Reviews - The Scarlet Plague

232 reviews for:

The Scarlet Plague

Jack London

3.5 AVERAGE

puchikboom's review against another edition

3.5

dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

La peste escarlata es uno de esos libros que, aunque menos conocidos en la obra de Jack London, resultan fascinantes tanto por su visión anticipatoria como por su tono melancólico y sombrío. Publicada en 1912, esta novela corta es una distopía postapocalíptica escrita mucho antes de que el género se codificara como tal, y eso se nota en su estructura, en su enfoque, e incluso en sus vacilaciones narrativas. Es una obra imperfecta, sí, pero llena de ideas provocadoras, y por eso me resultó tan valiosa como irregular.

El relato se sitúa en el año 2073, sesenta años después de que una plaga —la llamada “peste escarlata”— aniquilara a la civilización tal como la conocíamos. Un anciano, que alguna vez fue profesor universitario, intenta contarles a sus nietos nómadas y casi analfabetos cómo era el mundo antes del colapso. Lo más impactante no es tanto la peste en sí —que London narra con frialdad y cierta economía de recursos—, sino la degeneración del lenguaje, de la cultura, del pensamiento abstracto. Los niños no comprenden conceptos como “trenes”, “universidad” o “dinero”, y esa incomunicación entre generaciones —más aún, entre paradigmas históricos— es quizás el núcleo más poderoso del libro.

Lo que London plantea aquí es una pregunta que ha cobrado especial vigencia en nuestro propio siglo: ¿Qué tan frágil es nuestra civilización? ¿Cuán superficial es el barniz de tecnología, saber y organización social sobre el que descansamos? La rapidez con la que se desmorona todo en su narración es estremecedora, y a pesar de algunos anacronismos (propios de su tiempo), la visión que presenta es lúcida, amarga, cargada de una desconfianza casi darwiniana hacia el progreso humano.

Ahora bien, también se percibe en la novela un sesgo ideológico muy marcado, sobre todo en la forma en que London trata el regreso a lo primitivo. Hay una cierta exaltación de lo salvaje y una nostalgia por un orden casi tribal que, aunque coherente con su visión filosófica, puede sentirse limitante o cuestionable desde una mirada contemporánea.

El ritmo narrativo es desigual. Al tratarse de un largo monólogo interrumpido apenas por las preguntas de los niños, la estructura puede volverse monótona. No hay una construcción dramática en sentido clásico, sino más bien una elegía, una reflexión en voz alta, donde la potencia reside en las imágenes más que en los giros argumentales.

¿Por qué tres estrellas y media? Porque, aunque encontré pasajes brillantes, la novela como conjunto me resultó un tanto rígida en su propuesta. Hay belleza, hay lucidez, pero también cierta sequedad emocional y una falta de desarrollo profundo en los personajes más allá del anciano. Sin embargo, valoro profundamente el riesgo que London tomó al escribir una obra tan adelantada a su tiempo, en un registro tan diferente al del resto de su producción.

La peste escarlata no es una historia para entretener, sino para contemplar con inquietud. Es una advertencia envuelta en silencio, una pregunta lanzada al vacío: ¿qué quedará de nosotras cuando el lenguaje, la historia y la cultura se deshagan como polvo en el viento?

ejrathke's review against another edition

3.0

It's worth it, I think, to always be a bit circumspect when it comes to science fiction written a century ago. This is a kind of light science fictional novella. Light in that it's not overtly science fiction, the genre being, at the time, not really a separate genre. It's heavy in most other ways.

It's a meditation on power, class, art, and civilization. What does it mean when civilization breaks down and falls apart? It's interesting that London chooses a mostly unlikable perspective here. One who bemoans the postapocalyptic world because he is no longer the beneficiary of demeaning capitalist systems. He brings this up often. How he was the privileged class and that that was the proper order of things. Him being a university professor made him a member of the intellectual class, and of course the intellectual class should define how those of the working class should behave and live their lives, while benefiting from their wage slavery.

It's also an interesting, and wholly accurate, I think, depiction of systems of violence. Why was the university professor a beneficiary of the world order? Why because, if those workers stepped out of line to confront his privilege, someone with a club or gun or some kind of weapon would remind that worker where they belong. In the postapocalypse, with that system of violence gone, those more willing to engage with personal violence now define the hierarchy of society. And so the professor sees the injustice of the world. How he must be subservient to a chauffeur, who has taken it upon himself to violently impose his own order on those few remaining survivors.

It's interesting because we clearly live in a system defined by violence, and yet the violence is so removed from our every day life that we don't even consider what it would mean to, say, for example, stop paying taxes. The ramification, of course, is that state employees authorized to inflict violence on the populace would come to my door and take me to jail. If I continued to refuse to pay my taxes, they would take them anyway, and then force me to remain in prison for as long as the system deemed it necessary. Behind all of this is the threat of violence. Whether we agree on this or not, state control is primarily defined as a system of violence. When we live in a democratic society, we do our best to hide the threat of violence behind individual choices. We have the right and choice to not pay attention to parking meters, taxes, etc, but by not following those guidelines strictly, we are inviting violence upon us.

And it's always framed that way. To refuse to acquiesce to state violence we are choosing to bring state violence down upon our heads, and so no one has sympathy for me when I get caught smoking meth on my toilet.

So London does something clever, which is to show bluntly, without the buffer of bureaucracy, what constitutes state control. Well, it's a man with a club who's not afraid to use it!

Even clever as this is, it's somewhat muddied and not especially interesting to read. That's not a problem with the idea, but a problem with London. He's doing something clever here--something I often try to do in my own writing!--so it's interesting to see how it can fail. But he's asking us to identify with someone who supports and benefits the previous system of state violence--with all his classism and racism and sexism on display--while also showing us the horrors of this new system, which is really the old system stripped of its niceties.

London's whole career seems to be devoted to this stripping down of civilization. What are the basics of life when the rough edges of society are not smoothed over? This was pretty evident in The Sea Wolf, and employed in a similar way, though I enjoyed that much more.

Also, as is classic London, there are no speaking moments for women in the story.

But, yeah, an interesting product of its time, which manages to still be a timely critique of our very social fabric.