118
2016
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
WARNINGS OF THE END a review by Kathaleen E. Amende Sean Jackson. Haw. Hollywood, CA: Harvard Square Editions, 2015.
KATHALEEN E. AMENDE has a PhD from Tulane University and is an Associate Professor of English and the Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Alabama State University. Her scholarship includes the book Desire and the Divine: Feminine Identity in White Southern Women’s Writing (Louisiana State UP, 2013), and an NCLR 2014 essay on William Forstchen’s post-apocalyptic novel One Second After, set in Black Mountain, NC. SEAN JACKSON has published numerous short stories in literary journals from the US to Canada and Australia. He is a native of Raleigh, NC, and currently lives in Cary, NC. Haw is his debut novel.
In his 1967 seminal work on apocalyptic literature The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode posits that we are imbued with a sense of the ending of all things. According to Kermode, writing about the end of the world helps give it meaning and provides a framework for understanding both our world and our fears about it. We have an instinctual urge, he argues, to see ourselves in terms of time, and thus in terms of beginnings and endings. Since then, numerous authors and critics have attempted to understand why and when works about the end of our world become more prevalent. A common theory is that, during times of national stress and fear, stories of the apocalypse circulate more widely and are more popular with readers. Given the current state of affairs regarding the economy, the environment, and the political and social systems within the United States, it makes sense to see the large numbers of novels, films, and television series that center on the end of those things. Most people know the narratives in question – The Walking Dead, Mad Max, World War Z, Pacific Rim, The World’s End, Hunger Games, to name a few. A quick search on the internet uncovers that in the past few years there have been hundreds of post-apocalyptic novels published and as many apocalyptic films in the last fifteen years as there were in the almost seventy years previous to that. And even television is influenced by this trend – the last ten years have seen at least twenty apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic shows. So, whether it’s the post-disaster world of Hunger Games, the postnuclear world of The Road or even the post-zombie infestation film Zombieland, writers are happily
destroying America and the world over and over again. Set in the pre-apocalyptic wastelands near Raleigh, NC, Sean Jackson’s 2015 dystopia, Haw, clearly intends to stand with these other works as a warning to readers about our current practices and to suggest an extreme possibility of what can happen if such behaviors don’t change. The writing is honest and sincere, and Jackson’s intentions are clearly good here. A number of elements in this novel could make Haw a compelling one for those interested in both apocalyptic fiction and in Southern literature. It’s a fast read, and we are drawn to the characters who are, at least in the cases of the protagonist, Lucas, and his son, Orel, relatable characters. The fact that Orel’s homosexuality is seen in a positive light by both the author and the characters in the story adds a refreshing element to a genre that tends towards conservative and/ or heteronormative ideologies. Finally, that the novel is set in a real place that is recognizable in its landmarks (the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant and the Haw River are only two of the places that make a visible and obvious appearance) only makes the novel more compelling. Unfortunately, these positive elements of the novel are not enough to save it from some of its more glaring issues. The lack of believable world building, the underdeveloped nature of most of the characters, the noticeable lack of living women characters in the text (there are dead women aplenty), and the exaggeratedly villainous (evil for the sake of being evil) dystopian form of government turn what could be a chilling tale of governmental excess, environmental degradation, and the