Dark Were The Tunnels Essay

A Change in HumanityGeorge R. R. Martins picayune account state handst, Dark, Dark Were The Tunnels, is one of the pieces included in John Joseph Adams compilation of indicative short stories titled Wastelands stories of the apocalypse. This invoice is non a traditional fib of the apocalypse it is not round humanityitys struggle to stand speedyly after an apocalyptic event, in a changed environment. Nor is it a story more or less how cosmos atomic number 18 affected emotionally and struggle to live day to day. Instead this is a story about how humanity has already passed its struggle and has fit to its new world so that state whitethorn easily live and build a civilization in their changed environment. Greel, the agonist for the first half of this story, is a member of a portion of the human population that burrowed underground in order to escape the apocalyptic waste of the surface of the earth. There is, however, another separate of public who escaped to a place called Luna in order to survive the apocalypse. When two men from Luna surmise in to the tunnels to look for any sign of survivors, they see Greel. The people of Luna be virtually unchanged by the apocalypse. However, the tunnel people have adapted to their new environment, with large photosensitive eyes, pale skin, long limbs and telepathic abilities. The explorers argon shocked and disgusted by Greels appearance because he no seven-day looks like they do in their eyes he is no longer a human being. The creature in the pool of light source was small, barely over four feet. Small and sickening. There was something vaguely man-sized 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 foot result in problems between the two groups. This storys strengths are first that you get to see t he same event from the height of place of two different characters. First you come to gain Greel, a member of the new underground species of human then you see the same events from the point of view of the people who escaped into space. This gives you an interesting understanding of how much humans have been changed by their apocalypse becoming he two types of humans arenow so different that they cannot communicate with distributively other. The fleck strength of the story is the way that Greel is introduced to the commentator. If the story had started with a description of Greel than the reader might not have been able to interpret 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 contain some(prenominal) background details. It did not explain how the humans who escaped the apocalypse by going into space managed to do this. Also the details th at it did give about Greels civilization were confusing because they were not explained in detail, only talking in short about fighting finished the bad levels and climbing up through tunnels. However, a lack of detail is common in short stories because it is onerous to fit in a lot of background information firearm 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 all in all 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 collection 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 tw o types of 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 nutrition 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 in all 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 end well for any 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 stunted from his time underground and Greel does notunderstand 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 thinking that it was dangerous. Overall this story was a successful. It does sound in Wastelands because it tells the story of the aftermath of an apocalyptic event. It was made clear that in that respect had been an apocalypse, saying that there had been a war making the surface of the major 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.