"The aim of all utopias, to a greater or lesser extent, is to eliminate real people". The Handmaid's Tale. John Carey

Résumé du document

By asserting in the introduction of his ?Faber Book of Utopias' that "the aim of all utopias, to a greater or lesser extent, is to eliminate real people" [CAREY : xii], the British literary critic John Carey provocatively enhances what makes utopian stories so contradictory. On one hand, any utopia aims at fabricating ideal citizens. In that sense, it can be considered as a creative process since "anyone who is capable of love must at some time have wanted the world to be a better place, for we all want our loved ones to live free from suffering, injustice and heartbreak" [CAREY : xii]. On the other hand, reaching this goal always implies a "reform of the self" [CAREY : xix] or, to state it plainly, an elimination of the people unable to conform to the utopian ideal. In that sense, utopia also often infers the destruction of the people who do not succeed in adapting themselves to the utopian ideal. This ambiguity explains why "utopia" etymologically means "nowhere" that is to say an imaginary place, whether heavenly or nightmarish.

Extraits

[...] Now, I will try to exemplify this view referring to the 1985 Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale, which can undoubtedly be considered as an epitome of the dystopian literary genre. Indeed, Atwood's work deals with the story of a young woman called Offred enslaved and forced to give birth on behalf of an aristocratic cast in the aftermath of the advent of a theocratic and gender-segregationist dictatorship, the “Republic of Gilead” a country the reader supposes to be the U.S. [...]

[...] aim of all utopias, to a greater or lesser extent, is to eliminate real people” The Handmaid's Tale. John Carey By asserting in the introduction of his Faber Book of Utopias that aim of all utopias, to a greater or lesser extent, is to eliminate real people” [CAREY : xii], the British literary critic John Carey provocatively enhances what makes utopian stories so contradictory. On the one hand, any utopia aims at fabricating ideal citizens. In that sense, it can be considered as a creative process since “anyone who is capable of love must at some time have wanted the world to be a better place, for we all want our loved ones to live free from suffering, injustice and heartbreak” [CAREY : xii]. [...]

[...] Last but not least, in Gilead, the fabrication of “ideal people” implies preventing people from any cultural or intellectual improvement. Books and particularly magazines games for instance, Scrabble as well as writing are strictly prohibited. * * * All things considered, Gilead's revolutionary leitmotiv could be summed up by the Commander's statement that follows : “Those years were just an anomaly, historically speaking [ ] Just a fluke. All we've done is return things to Nature's norm” [ATWOOD : 232] just as if Gilead's utopia was a return to an alleged state of nature with no other social cements that the biological links. [...]

[...] Read Chapter 2 for a frightening example. Love is not the point says Aunt Lydia to the narrator about her relation with the Commander [ATWOOD : 232]. The reader can refer to the introductory quote of Genesis at the beginning of the novel. Theses strategies of resistances developed by Offred consist for instance of using her charm to obtain favours from the Commander, stealing butter for using it as an moisturizing lotion, and above all remembering non-stop her previous life with her friend Moira and her boyfriend Luke. [...]

[...] References - ATWOOD, Margaret 1996 (1995) : The Handmaid's Tale, Vintage, London - CAREY, John 1999 : The Faber Book of Utopias, Faber and Faber, London In that case the literary critics often use the adjective “dystopian”. Yet, in the first paragraph of his introduction, Carey shows how doubtful is the use of this term with regard to the etymological origin of the word “utopia”. Despite this, Carey ends up admitting that the distinction between “imaginary good places” (utopias) and “imaginary bad places” (dystopia) may be useful. The same applies with the narrator fellow countrywoman, “Ofglen”. This hypothesis is taken from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale See Chapter 2 that relates Offred's shopping session. [...]