Earth Abides

He climbed out through the broken window, and automatically started to replace the board. Then, he stopped. The great feeling of desolation came over him again. Why replace the board? It would make no difference. No one was left who would come here, in the future, to read. He paused, swinging the hammer idly.

At last, slowly, without enthusiasm, he picked up the board, and with the hammer pounded the nails in again. There was no enthusiasm. There was no hope. Yet this was merely part of his life. Just as George would always work at his carpentry, just as Ezra would always be good with people, so he, Ish, would keep some illusion of books, and the future.

After that he went around and sat down to rest on the granite steps at the front of the Library. Everything was overgrown and half ruinous. He thought of an old picture which he remembered. Who was it—Caesar? Hannibal?—someone, sitting in the ruins of Carthage? He pounded idly with his hammer at the edge of one of the granite steps. It was sheer vandalism. He did not ordinarily do such a thing. The edge of the step chipped off. Still, wantonly, he pounded harder. A three-inch flake loosened and fell. The fresh edge of the broken granite looked out roughly at him.

As he sat there still pounding gently with the hammer, he felt himself for the first time remember Joey without merely dissolving into sorrow. How would it have been anyway? Joey might not have been able to do anything. He was only a bright little boy. He could not have changed things. He could not have stood against all the pressing current of this altered world. He would only have struggled and struggled, and in the end he would not have succeeded. He would have been unhappy.

“Joey,” he thought, and he put the thoughts into words. “Joey was too much like me. I always struggle. I can never merely be happy.”

He concentrated on a small chip of granite, and vindictively pounded it into bits.

“Relax, relax!” he again thought in words. “It’s time to relax.”

Thoreau and Gauguin—we remember them. But should we forget the tens of thousands of others? They neither wrote books nor painted pictures, but equally they renounced. And what of those others, the millions who turned their backs on imagination?

You have heard them speak, and seen their eyes… “It was fine there, where we camped on our fishing-trip—sometimes I wished—of course I had to get back for the sales-conference.”… “Do you ever think, George, of a desert island?”… “Just a cabin, in the woods, no telephone.”… “The sand-spit by the lagoon, I like to fancy—but, you know, there’s Maud, and the children.”

What a strange thing then is this great civilization, that no sooner have men attained it than they seek to flee from it!

The Chaldeans told that Oannes the fish-god came up from the sea and taught men these new ways. But was he god or demon?

Why do the legends look back toward some golden day of simplicity?

Must we not think then that this great civilization grew up, not by men’s desires, but rather by Forces and Pressures. Step by step, as villages grew larger, men must give up the free wandering life of berry-picking and seed-gathering and tie themselves to the security (and drudgery) of agriculture. Step by step, as villages grew more numerous, men must renounce the excitement of the hunt for the security (and drudgery) of cattle-keeping.