For years, postmodern writers have foreshadowed what the end of the world would be like through dramatic depictions in literary works. Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx & Crake are no exception. Delving into the complexities that underlie man's existence on Earth, these authors use their novels as vehicles to describe a post-apocalyptic world, where everything that was once reduced to an inconceivable wasteland, both in figurative and literal sense. From the beginning, McCarthy sets the stage for his readers with a beautifully worded yet meticulously bleak description of the wasteland his characters find themselves in: "The nights are dark beyond darkness and the days are each grayer than what had happened before." (McCarthy 3). Throughout the novel, the author makes a series of similar statements while continually conjuring up images of this “desolate country” in a decidedly horrendous manner. Through vivid imagery and a mixture of short, choppy sentences to show the disconnection of the world, McCarthy successfully paints a picture of a desolate land, which seems, in most cases, completely uninhabited: "The land was hollowed out, eroded and barren. The bones of dead creatures were scattered in the waters. Piles of anonymous rubbish” (McCarthy 177). McCarthy pays particular attention to even the smallest and most minute details that allow readers to visualize the new world , the author tries not to reveal the ravines of a busy asphalt path, but instead to depict the household appliances scattered on the side of the road; the apple orchards in ruins, dark and deformed. These are images of the world, or at least of what remains of the world, which they stick…… in the middle of the paper……how it was done is not a progress of society, but a desecration After realizing this, he chooses what seems to be his only way out: death. Once all is said and done, one can come to a final conclusion about post-apocalyptic literature in the 21st century. No matter what it includes or lacks, the predominance of the wasteland mentality is simply inevitable in post-apocalyptic literature. The topic is too rich in substance to be overlooked, and for this reason writers such as McCarthy and Atwood bring it up again in their respective novels. Given the ability to create staged images and that one might never have the opportunity to do so, these authors use their novels as a means to prefigure a world that could be if humans continued at the rate they are going. Now, the only question is whether their predictions will ever come true.