The Last Man

As the plague ravages the world, both the lives and outlooks of the characters undergo radical shifts. At the beginning of Volume 3, Lionel reflects on how the things that once made civilization, such as art, government, and community, are now too much to ask for during the plague, reflecting the theme of Humanity Versus Nature. He explains, “to the arts, to reputation, to enduring fame, to the name of country, we had bidden farewell. We saw depart all hope of retrieving our ancient state—all expectation, except the feeble one of saving our individual lives from the wreck of the past” (458). Similarly, Lionel refers to England as a “corpse” (361) and, when looking back at his home in Windsor, he notes that “England remained, though England was dead—it was the ghost of merry England that I beheld” (403, emphasis added). Lionel personifies England as though the nation itself were a victim of the plague, suffering death (“England was dead”) and being reduced to the “ghost” of what it once was.  

The deaths of Alfred and Idris cause Lionel’s world to crumble, leaving him vulnerable to The Effects of Isolation once more. Though Lionel still has yet to lose several other people who are important to him, losing Alfred—whom he viewed as the future of England—and Idris, who gave him hope and a reason to live, leaves Lionel an increasingly isolated figure, foreshadowing his eventual absolute solitude by the novel’s end. Not only does Lionel end up as the titular last human on earth, but he is also the only human known to have recovered from the plague: This quasi-resurrection singles him out even more as someone who is isolated from all others. The Countess, meanwhile, discovers the importance of love and forgiveness in the midst of her own isolation: In the face of the plague, her royalist ambitions for Adrian now seem as futile as Lord Raymond’s ambitions once were, teaching her the value of humility. Although she is too late to reconcile with Idris, she tries to make amends to Lionel for the way she has treated him. 

Just as he had followed Raymond’s wishes for a burial in Athens, Lionel buries Idris and Alfred in the place that was most important to them—at Windsor Castle. The care Adrian takes with their burials reflects both the novel’s motif of memorialization (See: Symbols & Motifs) and emphasizes how Lionel fights to maintain vestiges of civilization and his own humanity even as the social and political order breaks down around him. His determination to maintain the rituals of death and memory even in the face of annihilation speaks to the tenacity of his spirit, suggesting that Lionel will not allow the plague to rob him of what gives his life meaning and structure.  

Politics come back into play as the pandemic begins to divide people, once more undermining the Equality of the Human Race. Adrian is surprised to hear that, without his authority to keep them in check, the emigrants in Paris have split into three factions. Adrian is able to make peace with two of these groups with his usual tactics of pointing out how they are all human and fighting the same thing: the plague. The third group, however, has embraced a more superstitious and apocalyptic vision: Their “imposter” prophet uses his followers’ anxieties about the plague against them, with his supposedly divine message suggesting that they are superior to the other groups. The imposter attempts to profit from this schism, while Adrian, ever the idealist, asks him, “Do you require anything of us that we refuse to give, and that you are forced to acquire by arms and warfare?” (423). Adrian remains willing to give whatever it takes to ensure peace among the few survivors of the plague, but the growing sense of chaos and hopelessness in the novel implies that idealism will no longer be enough to prevent the total ruin that is approaching. As with her discussion of ambition, Wollstonecraft Shelley here shows how useless and even harmful divisive politics are in a crisis, and how petty ambitions can drive people apart even when they most need to unify.