Alicia Keohavong
April 3, 2015
Engl 212
Gawronski
Leisure Time and Books In post-apocalyptic literature there are two things that are significant- leisure time and books. Leisure time itself can make one go crazy, but with books, the post-apocalyptic world could change. I Am Legend, The Book of Eli, and “Speech Sounds” all have a similarity of the use of their leisure time with books, but with different motives on why the antagonist in these stories are against the books or knowledge itself. Books are dangerous in dystopian literature because of possible rebellion but they are helpful in post-apocalyptic literature. They are usually rare in post-apocalyptic literatures since most are probably destroyed depending on the reason the world has become post-apocalyptic. The little books that may be left can possibly help rebuild a new community. I Am Legend, The Book of Eli, and “Speech Sounds” all use books in some way to try to rebuild a community. I Am Legend’s Robert Neville finds himself going crazy from just listening to the creatures outside. To solve his problem, he decides to go to the library to do research on how the creatures are connected to their fear of garlic. Later on, Neville finds a microscope and starts testing blood. Due to the leisure time, Neville uses books to try to find a cure so he can possibly cure some creatures and build a community because he is tired of being alone. In The Book of Eli, Eli uses a book, The Bible, to guide him. When telling Solara about his walk of thirty years, Eli says, “And then one day I heard this voice… It told me to carry the book west” (The Book of Eli). This shows Eli’s purpose with a book is because God told him so. Eli memorized The Bible so he could retell it to a printing press and spread it around the world. Eli does this in the hopes of a new community. He does this to help restore humanity that can follow a path and be civil again. In “Speech Sounds”, Rye used to be a teacher and loved to write. The illness that is described in the story took away her most prized possession, which was to read. Towards the end, when Rye realizes the children can talk, she decides to take them with her. Rye does this while realizing that because they can talk, maybe there is hope for a future. Readers may not know if the children can read as well, but it is significant in this story that Rye is in hopes of a new generation of children that can read and write. Rye proves this when she says, “What if children of three or fewer years were safe ad able to learn language? What if all they needed were teachers?” (Butler, 12). In contrast to
