David Foster Wallace wrote, “When a solipsist dies, after all, everything goes with him.” Never mind the context: The sentence, with startling concision, reminds us why the End of the World holds such fascination for mere mortals. Each of us is vouchsafed a very personal End, whatever else lies in store for the Earth, the universe, or the space-time continuum. Yet most of us are not solipsists. We care about our fellow men, our descendants, and, whether or not we think of it this way, the darkest mysteries of ontology. Why are we here, and what might it mean if we simply ceased to be? What if we were wiped out en masse?
“I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake,” God said, after the Deluge (Genesis 8:21), “for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth: neither will I again smite any more every thing living.” But God’s wrath doesn’t have to play fair: “Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left” (Matthew 24:41). See? He only promised not to smite every living thing. Thus saith the Lord: Gotcha. This verse, plus Thessalonians 4:16–17 and parts of Daniel and Revelation, form the basis for the widely venerated, and as widely mocked, born-again Christian tradition of the Rapture. The worthy are “caught up” to Heaven, while the remainder are left to suffer Tribulation.
Tom Perrotta, the gentle satirist responsible for Election
