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Good News From Outer Space By - Essay

Good News From Outer Space By


The key ingredients that make the society in the book “Good News from Outer Space” by John Kessel seem so full of mordant farce are chaos, technology, belief and faith run amok. The book is set in our present year of 1999, and it seems that all of the conventional thoughts and explanations that help life make sense, are no longer needed. All that remain are the lunatic explanations that have gained adherence within society.
Although the society in the book might seem more like an exaggerated version of our current way of life, what’s to say that in a couple of years or months, ours will not mirror the one in the book? After all, we are approaching the millenium. This ...

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Gilray, a major character in the book, is convinced that God will send a messenger to arrive on earth on January 1, 2000 in a spaceship. Using television, the smooth preaching Gilray manages to herd the followers in like cattle by the thousands. The words roll off of his tongue like honey and his followers are easily convinced that the perilous times of their last days have come Gilray’s prophecies are given light in the following quote: “They have been fulfilled. That’s how we know we’re in the Last days. The Bible predicts that certain events will happen: the Jews will return to Israel-they have been there since 1948. A burning star named ‘Wormwood’ will fall upon the earth and poison the waters, killing many men-in 2985 a meltdown occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Union. ‘Chernobyl,’ in Russian means ‘Wormwood.’ The Roman Empire will be re-instituted in a ten-headed beast-in 1997 the ...

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themselves, who would visit humanity in flying saucers. This clearly relates to the book because of Gilray’s belief that he had been chosen to do God's work. Another cult leader of our own society strikingly similar to Gilray and his beliefs was Marshall Herff Applewhite. Just like the Reverend in “Good News from Outer Space”, he also believed in a messenger who would arrive in a spaceship to deliver salvation. However, a slight difference between the two was the fact that Applewhite, leader of the Heaven's Gate cult, specifically believed that the approach of comet Hale-Bopp was an indication of the arrival of God’s spacecraft. In the end, Applewhite lead his ...

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PAPER DETAILS
Added: 4/23/2007 11:07:40 AM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1704
Pages: 7

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