DYSTOPIC RECONFIGURATIONS OF CORPORATE AMERICA: MARGARET ATWOOD’S “THE HEART GOES LAST”

Monika KOSA

doi:10.24193/subbphilo.2019.1.19

Authors

Monika KOSA Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Contact address: kosamonika@yahoo.com

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2019.1.19

Keywords:

dystopia, Margaret Atwood, Canadian literature, power, control, corporate America, freedom, social experiment .

Abstract

Dystopic Reconfigurations of Corporate America: Margaret Atwood’s “The Heart Goes Last”. One of Margaret Atwood’s dystopic novels, The Heart Goes Last is an intricate examination of human nature, the precariousness of love, free will, the roots of social evil and the potential dangers of excessive institutional power. Grounded in an examination of Atwood’s text, this paper aims to analyze the techniques through which the image of “corporate America” is re-configured in a nightmarish setting where the fight for power, money and control negatively re-positions the ethical limits of humanity.

REZUMAT. Reconfigurări distopice ale Americii corporatiste în The Heart Goes Last de Margaret Atwood. Una dintre cele mai recente capodopere distopice ale autoarei Margaret Atwood, The Heart Goes Last, este o analiză plurivalentă a naturii umane, fragilitatea iubirii, voința liberă, rădăcinile răului social și potențialele pericole ale puterii instituționale excesive. Pornind de la textul atwoodian, lucrarea de față își propune să analizeze tehnicile prin care imaginea Americii corporatiste e reconfigurată într-un cadru de coșmar unde lupta pentru putere, bani și control repoziționează limitele etice ale umanității într-o categorie negativă.

Cuvinte cheie: distopie, Margaret Atwood, literatură canadiană, putere, control, America corporatistă, libertate, experiment social

Author Biography

Monika KOSA, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Contact address: kosamonika@yahoo.com

Monika Kosa is a PhD student at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Her academic interests include Canadian literature, the twentieth-century novel, Victorian literature, Guillermo del Toro’s cinematic realm and fairy-tale variations in American, British, and Canadian fictions. Contact address: kosamonika@yahoo.com

References

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Harrison, John M. “The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood review-rewardingly strange” The Guardian (Online) 23 September 2015. Web. 30 October 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/23/the-heart-goes-last-margaret-atwood-review-novel

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Lyall, Sarah. “Review: Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Heart Goes Last’ Conjures a Kinky Dystopia”. The New York Times (Online). 29 September 2015. Web. 30 October 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/books/review-margaret-atwoods-the-heart-goes-last-conjures-a-kinky-dystopia.html

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Snyder, Katherine V. “Time to Go”: The Post-apocalyptic and the post-traumatic in Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake”. Studies in the Novel, Vol. 43, No. 4, 2011, pp. 470-489. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41319888?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Accessed 30 October 2018.