Compromising with the Situation: Meliorism Manifested in Select Pandemic Fictions

Abstract

A Pandemic is a Global epidemic or disease outbreak. These pandemics are mass murderers since time immemorial as History shows. Diseases like Plague, Smallpox, Influenza and Cholera have ruined families, destroyed towns and left the generations scarred and scared. Since the relationship between Literature and society is axiomatic, it not only throws a mirror to nature but also before men and manners of the age, to the society of the times. Then how will Pandemic fail to appear in the Literature of the times? Nay, whenever such calamities occurred on the earth, the creativity of the then writers had unvarnishedly caught the crisis of the time. The beginning of 2020 witnessed this havoc firstly in Wuhan Hubei province of China and from there grabbed its ‘global networking’ through Europe and many other parts of the world; i.e. Covid- 19 shook the whole world through community transmission, lockdown, quarantine phase, death tallies, Work from Home with salary cut, job loss leading to more hunger and financial crunch. The survivors got to know the gravity of situation resulting in the resurgence of interest in the earlier Pandemic Writing as “it provides us deepest and insightful record of events during Pandemics and tries to provide consolation in times of need” (Smith: 27) since nothing in life is permanent and this tide will also pass is the hopeful tinge above all adversity. So, compromising with the situation and working in the direction of finding out a way and making the situation better is the melioristic theme in all pandemic fictions.