This is a new theme for fiction, one resembling films likeA Quiet Placeand Alfonso CuarnsChildren of Men, or images of the depopulated Korean demilitarised zone and Chernobyl forest, those strange and beautiful landscapes where humans no longer dominate.

Shelley was writing in a time of crisis global famine following the Tambora eruption, and the first known cholera pandemic from18171824. Cholera spread throughout the Indian subcontinent and across Asia until its terrifying progress stopped in the Middle East.

Its disturbing today to read Shelley ventriloquising the complacent response from England to early signs of disease in its colonies. At first, Englishmen see no immediate necessity for an earnest caution. Their greatest fears are for the economy.

As mass deaths occur throughout (in Shelleys time) Britains colonies and trading partners, bankers and merchants are bankrupted. The prosperity of the nation, Shelley writes, was now shaken by frequent and extensive losses.

In one brilliant set-piece, Shelley shows us how racist assumptions blind a smugly superior population to the danger headed its way:

Can it be true, each asked the other with wonder and dismay, that whole countries are laid waste, whole nations annihilated, by these disorders in nature? The vast cities of America, the fertile plains ofHindostan, the crowded abodes of the Chinese, are menaced with utter ruin. [] The air is empoisoned, and each human being inhales death even while in youth and health [] As yet western Europe was uninfected; would it always be so?

O, yes, it would Countrymen, fear not! [] If perchance some stricken Asiatic come among us, plague dies with him, uncommunicated and innoxious. Let us weep for our brethren, though we can never experience his reverse.

Shelley quickly shows us this sense of racial superiority and immunity is unfounded: all people are united in their susceptibility to the fatal disease.

Eventually, the entire human population is engulfed:

I spread the whole earth out as a map before me. On no one spot on its surface could I put my finger and say, here is safety.

Throughout the novel Shelleys characters remain, ironically, optimistic. They dont know theyre in a book called The Last Man, and with the exception of narrator Lionel Verney their chances of survival are non-existent. They cling to a nave hope this disaster will create new, idyllic forms of life, a more equitable and compassionate relationship between classes and within families.

But this is a mirage. Rather than making an effort to rebuild civilisation, those spared in the plagues first wave adopt a selfish, hedonistic approach to life.

The occupations of life were gone, writes Shelley, but the amusements remained; enjoyment might be protracted to the verge of the grave.

Shelleys depopulated world quickly becomes a godless one. In Thomas Campbells poemThe Last Man(1823) the sole surviving human defies a darkening Universe to:

quench his Immortality

Or shake his trust in God.

As they realise the species of man must perish, the victims of Shelleys plague become bestial. Going against the grain ofEnlightenment individualism, Shelley insists humanity is contingent on community. When the vessel of society is wrecked individual survivors give up all hope.

Shelleys novel asks us to imagine a world in which humans become extinct and the world seems better for it, causing the last survivor to question his right to existence.

Ultimately, Shelleys novelinsists on two things: firstly, our humanity is defined not by art, or faith, or politics, but by the basis of our communities, our fellow-feeling and compassion.

Secondly, we belong to just one of many species on Earth, and we must learn to think of the natural world as existing not merely for the uses of humanity, but for its own sake.

We humans, Shelleys novel makes clear, are expendable.

Dr Oliva Murphy is a Postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of English at the University of Sydney. This article was originally published in The Conversation.

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Mary Shelley's The Last Man is a prophecy of life in a global pandemic - News - The University of Sydney