Last Night (2007) as a COVID-19-Like Narrative by Alex Scarrow

Abstract

Considered as having recently sprung up, health literature has suffered a long neglect by critics. However, with the outbreak of COVID-19, the latter has not finished reviving traces of literary pandemic representations. Consequently, much research is nowadays focusing on its collateral interactive impacts with the economy and other sectors while eluding stark thematic similarities that exist with anticipation fiction in terms of aesthetical representation. Thus, through comparative approach, Alex Scarrow’s Last Light is chosen to highlight those parallels with oil fiction. Consequently, the analysis must, firstly, foster that oil fiction does reflect pandemic-like symptoms representations marked by economic and sociocultural substrata. Secondly, oil, like any pandemic, shall invariably influence characters’ mindset in the throes of paranoia, duality, quest for social identity, etc. Thirdly, oil fiction is meant to pervade and seep throughout the whole narrative fabric thereby embedding a literary journalism style and fueling the narrative with aesthetic representations abundant with tropes that inevitably tap into medical, financial, pyramidal, conspiracy metaphors, etc.