Orleans: A Beautiful Post-Apocalyptic Fictional Setting For New Orleans
Orleans
Sherri Smith’s book Orleans creates a beautiful post-apocalyptic fictional setting for New Orleans after it has been destroyed by numerous hurricanes. The story opens in 2004 with a trumpet player, Edmund Broussard, standing in front of the Mississippi River playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The city has been given orders to evacuate from Hurricane Ivan but Broussard refuses to leave his home, believing that New Orleans would stand against any storm that came her way.
The author mentions that Hurricane Ivan missed New Orleans that year, but that the next time the city was not as lucky. Then from 2005 to 2019 a string of hurricanes, each one stronger than the last, leaves New Orleans destroyed. The entire gulf coast gets quarantined
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Although the setting is unique she still manages to be authentic to New Orleans. An excellent example of this is the Mercedes Superdome; In Orleans it is explained that during the hurricanes people started piling bodies inside the dome to keep the smell of rot at a minimum and once the bodies reached the roof it got sealed. Several years later, Daniel decides to investigate the Superdome because he’s curious about how it looks. “The Dome loomed above him like a poached egg in a cup. The top was shattered, tapped by a giant spoon […] the dome was as wide as a city block and while the sidewalks had once been broad to accommodate the crowds of concertgoers and sports fans, they were now broken and shadowed, treacherous to cross” (Smith, 2013, P.108) Daniel discovers that the Superdome has been converted into a catacomb by the Ursuline Sisters, nuns, who accumulated the bones of the deceased on top and beneath each stadium chair. Each set of bones had a skull painted with cross and flowers beside it. A few of the other landmarks that the reader gets to imagine in ruins is Algiers, the Garden District, and the French …show more content…
Since then, however, Orleanians have proven their resilience by bringing the city back to life. Smith symbolizes this throughout her book by making Fen constantly call Daniel a tourist. Daniel is considered an outsider because he jumped the quarantine wall in order to look for a cure for Delta Fever. When he first arrives in Orleans he constantly refers to it as the “city of the dead “and a necropolis. However, as the story continues he slowly realizes that Orleans is still thriving with life. During an outburst of frustration about the fate of Orleans, he exclaims “I don’t know! I don’t know! This city was supposed to be dead.” (Smith, 2013,
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