The appearances of tropical cyclones in popular culture spans many genres of media and encompasses many different plot uses. It includes both fictional tropical cyclones, and real ones used as the basis for a fictional work, and has proven to be of enough interest for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ("NOAA") to maintain a webpage on the topic.
Purpose in fiction and literature Although many forms of natural disaster appear in fiction and literature, tropical cyclones serve a number of useful literary functions because they are both extraordinarily powerful and, to those who have some experience with them, their occurrence can be portended several days in advance. The NOAA page notes that:
There is undeniable drama to hurricanes; their massive scale affecting the lives of thousands, the foreshadowing of impending doom, and their ponderous pace as they approach the shore. This has made them ideal plot elements in many fictional works. The strength of the tropical cyclone has made it a device by which authors explain the upending of characters' lives, and even transformations of the personalities of those who live through such an event. Their somewhat hazy predictability also makes them a useful MacGuffin, an impetus for characters to set to action. In some instances, the storm provides cover for characters to engage in covert behavior.
Early history of tropical cyclones in literature One of the earliest uses of a tropical cyclone as a plot device occurs in a William Shakespeare play, The Tempest, first performed in 1611 or 1612. There, a storm (raised by the sorcerer Prospero) blows key characters to the island to which Prospero had been exiled many years before. The theme is said to have been inspired by Shakespeare's knowledge of a real-life hurricane which had caused the shipwreck of the Sea Venture in 1609 on the islands of Bermuda, while sailing toward Virginia. Edgar Allan Poe, in his 1841 story, "A Descent into the Maelström", has the main character describe how "the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens" forced the boat crewed by himself and his brothers into a gigantic whirlpool. The trauma of surviving the storm and the whirlpool (and seeing the death of his brothers) is asserted to have a profound effect on the character, causing his hair to turn white. However, since the story is asserted to occur off the coast of Norway, it is unlikely that the event described could have fallen within the formal definition of a hurricane, as such storms form almost exclusively in the Maritime Tropical air masses of tropical regions of the globe. Joseph Conrad, in his acclaimed 1903 book Typhoon, uses a tropical cyclone as a more direct element of the story, centering the plot on a ship captain's stubborn insistence on going into the heart of such a storm.
Fictional tropical cyclones
Works predominantly focused on the occurrence of a fictional tropical cyclone
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