Analyse af Kim Paffenroths 'The World Is Dead'

Have you ever found yourself walking home at night, feeling unsafe in the surrounding darkness?

Nearly everyone has experienced the unpleasant feeling of walking outside at night and feeling unsafe, like something's looming in the darkness, waiting for you to not pay attention to your surroundings. But imagine this fear actually coming true. Imagine knowing that you are, indeed, being followed, and the only place you can run for safety is an abandoned wasteland filled with mountains of sharp wire, iron, and bodies of old cars.

In Kim Paffenroth’s thrilling short story, The World Is Dead, 2009, we follow the protagonist’s thoughts as he faces the very thing many of us are so terrified of experiencing.

The story is set in a deserted city, seemingly in a country where law enforcement does not protect the people and the infrastructure does not work properly as the roads aren’t lit up and there’s little security.

‘The place was well chosen, for behind him was the high wall of the convent, and the barred door that would not open before a man was dead. On the other side of the road was the waste land, full of wire and iron and the bodies of old cars.’ ( p. 1 , ll. 14 - 16 )