Post-apocalyptic fiction often asks us whether our lives or values are worth pursuing when society falls. Shows like The Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica give us worlds with ever-dwindling populations, constantly hinting at the futility of our existence. The point of fiction is to ask questions about ourselves in the present, and while post-apocalyptic fiction is certainly capable of this, it requires a very inflated kind of hyperbole. It is perhaps too far removed from reality. Set 3 years after an inexplicable event in which 2% of the world’s population inexplicably vanished into thin air, the landscape of The Leftovers is by no means post-apocalyptic, despite what you might expect from its title. When 10/14 happens, there is a great deal of shock, confusion and grief. But ultimately, the world makes the collective decision to move past these events and to get on with their lives. People still go to work; the schools don’t shut down. It’s business as usual. The Leftovers is able to ask us these questions more seriously because it’s much easier to accept that our lives are meaningless when faced with a band of 5 or 6 fending off a nation of walking corpses than it is in a world that more closely resembles our own. The suggestion that we may not have a purpose becomes a far more bitter pill to swallow. The Leftovers is an exhilarating counterpoint to dystopian fiction, providing intriguing and provocative answers to the genre’s questions regarding the meaning of our existence.
Battlestar revolves around a fleet of 50,000 people that becomes increasingly small as they are picked off by the cylons, artificial intelligence that has surpassed that of human capabilities. In The Walking Dead, a small group of human survivors fight inevitable extinction across the vast American landscape. In both, the characters experience an internal conflict between nihilism and optimism. In both, the characters struggle against an unconquerable enemy, forever trying to convince themselves that it will be worth it; that the human race can be salvaged, but we never truly believe it. The Leftovers’ nihilism finds a voice in the form of the Guilty Remnant, a cult that emerges in the aftermath of 10/14. They don’t see how everyone can pretend like their families and livelihoods might not be decimated again, at any given moment, without warning, cause or discrimination. While post-apocalyptic fiction is invariably nihilistic in and of itself, its protagonists must be optimistic; they must believe that their continued survival is for some greater purpose. Otherwise, why would they bother? In The Leftovers, each philosophy is given a voice, in the form of the nihilistic Remnant and the optimistic townsfolk.
The Leftovers suggests that human connection, optimism and love are all forms, or at least permutations, of denial and repression.
The Guilty Remnant, the cylons and the zombies are all allegorical representations of the subconscious. They are each an initially suppressed part of society who become an undefeatable enemy. Their rise to prominence is justification for taking on a nihilistic philosophy. Yet, even some of the bleakest post-apocalyptic landscapes opt for a glimmer of hope at the story’s end, such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. This is because the absolute futility of life is a dangerous thing to admit to ourselves. In The Last Man on Earth, the lead character attempts suicide in the pilot as he believes himself to be the sole survivor of the apocalypse. Again, this is hyperbole; while many of us might experience isolation and loneliness, we don’t experience it in the same way as Will Forte’s character does. In a post-apocalyptic landscape, the sense of futility and meaninglessness is overwhelming. In The Leftovers, because the Remnant are still in a minority when we first meet them, this feeling of insignificance is, like in life, a niggling doubt in the back of one’s mind. Furthermore, the show suggests that while denial is a stopgap, it is perhaps a necessary stopgap. Repression is defined by psychologist Lynn B. Myers as the methods by which we “avoid experiencing negative emotion, especially anxiety”. The Leftovers suggests that human connection, optimism and love are all forms, or at least permutations, of denial and repression. They are a distraction to keep us from going off the deep end, the means by which we convince ourselves that we have purpose.
The point of all fiction is to ask questions about ourselves. The questions that post-apocalyptic fiction asks are profoundly unwelcome. Perhaps this is why the genre is necessary, to make us consider the big questions that we would rather ignore. Perhaps the reason anyone writes post-apocalyptic or dystopian fiction and asks these questions in the first place is to provoke the rest of us to come back and say “yes, life is worth living!”, but only after we’ve weighed up all of the options. After all, if you truly believe that life is pointless, how do you motivate yourself to create anything? The problem with much of post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction is that it is too extreme a viewpoint and this is why The Leftovers offers a nice reconciliation of nihilism and optimism in dystopias; it acknowledges the valid concerns inherent within nihilism while acknowledging our basic human need for optimism, even if only for the lack of a better alternative.
