Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - Zsolt K. Virágos: The American Brand of the Myth of Apocalypse

Thunder and lightning ... overturning days ... teetering and tumbling affairs ... blood will have blood ... doomes-day drawing nigh ... the rule of the just

... a true reformation ... a flood tide of change ... audacious men and dark prophecies ... words are actions ... the minds of men ... purge the nation ... overthrow the rotten structures ... the holy destruction of the evil of oppression and injustice ... the golden age is at hand

... the fire and the sword. (Laski 285—86) Another comparison, this time with scenes of chaotic destruction and unredeemed suffering as depicted in a number of 20th-century war novels, like the one Heller's Yossarian experiences in the dark ruined city of Rome, or the careless annihilation of the planet, the freezing of the earth in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, or the scene depicting the burntout landscape of Dresden after the fire-storm in Slaughterhouse-Five, the final scene of Robert Coover's The Public Burning

; or the frentic search of Mrs. Oedipa Mass in The Crying of Lot 49 for the revelation of the meaning of life (perhaps the Pentecostal word) in a nightmarish postmodern terrain of high technology and obscure conspiracies may easily convince us that we are dealing with different interpretations of the traditional pattern. On the basis of Austin's text four typical traits of the American apocalyptic can be immediately established: the concept of a messianic mission for a chosen group of people as a part of the redemptive » scheme of history; a sense of optimism occasioned by the revealed prospect of a bright future for those chosen by God; a sense of the apocalyptic "joy" aboard the American ship of state (Bercovitch 105); and again, in mixing history and prophecy, a reading of contemporary events as the fulfillment of the historical plan revealed in the last book of the New Testament. All these traits seem to be eminently present and operative in earlier American conceptualization and expressiveness, and they soon became enduring cultural clichés of the American social consciousness. Yet another feature of apocalyptic millennialism, not readily discernible from either of the quoted texts, is an acceptance of 125