The Urgent Literary Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic in David Hare's "Beat the Devil: A Covid Monologue"

Abstract

Covid-19 is one of the iconic life-and-death events in the third decade of the third millennium. The outbreak of such a pandemic has killed millions of people in different countries around the world, while others are still fighting to survive and to save their loved ones. The implications of this unseen but present virus extend beyond health and also affect the ways we manage our lives and everyday activities. Therefore, the world is working hard day and night to stop the death toll as soon as possible and regain humans' pre-pandemic normal life. As Covid-19's palpable impacts have left nobody, nowhere, and no field unaffected, literature is there to record such impacts. In particular, the British dramatist David Hare (1947- ) takes the initiative of dramatizing his personal experience of such a contagious disease which is accompanied by a scandalous mismanagement by the British government officials. He responds to the worldwide pandemic just a few months after its spread outside the Chinese borders via his monologue Beat the Devil: A Covid Monologue (2020). It chronicles the various stages of illness as well as the incompetent reactions of those in power.

Keywords

• covid-19
• coronavirus
• pandemic
• symptoms
• literature