The Literature of Cabin Fever

Prompted by the isolating effects of COVID-19 lockdowns, Ian Frazier explores the cultural and psychological phenomenon of cabin fever in his personal essay, “The Literature of Cabin Fever.” He opens with a 2018 incident in which a Russian scientist stabbed a colleague at an Antarctic outpost—an act he sees as a prelude to the collective unraveling induced by the pandemic. “Entwined today with COVID,” he writes, “is the age-old mental malady called cabin fever.”

Frazier examines historical and literary cases of isolation-fueled violence, from fur trapper Albert Johnson in 1930s Canada to the radicalization of young men online during pandemic lockdowns. Though quarantine does not meet the classical definition of cabin fever—complete isolation in a hostile wilderness—Frazier argues that COVID isolation had comparably corrosive effects. His own bout with the virus, described in stark terms, underscores the claustrophobia of a situation where contact spreads disease, yet solitude breeds despair and aggression.

Frazier links global political shifts to this psychic toll. He suggests that Vladimir Putin’s wartime belligerence may have been exacerbated by prolonged isolation during COVID: “His particular case of Russian cabin fever preceded terrible consequences.”
The essay surveys American literature steeped in solitude—Thoreau’s Walden, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, King’s The Shining—to argue that isolation is central to American mythmaking. He cites the Second Great Awakening as another instance where isolation gave rise to frenzy. The pandemic, Frazier concludes, has produced a new body of life writing marked by paranoia, aggression, and rupture.