's award winning book The Road is similar to

Apocalypto; both stories focus mainly on a perpetual struggle, neither end with a finite

ending. The end of The Road is the start of the boy's journey, independent of his father;

Apocalypto ends with the commencement of a family's journey, independent of their

tribe. Both follow similar event syntax, but The Road starts a significant chronological

distance after the inciting incident, an unknown catastrophic event.

The book focuses primarily on the perpetual journey and struggle of the

protagonist, even more than Apocalypto. The inciting incident of the story happened

long before the author introduces his protagonists, a boy and his father. Any mention of

the incident is done via flashbacks. Dealing primarily with the wife and her decision not

to continue her struggle, the flashbacks never explain exactly what the inciting incident

is. Instead, our only clue to what became of the world is the current state of it: ash

everywhere, burnt homes and bodies, roving bands of marauders and murderers. The end

of the book may be the end of one journey, but is also the beginning of another, similar to

Apocalypto.

The emptiness and depression filling this barren world seems to fill every

character that isn’t killing and raping for sport. In the middle of the book, the man likens

himself and his child to hunted animals, and speaks of great sadness. “Borrowed time
and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it” (McCarthy, 130). It

would be hard to be optimistic in a world completely decimated, of population, and

striped of any of its former societal glory. Later, just over half-way through the book, the

boy and man come across an old, starving man wandering down the road. The old man

speaks with the voice of futility, “There is no God and we are his prophets” (McCarthy,

170). Completely devoid of any spiritual or religious optimism, the old man conveys his

opinion that there’s no God and their current situation is proof.

The Road also deals with the fine line between good and evil, charity and waste,

defense and oppression. Early in the book, the child sees another child and is greatly

perturbed when he can’t find the boy. The father completely dismisses even the option of

assisting this child, whether real or a figment of his son’s imagination. When the

protagonists meet the old man on the road, the man intends simply on passing him, while

the boy wants to share food. Far later, a thief steals their cart and supplies. After the man

retrieves the cart he forces the thief to surrender his clothing and shoes, leaving him,

effectively, for dead. Would helping the old man be charitable or a waste of sustenance

on someone already doomed? Perhaps true compassion would share food even when at

risk of starving. Perhaps true goodness would search for the child in need, even at risk of

one’s own destruction. Perhaps to take from a criminal what they would take from the

innocent is also criminal?

The father’s journey comes to a terminus in death. I don’t think this is as sad as it

immediately seems. During an early flashback, the wife tells her husband, “You won’t

survive for yourself” (McCarthy, 57). Given the assumption that she’s correct, the

mission and purpose of the man is served and accomplished. As a result of the time spent
in a melancholy world the man's primary concern moved from trying to find a better life

for himself and the boy, eventually concerned only with protection of his son. I think it

would’ve been far more depressing if the boy had died. Far from dying, the boy seems to

get what he’s been searching for. One of the “good-guys” finds him and offers to take the

boy to the others, including other children. The "good-guys" may have contacted the

protagonists earlier if there had been more evidence of humanity. There is more to being

human than just being alive. The man may have been acting with good intentions, but in

the course allowed his humanity to die and be replaced with animal survival instinct.

In the1957 novel, On The Beach, nuclear war has already happened. Dissimilar

to The Day After, the antagonist isn't a living being, but the radioactivity itself. Also, the

protagonists aren't in immediate danger of the radiation, but are in imminent danger. The

remaining people of the world are basically waiting to die. Some race cars, clean house,

have love affairs. Things such as money come to be seen as utterly worthless. This is

demonstrated by an exchange with a store clerk, "Pay by orange peel for all I care"

(Shute, 271).

Some people come to cherish the moments they have left. One of the main

characters, a young woman, had taken to being alcoholic as an immediate result of the

catastrophy. However, she meets a naval officer and a wonderful friendship ensues. The

young woman, Moira, may have wanted more out of their relationship, but she explains

how appreciative she is, "I suppose half a loaf is better than no bread, when you're

starving" (Shute, 263).

To me On The Beach is a macrocosm of each of our lives. When we become

ultimately conscious of our existence we must also be conscious of our imminent death.
Whether our end will come individually or with the whole rest of society, we all know

that this life is not forever.

I think that the topic of apocalypse in art is mainly used as a method for dealing

with this unpleasant fact. Examining the theoretical end of the world allows us to analyze

the impact of death from many different types of people in different situations and at

different ages. Being able to look at death under all these different scenarios is important

because no-one knows when or how their end will come. After we come to terms with

the inevitability of our end, the mystery of specifics, we can really only do one thing. We

must live every moment to its fullest.

Works Cited:

Apocalypto. Dir. Mel Gibson. Perf. Rudy Youngblood, Raoul Trujillo, Dalia Hernández.
Icon Entertainment International, 2006.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.

Shute, Nevil. On The Beach. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1957.

The Day After. Dir. Nicholas Meyer. Perf. Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Steve

Guttenberg. 1983. DVD. MGM, 2004.