A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

The Prelude opens with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, describing both the generosity of citizens and the authorities’ decisions not to help citizens because they feared them to be dangerous. Solnit observes that one’s reaction to others in disasters depends partially on how dangerous one believes others to be in comparison to the disaster. Solnit observes, quoting extensive research, that most people behave altruistically after a disaster and only a minority behave badly, and most of these do so because they fear the self-centered or dangerous behavior of others. Throughout the Prelude, Solnit describes several disasters and people’s reaction to them, including San Francisco’s Loma Prieta earthquake and Halifax’s 2003 hurricane. In all, a sense of fulfillment and connection among citizens prevails.

Solnit moves into describing the “social disaster” of the lack of social ties and sense of responsibility that we have for one another in contemporary Western society, in which we often believe humans are selfish. Disasters like Katrina can intensify this feeling or change it to create space for altruistic responses. She introduces the figures of Cain and Abel and the notion of “brother’s keeper” to describe a sense of mutual responsibility for one another. She gives us a rapid version of Genesis, which describes a descent into jealousy and violence soon after the expulsion from Eden. This discussion, as well as the image of a crumbling church in a hard-hit part of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, introduces the biblical backdrop that will continue throughout the rest of the book.

Solnit introduces the main goals of the book: to identify the “peculiar feeling,” akin to joy, that frequently arises amid disaster, as well as the “limits and possibilities of disasters” (19). While disasters are terrible and “not to be desired” (19), they can produce positive side effects that are not to be ignored and can be an important avenue for change. Communities’ reactions to disasters can provide insight into “social desire and possibility” (17), and they demonstrate that “social ties and meaningful work are deeply desired, readily improvised, and intensely rewarding” (20). For Solnit, the rupture that disaster causes can provide a “backdoor into paradise” (15).

However, Western society is set up so that these ideals and desires cannot be realized. Society is “skewed towards” ideologies that argue that we seek to fulfill our own needs in a self-serving, rational manner. If paradise can arise in hell, it appears that the system is flawed—not the people who live in it, who are “the citizens any paradise would need” (21).

Solnit argues that what stops this paradise from materializing is the “savage” behavior of the minority in power and the media’s representation of everyday citizens. This combination can make for a “second disaster.” Privatization has also played a major role in stamping out “paradise” by chipping away at the public good and trust. Privatization is introduced as a multivalent concept that occurs in two main, related arenas: economics and public life, and “desire and imagination” (22), or personal beliefs and worldviews. The push toward privatization is set up as a main force that keeps paradise from being realized.

Throughout the Prelude, Solnit’s perspective on human nature is revealed. She believes that humans have tendencies toward being morally good, and that it is coercive systems that stop them from realizing paradise. As such, she presents an optimistic view of people that conveys great faith in them and also enforces a binary between everyday people and the elites.

The Prelude ends with a metaphor. Solnit describes the major blackout of New York City in 2003, when artificial lights went out and the Milky Way was suddenly visible. She likens this artificial light to the “current social order,” explaining that it fails in disaster and leaves illuminated “the constellations of solidarity, altruism, and improvisation” (23). This metaphor suggests that Solnit believes these qualities are always present, if perhaps dormant, but can easily become obscured by circumstance. Poetic metaphors such as these pepper Solnit’s writing, providing images that add an aesthetic quality to her arguments.