Article Title
Hope at the end of the world: creation stories and apocalypse in Alexis Wright's 'Carpentaria' and 'The Swan Book'
Abstract
This article offers a close and careful reading of Australian Indigenous author, Alexis Wright’s most recent texts, exploring the portrayal of devastation, hope(lessness) and apocalypse in her unique works. What are the possibilities for rebuilding societies when the only characters to survive are ‘Hope’ and ‘Will’ (in Carpentaria) and Oblivion Ethylene (in The Swan Book)? By the end of each novel, these characters cannot be defined by their oppressors and, they cannot speak for a collective because the old worlds have been dismantled and destroyed. There is hope, however, the world can be reimagined without colonial power structures in a time of new beginnings. This article explores the regeneration of race-relations through the dualism of hope and apocalypse.