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Animalism In The Catastrophist

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“For him, the possibility of any mutation or metamorphosis was to be taken for granted, if not indeed welcomed, as was the contingency that, dead sun or no dead sun, the terrestrial globe could very readily be imagined after we’re gone,” claims Christopher Hitchens, an English author, literary critic and journalist, in his article The Catastrophist, where he comments on the pattern which James Graham Ballard takes for the course of his works, each one of them showing a depressing and deranged picture of humanity prone to animalistic and self-destructive actions. Hitchens describes Ballard as heavily influenced by Freud and surrealists, who “taught him what he already knew: religion is abject nonsense, human beings positively enjoy inflicting cruelty, and our species is prone to, and can coexist with, the most grotesque absurdities.” It also reveals the latent effects that The World War II had on Ballard's psyche, as it forced him into life in the internment camp in his early teens, where he experienced over two years of the helplessness of religion in defiance of worldwide violence and the more animalistic particularities of people cramped in a limited space. Ballard adheres to the motion of humanity degrading, no matter if in an overpopulated place like the tower in High Rise or almost entirely secluded house as in Enormous Space.

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