Disease as the Metaphoric Mastermind in Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty and Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
Keywords:
Pandemic fiction, COVID-19, Disease, Epidemic, Post-Apocalyptic, PlagueAbstract
The emergence of Pandemic fiction as a genre after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a new outlook to literature. The works that explore disease as a means of ‘mass- murder’ turns out to be a recurring theme in new writings. At the same time, works are being explored from the lens of pandemics and epidemics that direct the plotline while working in the background. This gives the readers and critics an opportunity to revisit literary works, particularly focusing their attention on the theme of ‘disease’ and ‘death.’ Running as a metaphor, as Susan Sontag would define it, disease runs as a trope of nineteenth and twentieth-century novels. Booker Prize winners Alan Hollinghurst and Margaret Atwood have dealt with disease in their own way. This paper is going to discuss Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty in light of the outbreak of AIDS impacting the emotional, social and psychological makeup of the characters and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake as a pandemic-struck post-apocalyptic work.
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