The Comet (5 points)

 


The Comet examines the racial divide in America through a story of survival. When Julia and Jim are alone together, convinced they’re the only survivors, they cooperate and are willing to set aside their race in order to help rebuild society. However, the moment more white people show up, Julia seems to forget this, jumping at the chance to be back with her own race, leaving Jim behind. Although, to be fair, she does defend Jim, which is the absolute bare minimum of decency. However, she doesn’t know his wife is going to show up after she leaves, so from her perspective she’s leaving him there to die. I guess I take back my earlier point. The second the societal divide is reintroduced, Julia completely disregards the safety of the man who helped her and goes back to the racist status quo.

 

It’s also interesting to note that when Julia’s white family arrives everyone is fine, whereas when Jim’s wife finds him she carries with her their baby’s corpse. I see this as a representation of how, even during an apocalypse, the privileged white population will thrive in America, while the oppressed black population will suffer. Especially in 1920, when this was published, white people in America profit off of the suffering of the people they oppress. They underpay them (or in the case of prisoners don’t pay them at all) for their labor and then punish them for existing. In this case, Julia gets the better end of the bargain, being helped by Jim out of the goodness of his heart, and then getting to see her family and friends again. Then she leaves him behind with his wife and dead child. Even though she didn’t do it on purpose, Julia exploited him for his labor and prospered or it, getting the consequence free happy ending Jim deserved as well. It’s a painfully real ending that, unfortunately, is still accurate to modern day America. You don’t have to change very many details to make this story work in modern day; just mention cell phones don’t work and you’re golden. Not enough has changed between 1920 and 2020.

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