Reconstruction in ‘The Survivor’ by Julian Barnes

• Main Author: Helen E. Mundler
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2018-03-01
• Series: Études Britanniques Contemporaines
• Subjects: Julian Barnes; Noah; Chernobyl; nuclear criticism; Cold War literature; ecocriticism
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/4303

The article turns to the narrative unfolding in the fourth chapter of Julian Barnes’ A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1989), a volume which retells and reconfigures the biblical Noah myth in a number of different ways. ‘The Survivor’ can be read within the context of a large number of contemporary fictions based on the story of Noah which make only indirect reference to the biblical story, and in which the ark, the flood and Noah himself are only obliquely represented. The eponymous “survivor” is a young woman who fears nuclear war and believes the Apocalypse is imminent. The narrative form of the text allows two stories to be told at once, one in which she sets sail to avoid the fallout of nuclear war, another in which she is interned in a psychiatric hospital and treated for paranoia. This paper offers a rereading of “The Survivor” in the light of recent work on ecocriticism, nuclear criticism and animal studies, considering both the form of the text, and the commentary it makes on the contemporary world.