Wednesday
Last July I collected all the essays I had written on Covid into a single post, with the first appearing almost exactly a year ago. This week, as we mark the once-inconceivable 500,000th official Covid death, I update that list. It has all been too tragic for words, but words are what we have.
Feb. 26, 2020 – Stephen King describes how pandemics spread in The Stand. Many Americans didn’t listen. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/stephen-king-on-pandemics/
March 4, 2020 – Hand washing works better for people threatened by Covid than it does for Lady Macbeth. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/hand-washing-and-the-coronavirus/
March 10, 2020 – Bocaccio provides guidance for dealing with plagues in The Decameron. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/boccaccio-on-pandemics/
March 13, 2020 – In this light-hearted lyric, Scott Bates suggests curling up with a good book, which is always a good piece of advice in dark times. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/curl-up-with-a-good-book/
March 15, 2020 – Thomas Nashe’s “Litany in Time of Plague” provides healthy plague responses. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/the-plague-full-swift-goes-by/
March 16, 2020 – Albert Camus captures how people respond to pandemics in The Plague. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/to-understand-covid-19-read-camus/
March 17, 2020 – Edgar Allen Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death” describes the same kind of plague denial that many Americans have been engaging in. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/not-poes-red-death-but-still-dangerous/
March 18, 2020 – Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider, about the 1918 flu epidemic, gave us a glimpse into our own immediate future. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/pale-horse-pale-rider-in-1918-and-now/
March 19, 2020 – Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year features many unsettling parallels with our current situation. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/journal-of-a-plague-year/
March 23, 2020 – Those who were living in the lull before the Covid storm should have heeded the warnings set forth in Jonathan Swift’s “Description of a City Shower.” https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/the-lull-before-the-covid-19-storm/
March 24, 2020 – In their first coronavirus relief package, Senate Republicans followed the lead of Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh in Candide. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/gop-bailout-nothing-if-not-consistent/
March 25, 2020 – Charlotte Bronte and Dickens, drawing on first hand experience, provide advice on how to handle epidemics. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/illness-in-19th-century-lit/
March 26, 2020 – In IT Stephen King shows how Americans close their eyes to horrific truths, thereby predicting how many Americans would respond to Covid-19. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/the-courage-to-face-the-darkness/
March 27, 2020 – As American Covid deaths mount up, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight teaches us how to grieve. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/the-green-knight-on-handling-death/
April 1, 2020 – Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal may have been meant, in part, as an April Fools’ joke. Certain Republicans seem bent on making their own version of it real. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/trumps-modest-proposal/
April 4, 2020 – The approach that fundamentalist millenarians have taken to the pandemic is captured in Emily St. John Mandel’s dystopian novel Station Eleven. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/when-millenarians-meet-a-pandemic/
April 6, 2020 – New Yorker Governor Andrew Cuomo channeled Henry V’s “St. Crispin’s Day speech” when thanking the National Guard for stepping up and building overflow hospital space in mere days. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/cuomo-channels-shakespeares-henry-v/
April 8, 2020 – Trump dealing with Covid-19 can be compared to the Ministry of Magic trying to deal with Voldemort. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/trump-covid-think-ministry-of-magic/
April 10, 2020 – With Covid-19 exposing the wealth gap in new and dramatic ways, Orwell more than Dickens provides a way forward. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/for-our-future-pick-orwell-over-dickens/
April 13, 2020 – In “Keeping Quiet,” Neruda offers us a powerful challenge in the face of the pandemic: what if the entire world were to observe a moment of stillness? https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/neruda-lets-all-stop-for-a-moment/
April 14, 2020 – There’s a special place in Dante’s Inferno for people who steal money from the funds allocated to Covid relief. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/what-awaits-covid-grafters/
April 15, 2020 – Insensitive employers have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds—perhaps thousands—of employees during the pandemic. Toni Morrison calls out such types in Song of Solomon. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/toni-morrison-on-insensitive-employers/
April 16, 2020 – As Covid threatens the U. S. Postal Service, it’s worth revisiting Thomas Pynchon’s novel on that institution. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/postal-service-under-attack-again/
April 17, 2020 – Trump handling the pandemic can be compared to Captain Queeg or to the captain in a recent David Eggers novel. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/trump-is-captain-queeg-not-bligh/
April 20, 2020 – Poets since the author of Oedipus have grappled for meaning in times of pestilence. I take a quick glance here at Sophocles, Virgil, Defoe, Porter, Camus, King, Mandel, Atwood, and Erdrich. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/a-literary-survey-of-what-plagues-mean/
April 21, 2020 – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Margaret Atwood’s Oryk and Crake trilogy help us understand why some during our pandemic are suspicious of scientists. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/sci-fi-provides-pandemic-guidance/
April 27, 2020 – A good case can be made that Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway was shaped by the 1918 flu pandemic. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/mrs-dalloway-as-pandemic-novel/
May 1, 2020 – Low-wage workers are taking the brunt of Covid-19. On International Workers Day, it’s good to revisit Shelley’s stirring poem about collective action. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/during-covid-workers-must-unite/
May 5, 2020 – Rita Dove explains how beauty can be found even at times of mass death. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/feeding-on-beauty-in-the-midst-of-horror/
May 6, 2020 – Although America’s president, Trump too often incites rebellion against elected officials trying to keep their states safe. In this way, he plays the double game also played by Gide’s immoralist. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/gides-immoralist-trumps-double-game/
May 7, 2020 – We have blundered into catastrophe the way that the Light Brigade, as described by Alfred Lord Tennyson, blunders into cannon fire. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/charging-into-covid-someone-has-blundered/
May 8, 2020 – Some in the GOP have expressed a willingness to write off old people as the cost of doing business during the pandemic. As an old person, I cite Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Mary Oliver in my desire to stay alive. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/choose-life-over-needless-sacrifice/
May 11, 2020 – My Sewanee students found hope in Beowulf when exploring ways to confront the coronavirus pandemic. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/students-as-beowulf-vs-covid/
May 18, 2020 – Donald Trump follows the Queen Jadis approach (from C. S. Lewis’s Magician’s Nephew) for handling the Covid pandemic: when threatened, destroy everything. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/making-charn-great-again/
May 20, 2020 – We think it bad when we’re quarantined for a few weeks. Count Rostov in A Gentleman from Moscow is quarantined for over 30 years. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/reading-montaigne-while-confined/
May 21, 2020 – Oscar Wilde says that a mask tells us more than a face. During the coronavirus pandemic, we can tell a lot about people by whether or not they choose to wear masks. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/does-a-mask-tell-us-more-than-a-face/
May 25, 2020 – In her sequel to Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood shows us how authoritarians want other people to be heroic in the face of disaster, not themselves. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/atwood-gets-authoritarian-mindset/
May 28, 2020 – Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, which opens with an epidemic, is good reading during our current one. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/secret-garden-perfect-pandemic-reading/
June 12, 2020 – In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift shows how it’s possible to normalize abhorrent behavior and shut one’s eyes to human suffering—in our case, to 130,000+ Covid deaths. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/swift-on-how-to-ignore-115000-deaths/
June 23, 2020 – When given the choice between protecting their followers and feeding their egos, Trump and Lear play from the same script. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/trump-and-lear-without-their-fans/
June 25, 2020 – Trumpists are willing to expose themselves to disease and death to prove their loyalty to their leader. Tolstoy describes similar behavior in War and Peace. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/is-gop-a-death-cult-ask-tolstoy/
June 26, 2020 – Trump is no better at handling reality than Don Quixote, although for far less benign reasons. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/trump-tilts-with-reality/
June 29, 2020 – The spy/scout in M.M. Kaye’s Far Pavilions about the British in 19th century Afghanistan has the same success in warning the British army about impending disaster as our scientists and health care workers have been with Donald Trump. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/our-embattled-health-care-workers/
July 7, 2020 – Ursula LeGuin’s “Nine Lives” shows how different cultures deal with apocalyptic disasters. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/le-guin-on-differing-disaster-responses/
July 9, 2020 – A forgotten Willa Cather novel grappled with the great flu epidemic following World War I. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/cathers-handling-of-the-1918-flu/
July 12, 2020 – Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Henry Fielding and Toni Morrison all capture what has been lost when Covid victims cannot share their final words with loved ones. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/covid-is-costing-us-final-words/
July 15, 2020 – To understand young people’s response to Covid, authorities would have done well to read the 17th century carpe diem poets. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/young-people-and-covid-spread/
July 26, 2929 – Langston Hughes’s poems on evictions were suddenly all too relevant as Covid-caused unemployment soared. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/langston-hughes-on-evictions/
August 3, 2020 – This James Baldwin poem stressing the need to hang together was used to mark the moment when Covid deaths hit 150,000. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/hang-together-or-go-under/
August 8, 2020 – This A.E. Housman poem was used to stress that teachers have a hard enough job without adding martyrdom to the job description. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/wanted-teachers-not-martyrs/
August 29, 2020 – This Richard Wilbur poem addresses the role of prophets in times of disaster. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/what-should-we-be-without-nature/
September 20, 2020 – Peer reporting of Covid rule infractions at a local college brought to mind Henry Tilney’s remarks in Northanger Abbey about community spying. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/spying-in-austen-and-at-colleges/
September 21, 2020 – When American deaths reached 200,000, Donne’s “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” was used to capture the way that people can overlook momentous occurrences. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/how-to-overlook-200000-deaths/
October 4, 2020 – A White House superspreader event was shakeycam farce, not Shakespearean tragedy. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/trump-covid-tragedy-or-farce/
October 6, 2020 – Upon returning from his bout with Covid, Donald Trump resembled the diminished king in Maria Mulock Craik’s fairy tale The Little Lame Prince. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/viewing-trump-from-afar/
October 20, 2020 – Scott Atlas, the neuroradiologist in the Trump administration responsible for much Covid misinformation, shares a vision with the libertarian protagonist of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/scott-atlass-miracle-covid-cure/
October 22, 2020 – Trump scientist Scott Atlas, in advocating for a hands-off herd immunity approach to Covid, resembled one of the quack doctors in Fielding’s Tom Jones. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/scott-atlas-a-fieldingesque-quack/
October 26, 2020 – This Jane Hirshfield poem struck back at Donald Trump’s war on science. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/despite-trump-the-rivers-kept-speaking/
November 1, 2020 – Because Sophocles’s Philoctetes deals with compassion—or lack of it—for a man who is sick, it’s appropriate that Joe Biden should quote a passage from a Seamus Heaney translation of the play. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/hope-rhymes-with-history/
November 7, 2020 – Following the election of Joe Biden, an Aeschylus passage on dealing with suffering seemed appropriate. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/our-new-president-understands-suffering/
November 17, 2020 – Trump focusing on his own misery while ignoring the millions suffering from Covid was reminiscent of the French marquis in Tale of Two Cities. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/trump-finds-covid-victims-a-nuisance/
December 13, 2020 – While Covid has been disrupted our dating lives, Milan Kundera, John Fowles, and Jane Austen lay out a possible upside. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/austen-like-distance-during-covid/
December 14, 2020 – Robinson Jeffers offers a poem that reminds us of spiritual resources available to us in these dark days. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/finding-strength-in-a-time-of-covid/
December 21, 2020 – A very smart Covid poem circulating on social media at the moment references 11 poems, all about longing to travel. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/dreaming-of-travel-during-covid/
January 5, 2021 – Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dodd mysteries about World War I and World II capture the drama of living under attack and the particular tragedy of dying in the final days of a war, which is where we currently are with regard to Covid, what with cases declining and a final end in sight. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/the-dangerous-final-months-of-covid/
January 9, 2020 – Charles Bukowski’s “Laughing Heart” shows us what we need to get through hard times. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/the-gods-wait-to-delight-in-you/
January 16, 2020 – A Denise Levertov poem acknowledges an important truth: while it’s hard to survive difficult times, it’s also hard to open ourselves to those moments when things get better. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/can-we-love-the-morning-again/
January 30, 2021 – A timely Joseph Awad poem about St. Jude, saint of impossible causes. https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/jude-for-when-things-seem-impossible/