Dark Were The Tunnels Essay

A Change in HumanityGeorge R. R. Martins short fabrication, Dark, Dark Were The Tunnels, is one of the pieces include in John Joseph Adams compilation of apocalyptic short stories titled Wastelands stories of the apocalypse. This tier is non a tralatitious story of the apocalypse it is not about military manitys attempt to survive immediately afterward an apocalyptic event, in a changed environ workforcet. Nor is it a story about how humans are affected emotionally and struggle to live day to day. Instead this is a story about how humanity has already passed its struggle and has fitted to its new world so that large number may easily live and build a civilization in their changed environ workforcet. Greel, the protagonist for the initiative half of this story, is a member of a portion of the human population that burrowed underground in order to escape the apocalyptic wasteland of the surface of the earth. There is, however, some other group of humans who escaped to a plac e called Luna in order to survive the apocalypse. When two men from Luna venture in to the tunnels to look for any sign of survivors, they chit-chat Greel. The people of Luna are virtually unaltered by the apocalypse. However, the tunnel people give way adapted to their new environment, with large photosensitive eyes, pale skin, immense limbs and telepathic abilities. The explorers are shocked and disgusted by Greels appearance because he no semipermanent looks like they do in their eyes he is no longer a human being. The beast in the pool of light was small, barely over four feet. Small and sickening. There was something vaguely manlike about it, but the proportions of the limbs were all wrong, and the hands and feet were grotesquely malformed. And the skin, the skin was a sickly, maggoty white. (Adams 97).The theme of this story is the how differences between two groups of people can result in problems between the two groups. This storys strengths are first that you get to s ee the kindred event from the point of view of two antithetic characters. First you come to understand Greel, a member of the new underground species of humans then you see the same events from the point of view of the people who escaped into post. This gives you an interesting understanding of how much humans have been changed by their apocalypse becoming he two types of humans arenow so various that they cannot communicate with each other. The second strength of the story is the way that Greel is introduced to the ratifier. If the story had started with a description of Greel than the reader might not have been able to sympathize with him. However by having his point of view first it makes the reader take Greels side and sympathize with him despite how he looks. The weakness of this story was that it did not command many background details. It did not explain how the humans who escaped the apocalypse by going into space managed to do this. Also the details that it did give a bout Greels civilization were confusing because they were not explained in detail, moreover speaking briefly about fighting through the bad levels and climbing up through tunnels. However, a lack of detail is common in short stories because it is difficult to fit in a hoi polloi of background information while still keeping the story interesting and short. The importance of this story is that it shows the long effects of an apocalyptic event on humanity. Humans have been completely changed by an apocalyptic event, so much so that the people who did not experience this event are shocked and horrified by what the changed group of humanity has become. They no longer consider each other a part of the same species they are now too different from each other. This is a unique story in the appeal of apocalypse stories because it shows how a normal person, someone unaffected by the apocalypse, reacts to a person who has been changed by the apocalypse.This story shows how the two types o f people can no longer understand each other. Dark, Dark Were The Tunnels does not talk about the original struggles of the people who burrowed into the earth to escape the apocalypse, such as an inability to find nourishment and the emotional impact of being trapped underground, instead it talks about how the people who have adapted to their new situation have created an entirely new civilization in their new environment. They are no longer the same group that fled underground they have changed almost entirely. This is a story of these new people, people who were irrevocably changed by the apocalypse, meeting people who were not changed at all. The interaction between them does not remainder well for either party. They no longer speak the same language so they cannot communicate, they do not look the same physically, and both think that the other has a limited intelligence. The humans from Luna believe that Greel is underweight from his time underground and Greel does notunderst and why he cannot form a connection with the minds of the men from Luna, something that only happens with animals. Neither side understands the other and this results in Greel killing the humans from Luna because they killed his hunting rat, wrongly cerebration that it was dangerous. Overall this story was a successful. It does belong in Wastelands because it tells the story of the aftermath of an apocalyptic event. It was made take place that there had been an apocalypse, saying that there had been a war making the surface of the planet unlivable for a long time. This apocalypse is what led to the change in the human population that burrowed underground. The story is not a about the immediate effects of the apocalypse, it is a story about the aftereffects of an apocalypse.Work CitedAdams, John Joseph. Wastelands Stories of the Apocalypse. San Francisco Nightshade Book, 2008. Print.