Pandemic Narrative, Cultural Fears and Stephen King's Novel The Stand

Abstract

Pandemic narrative has ground the world normal life as well as its conflicts and a spiral of reactivity. At the same time peoples of the world have gained control of what they want to stand against the tragic effects of the fatal Covid 19 pandemics and to face it with bravery and breaking old normal life patterns to establish new ones. This real humanity stands have prevented the prophecy of Stephen King's world end. This paper reconstructs the blurring layers between fiction and reality. This paper offers a new reading of Stephen King's fictional super flue in his novel The Stand and recreating the human situation according to our postmodern political reality in which this fictional world has found certain foreshadowing in our own global struggle against Covid 19 pandemics to shed lights on any possible ways in which humanity survives. Between fictional and real threads of epidemic stories human consciousness enables us to cope with growing fears and concepts of uncertainty and social insecurity during epidemic times.

Keywords

• Pandemic
• cultural fears
• Stephen king
• horror
• fiction
• Pandemic, cultural fears, Stephen king, horror, fiction

Supporting Institution

Mustansiriyah University

Project Number

1

Thanks

Many Thanks for the LALTS Conference organizers

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