The Scarlet Plague

Taking into consideration that this was written almost 100 years ago, it’s pretty good. Jack London tends to be more remembered for Call of the Wild type novels. This one is postapocalyptic, following a worldwide pandemic that killed off all but maybe a couple of hundred humans in the world. The story of civilization’s end is recounted by a very old (Gosh! He must be in his 70’s….) former humanities professor, now dressed in animal skins, with his grandchildren not even able to comprehend the concept of writing. I think the decline was too fast and too profound. This is a very early post-apocalyptic tale, which has been done numerous times, mostly better, by others.

This short novelette of Jack London’s, is a radical departure from his usual “he-man” expostulations upon brutal Nature, brutal men, brutal institutions, and, brutal oceans. He had manged Science Fiction, with as much adroitness, just as well, as he did with his usual genres.

It was fascinating to see how he made projections upon the progress of technology, 100 years ahead of his time. Wireless radios being used for routine communications between regular folks; monorails to transport the masses overland; and private luxury zeppelins, for the wealthy to travel.

After this pandemic had culled humanity, by at least 95%, there was an irrevocable descent by humanity into savage barbarity, once they lost their comforts, technology, and institutions, and that is the common thread–of brutality–that this story has, with the rest of London’s works.

One should also read George R. Stewart’s “Earth Abides” alongside of “Scarlet”, as they are both very complimentary to each other.

I find it amazing that London wrote this story in 1912 about a plague in 2013. His imagination was pretty spot on, and although he didn’t pinpoint many advances, his descriptions are vague enough to be accurate. The only part I found disconcerting is the rate at which man devolves after the great plague, with only 60 years passing before the narrator’s grandsons are little more than savages. I would think it would take more than two generations for speech to devolve and lose syntax and composition, rendering it nearly unrecognizable. Unlike some readers, however, I find it wholly believable that the grandsons act the way they do toward their grandfather. The things he describes are so far beyond their experience that they simply cannot comprehend, and he treats them with about as much disdain as they treat him, calling them dirty savages at every chance he gets. The story ends pretty uneventfully, but with the hope that Edwin, the most “civilized” grandson, may just be curious enough to move back in the direction of humanity as we know it.

For the last few centuries, the looming self-destruction of humankind has been much in the mind of some great writers. This is Jack London’s contribution. The device triggering the breakdown of civilisation here is an incurable plague. Which in the age if Covid makes the book timely. The narrator is the last to remember civilization, and, as he tells the stories of that age to a group of half-savage youngsters, slowly comes to realize that the whole cycle of societal division, where some people eventually get everyone else to work for them, will inevitably be repeated. Some will convince others that they should worship them, some will con them, use economic pressure or superstition to oppress others. In this sense, he is more pessimistic than HG Wells, who believed that one of the great catastrophes would knock sense into people, and they would learn not to make the same mistakes. History seems to be siding with London.

A rather hopeless tale of one version of almost-the-end-of-the-world. But an interesting read in these times of the pandemic. I disagree with Mr. London that civilization would continue to devolve as time passes after a catastrophe. We have seen civilization rebuild and reinvent itself time and time again, despite wars, natural catastrophes, genocides, dictatorships whatever is thrown at us. We may go thru a period of savagery but our noble instincts do eventually rise to the surface. Even as we struggle thru the current pandemic and cruelty of the Trump Administration, I believe we will not sink to the mentality of the lowest common denominator as this president wishes. The dark days will pass and hope will emerge.

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