Pandemic Literature: Envisioning Catastrophe in Soderbergh’s Contagion

Abstract

Pandemics are biological crises that pack a punch on the lives of every human being, regardless of the nation or race to which one belongs to. Whatever be the technological advancements man has made, pandemics have made a mockery of man’s high claims by having the last laugh and wiping the lives of people in millions. Supplementing this, the pandemic literature is opulent with biographies, fictions, memoirs, testimonies and movies which narrate the life, survival and death of human species. The pandemic literature probes into the lives of individuals and the reconnoitred information makes the pages of history. More than this, literature has the earmarks of predicting or prophesying the future. One of the finest examples for this is the movie Contagion. The movie rightly insinuates the present global situation and reasserts the plight of human nature where a microscopic organism plays its game.