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A review by meganac
The Scarlet Plague by Jack London
4.0
The human race is doomed to sink back farther and farther into the primitive night ere again it begins its bloody climb upward to civilization.
A young friend of mine, much too wise for his age (and by age, I mean 13), recommended this to me. He insisted I read it at once, and so I did. It's not a lengthy book, so I read it in one sitting. The Jack London I knew wrote about the wild and dogs, but this book isn't about either of those things. It's about the end of civilization with the coming of a plague that sweeps the earth too quickly to be prepared for, apprehended, or stopped. It's a plague that strikes everyone regardless of their health status, their position, or their attitude, carrying them off into death - some, in mere minutes. For others, it takes hours. As we would expect from what we've seen of riots, most of humanity degenerates rapidly and begins plundering the homes of the sick, wandering the world with weaponry, causing mayhem. The rest gather their courage and hole up somewhere they can easily defend themselves against marauders, but they can't defend themselves from the plague and are forced to flee as more and more of their own fall sick.
It's a vivid picture of what life might be like if a plague were to undermine all our efforts for progress, and though it wasn't mindblowing for me, worth the read.
A young friend of mine, much too wise for his age (and by age, I mean 13), recommended this to me. He insisted I read it at once, and so I did. It's not a lengthy book, so I read it in one sitting. The Jack London I knew wrote about the wild and dogs, but this book isn't about either of those things. It's about the end of civilization with the coming of a plague that sweeps the earth too quickly to be prepared for, apprehended, or stopped. It's a plague that strikes everyone regardless of their health status, their position, or their attitude, carrying them off into death - some, in mere minutes. For others, it takes hours. As we would expect from what we've seen of riots, most of humanity degenerates rapidly and begins plundering the homes of the sick, wandering the world with weaponry, causing mayhem. The rest gather their courage and hole up somewhere they can easily defend themselves against marauders, but they can't defend themselves from the plague and are forced to flee as more and more of their own fall sick.
It's a vivid picture of what life might be like if a plague were to undermine all our efforts for progress, and though it wasn't mindblowing for me, worth the read.