NARRATIVES OF CRISIS AND THE ETHICS OF SURVIVAL: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ANALYSIS OF PANDEMIC FICTION

Abstract

This article investigates the evolving cultural, ethical, and psychological dimensions of pandemic fiction through a close literary examination of six key texts: The Stand, Station Eleven, Blindness, Oryx and Crake, World War Z, and The Road. As global health crises reshape socio-political landscapes, literature’s response has grown increasingly complex, offering profound insights into human behaviour, systemic fragility, and existential resilience. Pandemic fiction, once peripheral to the literary canon, now serves as a speculative mirror reflecting humanity’s fears, failures, and moral reckonings. Through an interdisciplinary lens that draws on ethics, trauma studies, sociology, and philosophy, this article argues that pandemic narratives do more than reflect catastrophe they offer critical tools for understanding survival, memory, and ethical life under duress. The study also positions pandemic fiction as a pedagogical resource for cultivating empathy and critical thought in a post-COVID world.