by Mordecai Roshwald
p. 1962
Cold War-era satire, A Small Armageddon, was the second of
only two fictional novels ever written by Mordecai Roshwald, whose first novel,
Level 7, got me into the post-apocalyptic genre to begin with. A Small Armageddon explores similar
themes of mutually assured destruction and the threat of the arms race, but
unlike the former, it follows a much more irreverent path to get its point
across.
A
Small Armageddon does not follow heroes; its primary characters are
actually the villains: rogue nuclear submarine captain Gerald Brown and religious
fanatic, Peter Schumacher. Brown dominates the majority of the novel as we
follow his descent into modern day piracy. Brown—an ambitious but deeply
resentful man in command of the nuclear-armed submarine Polar Lion—is interesting because he is a character who may never
have become the person he did were it not for various influences. If he didn’t
carry with him the baggage of his adolescence, always second best to the
‘popular kids’ he resents, he may never have snapped and murdered his
commanding officer. If he weren’t so determined to be liked, he may not have
gotten the support he needed to support his mutiny. If he hadn’t listened to
one dumb kid’s dreamy notions of adventuring, he may never have gotten the idea
to resort to piracy. And most importantly, if he hadn’t felt one-upped by
Schumacher, the whole affair might have turned out very differently.
Schumacher is also incited to act based
on his personal impulses, his being religious in nature. Schumacher, an
extremist and fundamentalist, sees Brown’s crusade and is inspired to start one
of his own—but instead of requesting strippers and gold, he demands strict
enforcement of his moral code, which ends up being more difficult to provide
than the strippers and the gold. Both men are in considerable positions of
power and no one suspects they are capable of extreme action until they are
literally pointing a missile at the world. It’s not enough that Brown and
Schumacher are inspired by personal impulses; they are then further inspired to
target each other out of revenge. This whole bit of satire just goes to show
how dangerous it is to put the nuclear threat in the hands of men. We are quick
to incite to anger and far too easily guided by emotion or personal gain. To
allow corruptible men access to such savage power as nuclear weaponry can,
according to Roshwald, very likely lead to our own downfall.
I did not find A Small Armageddon to live up to its predecessor. Level 7 is the more impressive of the
two, as its vague tones and dire conclusion give it a gut punch feel unrivaled
here, where the only ones who suffer are the villains (and a couple unfortunate
people caught in the crossfire). Still, A
Small Armageddon is not without its merits and it still manages to get its
point across: it does not matter if you have the best intentions or the worst
intentions if the end result is the same.
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