Preview

Taronga & 2012

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
796 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Taronga & 2012
Victor Kelleher’s Taronga and Roland Emmerich’s 2012 reveals to the reader and viewer what could happen if there was a nuclear holocaust or destruction of our environment. We get a clear illustration of man’s reaction in times of devastation. Though both are fictitious we are affected by the chilling possibility of it becoming a reality.
The destruction that can result is clearly shown in Taronga where a nuclear holocaust destroys most of the population and circumstances have reduced the majority of humanity to the level of animals, or perhaps worse than animals. This is seen when Greg bullies and uses Ben’s gift to find food and when Ellie upset by Molly’s cruelty, tells Ben “ If Molly can kill a poor defenseless woman for no reason, when there’s not even any pressure on her, what will she do if one day she’s threatened? Ask yourself that, Ben. What will she do then?” and finally when Ellie tells Steve “you’re worse then Raja!” because Steve was planning to throw Ben out to the lions as food.
The devastating result of the world coming to an end is clearly shown in 2012, as the world starts to turn to volcanic rock destroying most of the population. The people who are still alive are trying to fight for survival; we start to see the ugly side of people. For example Yuri uses Jackson and his family to get to the big arks the government had built but Yuri knew that you needed a special pass from the government and he only had 3 for him and his sons so he leaves his girlfriend and the rest of the passengers who have helped him to fend for themselves. The men who worked in the ark found themselves locked out by the Captain who never had the intention of including them.
The devastation of the effects of nuclear radiation to the environment means that the survivors have little chance of existing but the will to survive holds strong. In Taronga Australia has become a harsh place, no one can be trusted, people are desperate for food or whatever they can get.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    “Production takes precedence over safety” was a quite common idea in Rocky Flats during the Cold War (Iversen 409). In Kristen Iversen’s non-fiction memoir, Full Body Burden, she investigated the top secret about Rocky Flats – the nuclear weapons plant. She revealed the truth for the innocent citizens lived near around the radiation area and unfolded the concealed information of how the toxic and radioactive waste affected the area around Rocky Flats, and extensively, seeking justice for innocent people in her twelve years of researching. Nuclear production: these words drive all the main factors in this book, two nuclear building fires, death of local animals, water safety issues, higher rate of cancer in local residence, extensive test…

    • 1553 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    At a point in time where human extinction was not only conceivable but had been partially displayed- many took upon the role of the ultimate survivor. In desperate attempts to control their own personal lives: Many individuals developed strategies proposed by Christopher Lasch, an American cultural critic. The fact that Lasch’s commentary comes from an American perspective (removed from the physical fighting, threat or violence of the changing society) deems important in that he talks of the effect felt by those who were seemingly unaffected by the cold war. Lasch proposes that ‘under siege, the self contracts to a defensive core, armed against adversity’ which seems like a perfect summary of the personal and political values and events of this time. Politically, nations and governments developed espionage and security systems, which were defensive and ultimately damaging to both sides involved. Their expendable agents, money and morals were masked with the code name of ‘national security’ however was often a detailed, confusing plan that left many with wounds both physical and emotional. Lasch’s proposal and book The Minimal Self, develops a unique outlook on our human responses to control and attempts of control. On a personal level, Lasch suggests that in order to resist total external control from governments or higher authority figures, individuals shut down their interior introspective and personal responses to ensure a safe passage through uncertain times. This theory was heavily authenticated through personal accounts and experiences through living in the fear of another world war. Lasch’s theory, however sad and depersonalizing establishes the ultimate survivor: Much like our protagonist in Spy who came in from the Cold, Leamas we see social and emotional disengagement from others along with a refusal of past and present which…

    • 1133 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In short, in “Cheer up, it’s just the end of the world,” Ira Chernus discusses that an apocalypse is a genuine ongoing threat today. Since biblical times, apocalyptic stories always begin with the fact that the end is near; then, after the world ends, a new one will arise. Some apocalyptic ideas suggest that the world will end abruptly, while other ideas suggest a slow approach. Chernus adds that some ideas of apocalypses have shifted from “’the end of everything,’" to “’the end of anything’” (Chernus 19-21). Overall, Chernus identifies the issues caused by unrealistic ideas of apocalypses, such as “’psychic numbing’” (Chernus 19-21), and he stresses the importance of identifying real apocalyptic threats, such as climate change. Chernus then…

    • 298 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Particular events have such broad and long-lasting ramifications for our society that they shake the very pillars upon which our world is built. The dropping of the atomic bomb upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one such event. The very foundations of our society – traditional philosophical concepts such as totalising metanarratives, absolute truth and the purposefulness and rationality of life – were shaken by contestation fuelled by the uncertainty that was generated by the absolute destructive power of the atomic bomb. The uncertainty generated by this cataclysmic event also gave rise to the aggression, paranoia and irrationality that drove the Cold War – a conflict which rocked the foundations of our world by threatening it’s annihilation in a nuclear apocalypse.…

    • 2185 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The atomic bomb is the killer of those unrealistic, imaginary fantasies. It represents violence, cruel actions and destroys. It is an irony of what the people are doing…

    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    In Ryfle’s article “Godzilla’s Footprint,” he talks about the Japanese movie “Godzilla,” directed by Ishirō Honda. To Honda, this movie had a serious meaning because it was about the atomic bombings that demolished Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It was made to make the audience understand what the Japanese people went through at a time when no one knew what type of damage resulted from the bombings. Susan Napier suggests that the ideological change in terms of both presentations of disaster and the attitudes inscribed toward disaster derive from…

    • 1633 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Duck and Cover

    • 464 Words
    • 2 Pages

    There are similarities to that and the times we are living now with the constant threat of a terrorist attack. Although it´s more controlled, there are warning signs of terrorist attacks and terrorist activity. There are also the attacks that come with no warning. In the event of a terrorist attack and an atomic bomb attack the devastation are massive. They are both equally effective at creating fear, not just after, but before as well.…

    • 464 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Times have changed since the writing of "There Will Come Soft Rains", when the threat of nuclear extermination seemed more real than it is now. But should we read it only as a chilling view of what the future might have been? One thing in man's favor: he is ingenious; and in inventing new ways of making his species extinct he has in many ways surpassed himself.…

    • 623 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    There was a bench made from the trees of cinderwood that stood out from the others or so that’s what one boy believed. In the boy's eyes, the bench was all alone, besides the leaves that had come and go as they fulfilled their duties for the seasons. It astonished him; how the fallen leaves had disappeared and withered into the ground, only to realize that those leaves bore a similar resemblance to the ones gathered upon the trees above. The child was only of the age of seven years and knew little of what was to come; That would be three years later being the year of 2713, when all feared that a third world war would happen and it did, becoming the shortest war to ever exist. It all ended after multiple nukes had turned the world of bloom and order into mere ruins and anarchy. No longer were there rivers that roamed for miles; No longer was there the earth that we used to know, but there was at least one thing that remained from that previous world. Us. Now returning to the boy from the beginning……

    • 1620 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The mystery of the apocalypse is a phantasmagoric fantasy that has fascinated humanity for generations. Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars is an insight as to what the world may look like during the aftermath of a pandemic apocalypse. In the text, the reader follows the journey of Big Hig and what trials he must go through to survive. Steve Almond, author of The Apocalypse Market is Booming, believes that apocalyptic books and films “offer no coherent moral agenda.”…

    • 1094 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Hiroshima Research Paper

    • 1252 Words
    • 6 Pages

    On August 6th, 1945, the world was forever changed when the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The attack was made as an attempt to end World War 2, and it succeeded at a devastating price. John Hersey’s Hiroshima depicts six different accounts of victims of the bomb. The journalistic novel tells how each of the people began their day, how they survived the explosion, the response, and where they were 40 years later. Each account is different, and they all represent the various ways that the bomb hurt the people. These six individual catastrophes illustrate the horrible effects of atomic bombs and how the use of them should not be even considered by any empathetic human being.…

    • 1252 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    “On the Beach” is a surreal journey into the darkness of the Nuclear Age. Our age. As a scientific phenomenon, the nuclear age began in 1945 with the explosion of the first nuclear bomb. But in world relations the nuclear age really began about ten years later. Until nearly the end of the forties, the United States was the only nuclear power in the world. In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear device. But it was not until the middle of the fifties that the Soviet Union began to have an armory of nuclear weapons. Beginning about 1955, the West had ceased to have a monopoly of nuclear weapons, and by the end of the 1950s, the Soviet Union had become a very formidable nuclear power. Since 1955 there have existed in the world two rival and conflicting coalitions armed with nuclear weapons. They are in conflict at many points on the globe. They distrust profoundly each other's purposes. In the story author Nevil Shute uses the fear of nuclear annihilation to show the reader what could have happened to the world had the U.S. or the Soviet Union actually fired their arsenal of atomic weapons.…

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The storm of post-apocalyptic novels has taken much of the literary world by storm in the past century or so. This does not stop just there, of course, it branches so far into other media that the storyline of a human life following the collapse of the world as we know it is not at all an unfamiliar one. Movies, video games, and the traditional books have all taken their own look at this interesting offshoot of (science) fiction and have morphed new concepts and perspectives from this one single origin. One such work that exemplifies this is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.…

    • 2253 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Crazies Epidemic

    • 586 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Ogden Marsh, Iowa was once the friendliest place on Earth. Until one day the “American Dream” changed into the “American Disaster” within a blink of an eye. The American scientific horror film, “The Crazies”, portrayed this disastrous apocalyptic event. The apocalypse is any universal or widespread destruction or disaster. Every apocalyptic event contains narrative elements which can be profoundly disruptive, chaotic, and uncontrollable. I believe the motion picture, “The Crazies” consist of these narrative elements.…

    • 586 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Night and Fog (by Alain Resnais) and Hiroshima-Nagasaki 1945 (by Erik Barnouw) are two very different documentaries with two very similar messages. Though the task of viewing these films was quite difficult, both films conveyed a very strong message, the aftermath of human destruction. Resnais and Barnouw showed us the horrible capabilities of human beings at their worst and the result when humanity and morality is no longer present. Both filmmakers took the task of bringing the realities of these two disasters to life in two very different ways. While Resnais and Barnouw differ a lot in their narrative and musical, chronology, and cinematography, structural and ethical choices, they do share slight similarities in each category. Separately, these two great directors produced two amazing documentaries. As different as the films are, the same message is effectively demonstrated in both pieces.…

    • 1821 Words
    • 53 Pages
    Powerful Essays