“I’ve been made to watch the end”: pretraumatic disaster imaginaries in the cabin at the end of the world (2018)

Abstract

[eng] Literary works that explore the effects of anthropogenic climate change have significantly increased in the last few decades. Often encapsulated under the term “climate fiction” or “cli-fi”, these texts speculate about the future of humanity, inviting readers to reflect on what it means to live in the Anthropocene. This is the case of the 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay, a story framed within the classic horror trope of home invasion that quickly escalates into a tension-filled apocalypse. Drawing on climate trauma theory by E. Ann Kaplan (2016), this study aims to provide a close reading of the apocalyptic visions that drive the novel’s narrative, focusing on the affective consequences that these imaginaries have on the characters and, potentially, on the reader. The paper argues that these visions conflate present and future temporalities and, in the process, draw attention to contemporary anxieties regarding the climate crisis. Bearing witness to different catastrophic scenarios invites the reader to confront the possibility of environmental collapse, but the novel’s open ending denies any sort of catharsis common in these types of narratives. The first three sections in this paper offer an analysis of different visions, foregrounding issues of temporality. The study then moves on to the concept of collective witnessing and concludes by discussing the implications of the book’s open ending in the wider context of the apocalyptic genre.