Writings and Readings of the Pandemic: The Shadows Left Behind

Abstract

A pandemic’s reach is broad, deep, layered—both as an infectious agent and as the psychological force that will be explored by the author in this paper. The disorder it creates and the sorrow it leaves in its wake can be found in traces of its existence that remain in written works generated in the time after the pandemic is thought to be over. The author draws from creative texts by imaginative writers and Freud written in the period after the 1918-1920 pandemic. This paper is intended to create an experience in reading that introduces ways in which we can look for the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic in our own writing.