Dystopian Visions: A Critical Examination of Margaret Atwood’s the Handmaid’s Tale and Cormac Mccarthy’s The Road

Abstract

Literature is the total of preserved writings belonging to a given language or people. It is a product of life and about life. It uses language as a medium. A dystopia is an imaginary society or community characterized by undesirable, frightening, and often oppressive conditions in a totalitarian society. Dystopian literature is a genre of fiction that enables authors to examine the consequences of human decisions, social and political
patterns, and technological processes. It characterizes a society plagued with suffering, poverty, or oppression. Dystopias are extremely flawed societies. In this genre, unlike other literary genres, the setting is often a fallen society, usually occurring after a large-scale war or other horrific events that caused chaos in the former world. In many stories, this chaos gives rise to a totalitarian government that assumes absolute control. The flaws in this sort of dystopia are centered by oppression and restrictions on freedom by central authorities. Dystopian literature has become an ever-increasingly popular genre in recent times. The novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood depicts a dystopian society dominated by totalitarian and patriarchal forces that make women powerless. The feminist elements within this society are essentially under the dominant power. The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a powerful dystopian novel that revolves around a boy and his father seeking to survive in a ruined, post-apocalyptic world after calamities. Thus, the paper focuses on the analytical study of the novels, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Road as a dystopia.