To Inform You, Not to Amuse You

8/7/2019 To Inform You, Not to Amuse You

1/3

To Inform You, Not to Amuse You

Jacquelyn Suter

At the recent World Economic Forum at Davos the worlds largest gathering of economicexperts who ponder extreme scenarios and drink a lot of expresso an unexpected person was

in attendance: Margaret Atwood, one of the worlds finest contemporary writers.

As these experts mulled economic implications of scenarios such as diminishing oil reserves,food and water supplies, and environmental catastrophes, I wondered if any of these participantshad read Atwoods work. For all the economists theoretical musings, Atwood had alreadyfleshed out in fiction what these end-games would look and feel like. Maybe she was there to putfinger to wind for her future themes.

Dystopia is the name for this type of writing. Set in a future time when civil society has brokendown because of manmade disaster or crippling political repression, dystopian fiction is aprojected exaggeration of what we may already glimpse or sense in our contemporary society.Aldous Huxley said this type of fiction can interest us only if its prophecies might come true.

Fictional societies of extreme socio-political repression had already been described in two well-known classics, Huxleys Brave New World(1932) and George Orwells 1984 (1948).Huxley said about the fictive world he created: A really efficient totalitarian state would be one inwhich the all-powerfulcontrol a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, becausethey loved their servitude. As Atwood said in one of her first dystopian novels, The HandmaidsTale (1986), from a distance it looks like peace.

In Huxley and Orwell, the societies are bleak and unforgiving. Hope is absent. Heres the lastlines of1984: the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved BigBrother.


2/3

For all that we now understand about potential environmental disaster since Huxley and Orwellwrote, one would think that dystopian works would get irremediably more bleak and hopeless.But in some of the best, most recent of these novels, this is surprisingly not the case.

Lets track this idea first in Atwoods The Handmaids Tale. "I would like to believe this is a storyIm tellingI must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have abetter chance. If its a story Im telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be anendingand real life will come after it," says the lead character, Offred a story set in atotalitarian theocracy which overthrew the US government after a series of catastrophes. Here,people are segregated into strict hierarchy, and the only role for women is to breed.

Offred does escape, however, to write this story we now read, but we dont know whether shewas recaptured. Ending in ambiguity, we can inscribe hope if we wish -- her above quote wouldcertainly lead us in that direction. Powerfully written, The Handmaids Tale is prelude to twosubsequent Atwood dystopias.

The whole world is now one vast uncontrolled experimentand the doctrine of unintendedconsequences is in full spate. This is a quote from Atwoods next dystopia, Oryx and Crake(2003), but it can apply equally to Atwoods most recent fiction, The Year of the Flood(2009).

With these two novels, we now enter a world where bioengineered life forms have run amok:luminous green rabbits and gene-spliced animals such as wolvogs killer wolves that wag theirtails invitingly like affectionate dogs.

The characters day job? Finding edible food in an environment where all social contract hasbroken down and the world as we know it doesnt exist. Their side job? Poignantly, getting timeover with in a world where there is no time. And how did events like this come to pass?Innocently enough, of course, trying to create a better world and alleviate human suffering bytinkering with our ancient, messy primate brains eliminating, among other things, inconvenientemotions like love. But however unconvincing, familiar human emotions would still seem tospring eternal.

Towards the end ofOryx and Crake as the main character, Snowman, awakes one morning

perched for protection in his favorite tree, he notices the sunrise beyond ruined towers in thedistance. Rapture, he thinks, after everything thats happened, how can the world still be sobeautiful? Because it is.

Similarly, the ending ofThe Year of the Flood, inclines toward humaneness in the form ofempathy for captured killers, flying in the face of all survivalist common sense. Snowman appearing as a character in this novel too hears the faint music he has periodically perceived inOryx and Crake: Listen to the music.You cant kill the musicYou cant!

Margaret Atwood is not the only contemporary author to write disquieting dystopian fiction.Cormac McCarthys The Roadis a classic of that genre as well. Its narrative follows similarcontours as Atwoods: relentless survival in a world devastated beyond all recognition. As in somuch of McCarthys work, theres at least one character in each novel who is a moral compass.

In The Road, that would be the small boy who wanders the wasteland with his hopeless fatherwho says to his son, you have to carry this fire inside you. At the end ofThe Road, the fatherdies, but the reader is left to understand that the son will be cared for by another family who alsocarries the fire. This fire is hope.

In The Year of the Flood, the leader of Gods Gardeners, a cult-like group who strive to maintainrespect for life amidst all the chaos, recites all the names of those people and entities who havedestroyed the earth for wealth and power and asks that we do the hardest thing forgive them.


3/3

But against the nightmare scenarios these two authors have taken pains to create, what are we tomake of expressions of hope and forgiveness? Are we to unquestioningly accept theirappearance as a deus-ex-machina of sorts, or should we cast a critical mind toward this?

Timing matters. To forgive at a point when theres no other reasonable course of action is easy.However, to forgive when impending devastation can still be reversed is something else especially when naming will allow one to see clearly the way to rectification. The same for hope

its only a viable sentiment when theres a realistic wedge from which it can emerge and changethe future course of events.

In The Road, The Year of the Flood, and Oryx and Crake there appears to be no chance tochange the course of catastrophe worldwide damage has already been irreversibly done. Ifdystopian fiction is to inform us, not to amuse us, hope would seem to be tragically misplacedand forgiveness outrageous orthe very last noble sentiment of doomed humanity.

In Atwoods The Handmaids Tale, Offred voices what many might feel about destruction resultingfrom inappropriate use of wealth and power: Who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it.Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

http://[email protected]
http://theparhamreader.blogspot.com/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://theparhamreader.blogspot.com/mailto:[email protected]

To Inform You, Not to Amuse You

Documents

Transcript of To Inform You, Not to Amuse You