LizzieMaine
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I think the point in "Earth Abides" was that the "Tribe" *wasn't* a carefully-chosen assembly of the best-and-brightest -- it was a random group of survivors who had survived out of dumb luck rather than design. Their leader, Ish, was a twenty-five-year-old graduate student in antropology, but he was the type of academic who learned everything he knows in the classroom rather than thru actual practice -- he was great at theory and absolutely awful when it came to execution. He had no actual real-world experience in anything -- he considered it a great triumph when he figured out how to replace the battery in his car. He was exactly the wrong kind of person to lead an effort to rebuild civilization -- because he didn't understand that knowledge is only part of the equation. Knowing how to actually *use* that knowledge was completely beyond him, and the "Tribe's" degeneration into savagery over fifty years' time was a direct consequence of that failing.
Ish, by the way, was a stand-in for the author himself, George R. Stewart, who was evidently all too conscious of his own shortcomings.
"Earth Abides" is one of my favorite books. A lot of it might seem dated today, but it's still the most thoughtful "end of the world" novel ever written.
Ish, by the way, was a stand-in for the author himself, George R. Stewart, who was evidently all too conscious of his own shortcomings.
"Earth Abides" is one of my favorite books. A lot of it might seem dated today, but it's still the most thoughtful "end of the world" novel ever written.
