Endings and Beginnings: Tracing the Nonlinear Storytelling in Ling Ma’s Severance
Major
English – Literature
Submission Type
Oral Presentation
Area of Study or Work
English-Literature
Faculty Advisor
Michael Theune
Location
CNS E103
Start Date
4-12-2025 8:30 AM
End Date
4-12-2025 9:30 AM
Abstract
The main trends of criticism about Ling Ma’s 2018 Severance, a novel that involves infectious disease and a zombie apocalypse, are the result of a coincidence: the novel was published just prior to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. In large part due to this, studies of the novel largely focus on its macroscopic significance, such as immigration, US relations with the Global South, and global capitalism. Certainly, Ma offers extensive insights into these issues in her work, but most scholars have been focusing on either the pre- or the post-apocalyptic part of the narrative, and even when they address both, they investigate the story in a linear manner. In fact, the storytelling in Severance is disjointed. The protagonist Candace Chen’s pre- and post-Shen Fever lives blend into each other throughout the narrative. Therefore, in order to explore the meaning of this fragmentation in Severance, I would like to perform a literary analysis to explore Ma’s creative choices with the nonlinear narrative. I argue that Candace’s severance from the post-pandemic social environment due to her immunity to the disease parallels her pre-pandemic state of alienation, because for Candace, her childhood memories, her relationships with her mother and her unborn daughter, and her life in metropolitan cities profoundly influence her sense of belonging and her state of detachment within the cultural, economic and social system. By examining the narrative structure, this study highlights the humanistic value of the overlooked individual experience under the macro-dynamics of the historical periods, global dynamics and social phenomena that have been concentrated on by previous studies.
Endings and Beginnings: Tracing the Nonlinear Storytelling in Ling Ma’s Severance
CNS E103
The main trends of criticism about Ling Ma’s 2018 Severance, a novel that involves infectious disease and a zombie apocalypse, are the result of a coincidence: the novel was published just prior to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. In large part due to this, studies of the novel largely focus on its macroscopic significance, such as immigration, US relations with the Global South, and global capitalism. Certainly, Ma offers extensive insights into these issues in her work, but most scholars have been focusing on either the pre- or the post-apocalyptic part of the narrative, and even when they address both, they investigate the story in a linear manner. In fact, the storytelling in Severance is disjointed. The protagonist Candace Chen’s pre- and post-Shen Fever lives blend into each other throughout the narrative. Therefore, in order to explore the meaning of this fragmentation in Severance, I would like to perform a literary analysis to explore Ma’s creative choices with the nonlinear narrative. I argue that Candace’s severance from the post-pandemic social environment due to her immunity to the disease parallels her pre-pandemic state of alienation, because for Candace, her childhood memories, her relationships with her mother and her unborn daughter, and her life in metropolitan cities profoundly influence her sense of belonging and her state of detachment within the cultural, economic and social system. By examining the narrative structure, this study highlights the humanistic value of the overlooked individual experience under the macro-dynamics of the historical periods, global dynamics and social phenomena that have been concentrated on by previous studies.