scholarly journals Baudrillardian Concepts of Hyperreality and Simulacra in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 36-54
Author(s):  
Behzad Pourgharib ◽  
Afsaneh Pourebrahim
Keyword(s):  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Future Time ◽  
The Real ◽  
Oryx And Crake

The study attempts to analyze Margaret Atwood Oryx and Crake in the light of Baudrillard Theory. The discussion is based on Baudrillard theory of Hyperreality and Simulacra. Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake (2003) takes place in a future time where there are scientific progresses. The protagonist of the story is Snowman who used to be called Jimmy and who is the son of two genetic scientists. Snowman lives near some creatures that are called Crakers. When jimmy is near starvation, he decides to search for food in the ruins of RejoovenEsence. Jimmy and Oryx develop a relationship. The human race is wiped out and Jimmy realizes that all of these are planned by Crake. Crake says that the three of them are immune to the virus. Crake kills Oryx and he is killed by Jimmy. Jimmy also gets a disease and finally finds three humans, two men and a woman, and he does not know whether to kill them or become friend with them. He makes up his mind and goes towards them and the story ends there. It can be said that there is elimination of hyperreality in the novel as there is the decline of civilization. Baudrillard’s hyperreality explained the situation in the consumer society in which the real was lost. Thus, it can be said that the catastrophe in the novel has resulted in the elimination of the civilization, consumer society and thus hyperreality in the consumer society. But it should be pointed out that there is also hyperreality created due to the catastrophe because things are no longer what they used to be and some human made structures have lost their function, similar to the map in the Borges fable pointed out by Baudrillard.

scholarly journals Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake as a Critique of Technological Utopianism

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
Murat Kabak
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Scientific Objectivity ◽  
Oryx And Crake ◽  
Utopian Thought

While there are major works tracing the themes of belonging and longing for home in contemporary fiction, there is no current study adequately addressing the connection between dystopian novel and nostalgia. This paper aims to illustrate how the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood uses nostalgia as a framework to level a critique against technological utopianism in her dystopian novel Oryx and Crake (2003). The first novel in Atwood’s “MaddAddam Trilogy” problematizes utopian thought by focusing on the tension between two utopian projects: the elimination of all suffering and the perfection of human beings by discarding their weaknesses. Despite the claims of scientific objectivity and environmentalism, the novel exposes the religious and human-centered origins of Crake’s technological utopian project. Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is an ambiguous work of science fiction that combines utopian and dystopian elements into its narrative to criticize utopian thought.

A Compact Embodiment of Pluralities and Denial of Origins: Atwood’s The Year of The Flood

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Rana Sağıroğlu
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Why Questions ◽  
Near Future

Margaret Atwood, one of the most spectacular authors of postmodern movement, achieved to unite debatable and in demand critical points of 21st century such as science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism in the novel The Year of The Flood written in 2009. The novel could be regarded as an ecocritical manifesto and a dystopic mirror against today’s degenerated world, tending to a superficial base to keep the already order in use, by moving away from the fundamental solution of all humanity: nature. Although Atwood does not want her works to be called science fiction, it is obvious that science fiction plays an introductory role and gives the novel a ground explaining all ‘why’ questions of the novel. However, Atwood is not unjust while claiming that her works are not science fiction because of the inevitable rapid change of 21st century world becoming addicted to technology, especially Internet. It is easily observed by the reader that what she fictionalises throughout the novel is quite close to possibility, and the world may witness in the near future what she creates in the novel as science fiction. Additionally, postmodernism serves to the novel as the answerer of ‘how’ questions: How the world embraces pluralities, how heterogeneous social order is needed, and how impossible to run the world by dichotomies of patriarchal social order anymore. And lastly, ecocriticism gives the answers of ‘why’ questions of the novel: Why humanity is in chaos, why humanity has organized the world according to its own needs as if there were no living creatures apart from humanity. Therefore, The Year of The Flood meets the reader as a compact embodiment of science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism not only with its theme, but also with its narrative techniques.

scholarly journals Improving the Downwind Sail Design Process by Means of a Novel FSI Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 624
Author(s):  
Antonino Cirello ◽  
Tommaso Ingrassia ◽  
Antonio Mancuso ◽  
Vincenzo Nigrelli ◽  
Davide Tumino
Keyword(s):  
Numerical Methods ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
Weakly Coupled ◽  
Design And Manufacturing ◽  
Sailing Yacht ◽  
Computational Resources ◽  
Effective Use

The process of designing a sail can be a challenging task because of the difficulties in predicting the real aerodynamic performance. This is especially true in the case of downwind sails, where the evaluation of the real shapes and aerodynamic forces can be very complex because of turbulent and detached flows and the high-deformable behavior of structures. Of course, numerical methods are very useful and reliable tools to investigate sail performances, and their use, also as a result of the exponential growth of computational resources at a very low cost, is spreading more and more, even in not highly competitive fields. This paper presents a new methodology to support sail designers in evaluating and optimizing downwind sail performance and manufacturing. A new weakly coupled fluid–structure interaction (FSI) procedure has been developed to study downwind sails. The proposed method is parametric and automated and allows for investigating multiple kinds of sails under different sailing conditions. The study of a gennaker of a small sailing yacht is presented as a case study. Based on the numerical results obtained, an analytical formulation for calculating the sail corner loads has been also proposed. The novel proposed methodology could represent a promising approach to allow for the widespread and effective use of numerical methods in the design and manufacturing of yacht sails.

scholarly journals The Paradox of Happy Hypoxia in COVID 19

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-124
Author(s):  
Madhu Bansode ◽  
Pankaj Bansode
Keyword(s):  
Young Patients ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
X Rays ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
Diagnostic Modalities ◽  
High Index Of Suspicion ◽  
Rule Out

Ever since the human race has been exposed to the novel COVID 19 illness, newer and newer intriguing features of the COVID viral plethora are seen with each passing day. Many manifestations of the COVID 19 illness have been baffling and unexplainable to researchers currently. One such unusual presentation seen is ‘happy hypoxia’ or silent hypoxemia in a third of patients' total number. This review article is intending to put some light on the puzzling condition of happy hypoxia. We authors refer you through various theories postulated for happy hypoxia. It has definite clinical implications in the sense that it can be lifesaving if detected early and promptly in a COVID patient. We conclude that happy hypoxia or silent hypoxemia is a new entity and should be diagnosed with a high index of suspicion in COVID suspect patients in both young patients with no co morbidities and the elderly and diabetics. Diagnostic modalities like pulse oximeter should be widely used at hospitals and clinics and for self-monitoring by the patients at homes. Also, chest X-rays or HRCT imaging of the lungs is essential in the early stages to identify the early infective changes with compromised lung function and rule out this happy hypoxia. Also, further research is essential to find the exact ethologic of this subclinical though ominous prognostic entity.

scholarly journals Seksualitetens uddrivelse

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (121) ◽  
pp. 205-220
Author(s):  
Nils Gunder Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Rural Community ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Pure Material ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Welfare Society ◽  
Big City ◽  
Life Trajectory ◽  
Late Modern

The article investigates a historical development in the concepts of happiness and love and the norms of sexual behavior from a rural community over the upcoming welfare society in the suburbs to the late modern period in the big city. The changes are observed through three Danish literary texts from 1960, 1965 and 2011, first the novel I heltespor (“In the footsteps of heroes”) by Erik Aalbæk Jensen, then the short story Julestue (“The Christmas Gathering”) by Anders Bodelsen and finally the novel Se på mig (“Look at me”) by Kirsten Hammann. In the rural community happiness is knowing your right place and mastering the challenges of seduction and sexual temptation without the complete surrender to an inauthentic life of pure conventionalism. In the suburbs and early welfare society controlled infidelity with the exchange of partners represents a promise of happiness, something “more” and meaningful transcending the pure material satisfaction of the new and well managed consumer society. In the late modern period the importance of sexuality and love is downgraded in a remarkable manner: The search for happiness is extremely individualized and conceived as a kind of portal you have to enter at the precise right moment of your life trajectory. Sexuality and love seem to have lost their transcendent and integrational power in the game of happiness.

scholarly journals Vuoret ja kaupunki vastakohtaisina tiloina Alisa Ganijevan teoksissa

2016 ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Anni Lappela
Keyword(s):  
Central Element ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Real ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The City ◽  
Geographical Space

Mountains and City as Contrary Spaces in the Prose of Alisa Ganieva I analyze Alisa Ganieva’s novel Prazdnichnaia gora (2012) and her novella Salam tebe, Dalgat! (2010) from a geocritical (Westphal, Tally) point of view. Ganieva was born in 1985 in Moscow, but she grew up in Dagestan, in North Caucasia. Since 2002, she has lived in Moscow. All Ganieva’s novels are set in present-day Dagestan, not only in the capital Makhachkala but also in the countryside.  I study the ways the two main spaces and main milieus, the mountains and the city, oppose each other in Prazdnichnaia gora. I also analyze how this opposition constructs the utopian and dystopian discourses of the novel. In this high/low opposition, the mountains appear as the utopian place of a better future, and the city in the lowlands is depicted as a dystopian place of the present-day life. The texts’ multilayered time is also part of my analysis, which follows Westphal’s idea of the stratigraphy of time. Furthermore, the mountains are associated with the traditional way of life and the Soviet past. In this way, the mountains have two kinds of roles in the texts. Nevertheless, the city is a central element of the postcolonial dystopian discourse of Prazdnichnaia gora. In my opinion, Ganieva’s texts problematize referentiality, one of the key concepts of geocriticism. Whilst the city tends to be very referential, the mountains escape the referential relationship to the “real” geographical space.

scholarly journals On freedom in the times of Economic Crisis – A Close Reading Of Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-154
Author(s):  
Ewelina Feldman-Kołodziejuk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Economic Experiment ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
The Times ◽  
Far Future

In her fifth dystopian novel, The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood portrays North America in the not so far future, in the wake of a global economic crisis. Parts of the country are in the state of complete chaos, subjected to a ruthless gang rule. The solution to the system's breakdown comes in the form of the socio-economic experiment that requires from its participants relinquishing their freedom as every other month they will spend in prison. The seemingly preposterous experimental project enables Atwood to explore principal questions about the limits of our freedom in the times of an economic crisis or a neoliberal model of economy. The satirical form the novel takes, especially towards its end, helps the writer to decry people's over-willingness to give away their freedom and civil liberties in exchange for happy, uninterrupted consumption. The following article aims to demonstrate that the notion of freedom and free will permeate The Heart Goes Last, which is, in that respect, a politically and socially engaged satire.

scholarly journals Diving into the Subconscious of Women and Nature: Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing as an Ecofeminist Novel

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (10) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Hyma Santhosh
Keyword(s):  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Life Worth Living ◽  
Female Community ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Rapid Industrialization ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Self Discovery

Woman and nature can be considered the best creations of god. Both together keep the earth alive and balanced through the process of creation. The male dominated practices have destroyed the nature as well as women. This paper deals with the different aspects of Eco-feminism through the novel Surfacing by Margaret Atwood. The narrator’s quest to the wilderness of Canada in search for her father which leads to a quest of self-discovery in the lap of nature becomes the major focus of this paper. The unknown protagonist becomes a representative of the entire female community. The realization that women are just an object to be conquered and violated by men is what leads to the ‘surfacing’ of the protagonist. In complete harmony with nature excluding clothes, language, food etc. the protagonist goes crazy which gives her more happiness that with her other relationships. The paper also tries to analyse the close relationship between women and nature and how the virgin nature and woman are destroyed by the invasion of the male community. Repressed gender roles, submissiveness, self-realization through nature and the challenges faced by women that are presented. The concept of women and nature as both victims of the male dominated society is also emphasized. This novel is the perfect literary example of an Eco-feminist work that portrays the destruction of women and nature even in the minutest episodes in the novel. Nature is a treasure-house of many myths that lay hidden in the beliefs, rights and rituals of the aboriginals which are passed from one generation to another. In the same manner women also are the sustainer's of many myths that the male society has made upon her. The mother i.e. both woman and nature is examined here.In a vast country like Canada,nature comprises to its majority through its wilderness.This wilderness hides many priceless virtues and knowledge that can be learnt only in complete harmony with nature.Surfacing is not just the journey of a woman but it is the quest that the female gender thrives for.This paper combines the theories of eco-criticism, eco-feminism and to analyse the novel Surfacing into a biological whole that merges nature, man and the beliefs of man that make existence meaningful and life worth living. In an era of rapid industrialization and materialism, it is necessary to go on a quest back to nature and learn how life was easier in the lap of nature. Great writers like Shakespeare,Chaucer and Wordsworth were able to carve out such master pieces only because of their relationship with the purest and virgin nature which is the greatest teacher for mankind of all times.

scholarly journals “The Handmaid’s Tale”: a legal-literary essay

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-147
Author(s):  
Clarice Beatriz da Costa Söhngen ◽  
Danielle Massulo Bordignon
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fictional Space ◽  
Second Wave

This paper proposes an analysis of the legal aspects present in the narrative of “The Handmaid´s Tale”, a novel by Margaret Atwood. First published in 1985, and heavily influenced by second-wave feminism, “The Handmaid´s Tale” addresses, mainly, the matter of gender inequality, once it creates a reality in which fertile women are compelled to reproduce through a servitude system. Through a rupture with the Cartesian dichotomy whose dualist notion separates objectivity from subjectivity, reason from emotion, this paper exposes that this oppression is not a literary creation by Atwood, but a reproduction of the power relations put forward in the history of humankind. In this regard, it is explored how Literature can aid the Law in facing the questions that come up in the resolution of legal and social problems. Besides gender inequality, it is possible to spot in the novel several violations concerning the principle of human dignity. Therefore, this research analyzes the legal provisions taken in the fictional space of Gilead, as well as in the country that preceded it, the United States of America, as well as in Brazil. In addition, it studies the symbolic violence to which women are submitted in Gilead and how it relates to the experiences lived by contemporary Brazilian women.

scholarly journals Corpus Assisted Approach To Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-40
Author(s):  
Samuel Kwesi Nkansah
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Numerical Data ◽  
Qualitative Description ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Context Of Use ◽  
Objective Investigation

Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born is a novel known for its extensive portrayal of the ills and anomalies in the Ghanaian society right after independence. The majority of studies on the novel have overwhelmingly concluded that corruption is the preoccupation of the text. This view appears skewed in many respects. This paper argues that the corpus assisted approach can contribute methodologies to support objective investigation of the subject matters of the text. This study, adopting the corpus-assisted approach in a mix of numerical data and qualitative description of Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born, used frequencies of the occurrence of pejorative terms in the text to determine the dominant subject matters in the novel. The approach reveals that “rot” and “decay” are the most dominant motifs used, followed by “filth”, “corruption”, and “bribery”. It suggests that clusters, i.e., recurrence of words, characters’ association with the words, and context of use serve as textual cues in thematic exploration. The approach aids in revealing that the real intent of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is that the total breakdown of the society rests on seemingly insignificant characters. The paper has implications for methodological approaches to thematic analysis of literary texts, particularly, the novel.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document