![]() Severance, according to Ma, “ began as a meditation on work.” Others characterize it as a satire of millennial working conditions. They are lifeless but continue to put away dishes, do paperwork, or organize shelves. When the Shen Fever infects people, they continue doing their mindless work and life routines. How did the disease overcome them, exactly? This is the second way Ling Ma makes us self-reflect, this way being purposeful, whereas the fever’s likeness to reality is coincidental. We are steadily overcoming our coronavirus, while, in Candace’s world, the Shen Fever overcame them. The likeness of the Shen Fever to COVID-19 is only one way Severance holds up a mirror to our own lives, a reflection that I would assert is positive in one sense. Some may even get the impression that Ma’s novel is semi-prophetic, being published in May 2019, before our own pandemic. Still, the talk of masks, quarantines, and shutdowns in the novel hits close to home. ![]() The analogy ends there, however-and thankfully it does, because the Shen Fever is far more deadly. ![]() It sounds a little like our non-fiction acquaintance, COVID-19! And what is the End? “The End” is disease from China known as Shen Fever that takes the US and the world by surprise. ![]()
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