How Apocalypse Works as an Ending

Walter Terry, the main character of my first novel, Apocalypse TV, is mostly certain of one thing: his own uncertainty and the uncertainty of others.

This is a weakness to some readers. It is a strength--even what keeps him interesting--to others.

I didn't plan on this dichotomy. Indeed, I wish I'd been able to anticipate that some readers turn to fiction for active types and might be turned off by characters who have doubts. Certainly, I should have guessed this just by watching the political debates taking shape, where members of different parties are not swayed by evidence but by those who argue with absolute certainty that they are right and everyone else is criminally wrong.

This is a milieu in which Walter hardly fits, but it is one where his type is sorely needed.

When I was writing Walter's story, I was simply intent on telling it. I didn't realize that some readers would question his masculinity or his passivity. He is an academic. He is given to polemics and pedantry. Learning and knowing are matters of importance to him. So he corrects others just often enough to be awkward and not invited back when groups begin to form. This makes him a decent enough professor, but it hurts his participation, where it matters most, on a reality show about the end of the world.

Apocalypse? Or Apocalypses? 
And there is plenty to correct people on where the end of the world is concerned. First, on the set at the Plymouth colony re-enactment site, he overhears one of the Pilgrim impersonators asserting as fact that the world will end in the year 1700.

It's not just that Walter delights in this information. He's studied enough to know that just about every generation since the first century C.E. has believed itself to be the last generation, the ones who will see Christ's return. He knows that there are reasons to question things.

So he uses this. And it persuades no one. Obviously, as he should know, this is not a fact to convince anyone of anything. Rather, it is a point of ideology. We remain dogmatic in our belief that the generations that came before us were simply more ignorant than we are, had less facts to go on, or were not aided by technology. They were in error, but we won't make the same mistakes.

Except that to Walter, it appears that we are doing just that.

Then there is the question of exactly what an apocalypse is and will look like. Walter's reality show colleagues all assume that the word refers to a final, explosive battle. Apocalypse equals a catastrophic event of the proportion of a nuclear, genocidal, or viral holocaust. Since the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, apocalypse has come to be associated with a big, world wide battle or destruction.

As Walter is quick to point out (and it wins him no friends), apocalypse, a Greek word, refers to the pulling away of a veil. To use another English word, apocalypse means to reveal.

That is why the last book of the New Testament is sometimes called "The Revelation," and not, as a friend used to correct me, "Revelations."

It is one pulling away of the veil. It is the revealing of the Second Coming.

Again, the show ignores Walter and spends money on a set designed to play to American viewers' expectations of a holocaust. Of course, you can read to find out how the thing plays out.

Interpreting Scripture
I think I realized something in writing all of this. I understand that we are in the middle of asserting a modern interpretation of scripture--and not just one seen through the distorted lens of dispensational theology, which has been popular in Protestant circles since the 19th century (a theology that Walter, as a former Catholic, is quick to question). It is this: We are reading a first century text, which was written in historical circumstances we are largely ignorant of and, certainly, mostly unable to recreate: we are reinterpreting this ancient text largely in terms of our own very different historical moment, which is a moment when we are threatened on all sides by our advanced technology. The fears I grew up with as a boomer, which included the spread of communism and nuclear war, now include fears over technology and its assault on privacy and identity.

With the rise of the machine, our Apocalypse comes as the result of huge advances in technology and shifting semantics. Neither Walter, the main character of Apocalypse TV, nor I, his creator, are ready to say that most people are wrong about this. Things do appear as threatening.

It's just that nagging question of certainty. And, in what may be Walter's main contribution to the current question, it's that nagging question of the meaning of words that we've forgotten.

Thank you for reading.