This essay explores the theme of deep ecology in Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake. It analyzes how the novel deals with the topics of environmental disasters and the apocalypse. It describes humanity’s effect on the planet and how the inventions of the Crakers and the BlyssPluss pill can be seen as good things. It argues that Crake can be seen as the savior of this new and improved world that he creates and that the human species’ annihilation is the only way. / Den här uppsatsen utforskar tema såsom ekokritik och djupekologi i Margaret Atwoods roman Oryx and Crake. Den analyserar hur romanen behandlar  ämnena miljökatastrofer och apokalypsen. Den beskriver människans effekt på planeten och hur uppfinningar såsom Crakers och BlyssPluss pillret kan vara bra saker. Vidare argumenterar den att Crake kan vara vår räddare för denna nya och förbättrade värld som han har skapat och hur förintelsen av människan är den enda rätta vägen.

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<p>The aim of this thesis is to examine the impact that clothing has in Margaret Atwood’s novel <em>The Blind Assassin</em> from 2000. The essay begins with a brief overview of how clothing has been acknowledged in different areas of research. The overview leads up to the conclusion that fashion, as well as clothing in large, has been overly ignored as a potentially fruitful subject of academic status. This is much due to the fact that fashion is traditionally regarded as being a classically feminine subject, as well as it can be said to be a result of fashion’s very elusive character. In the analysis of the novel the text first discusses the role that clothing has in a societal perspective as a means of power, partly in relation to Girard’s erotic triangle, as well as in relation to gender and Atwood’s dystopian parallel story. The essay then focuses on the naked body, which is found to be non-existing in Atwood’s novel, and goes on to discuss the suggestive qualities that clothing is given in the novel. In the concluding part, the results of the research is summed up and I am able to draw the conclusion that clothing has a great significance in <em>The Blind Assassin</em>, together with the notion that literary criticism is in need of a discourse that acknowledges clothing and fashion theory as academic subjects.</p>

The aim of this thesis is to examine the impact that clothing has in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Blind Assassin from 2000. The essay begins with a brief overview of how clothing has been acknowledged in different areas of research. The overview leads up to the conclusion that fashion, as well as clothing in large, has been overly ignored as a potentially fruitful subject of academic status. This is much due to the fact that fashion is traditionally regarded as being a classically feminine subject, as well as it can be said to be a result of fashion’s very elusive character. In the analysis of the novel the text first discusses the role that clothing has in a societal perspective as a means of power, partly in relation to Girard’s erotic triangle, as well as in relation to gender and Atwood’s dystopian parallel story. The essay then focuses on the naked body, which is found to be non-existing in Atwood’s novel, and goes on to discuss the suggestive qualities that clothing is given in the novel. In the concluding part, the results of the research is summed up and I am able to draw the conclusion that clothing has a great significance in The Blind Assassin, together with the notion that literary criticism is in need of a discourse that acknowledges clothing and fashion theory as academic subjects.

This essay shows how Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) functions as a critique of patriarchal society as it depicts a dystopic, dismantled society where women are divided into societal groups on biological grounds. Based on socialist feminist literary theory, an analysis is carried out of two of the female characters, Offred and Serena Joy, who are both oppressed by a patriarchal, totalitarian government; an oppression that is manifested in different ways. Offred is used as a tool to provide children and Serena Joy is confined within the home. The focus of the analysis is on the oppression of these two characters by the patriarchal government through the removal of their rights due to their gender. Red and blue, the two colors used to mark their different societal groups, are analyzed to show how they affect the reader’s perception of these characters and how the novel demonstrates the division of women visually. / Denna uppsats visar hur Margaret Atwoods roman Tjänarinnans berättelse (1985) fungerar som en kritik mot ett patriarkalt samhälle. Denna kritik tar sig uttryck genom en dystopisk skildring av ett samhälle där kvinnor delas in i sociala grupper baserat på deras biologiska förutsättningar. Med utgångspunkt i socialistisk feministisk litteraturteori görs en karaktärsanalys av två av de kvinnliga karaktärerna, Offred och Serena Joy. De är båda förtryckta av det patriarkala, totalitära styret, ett förtryck som tar sig uttryck på olika sätt. Offred används som ett verktyg för att öka barnafödandet och Serena Joy är isolerad i hemmet. Analysen fokuserar på förtryckandet av de två karaktärerna baserat på borttagandet av deras tidigare rättigheter på grund av deras kön. Röd och blå, två färger som används för att markera deras sociala grupp, analyseras för att påvisa hur de påverkar läsarens uppfattning av karaktärerna och hur romanen rent visuellt kategoriserar kvinnor i olika grupper.

This thesis traces Margaret Atwood's uses of three major elements of fairy tales in her novels. Atwood creates a passive, fairy-tale-like heroine, but not for the purpose of showing how passivity wins the prince as in the traditional tale. Atwood also uses the binary system, which provides a moralistic structure in the fairy tale, to show the necessity of moving beyond its rigidity. In addition, Atwood's novels focus on transformation as the breaking of a spell. However, the spell to be broken arises out of the fairy tales themselves, which create unrealistic expectations. Thus, Atwood not only presents these fairy tale elements in a new setting, but she also changes their significance.

Margaret Atwood speaks about a now common and yet still predominant question of female identity. Eye images, appearing frequently, correlate with ideas of observation, perception, and reflection as the woman seeks to understand herself. Introductory material examines three female archetypes, five victim positions, and male-female worlds. Eye imagery in early poetry expresses female feelings of frustration and submission to unfair roles and expectations. Imagery in the middle poetry presents causes for male-female manipulations. In later poetry eye imagery underscores the woman's anger and desire to separate into a new self. Concluding this study is an analysis of female options. From denial and anger the poet moves to recognition of choices open to today's woman, offering a possibility of wholeness.

When the body is observed through a certain combination of technologies, there can be subversive politics to doing anything at all. The nature of media and biopolitics has permitted for a set of systems aimed at total control of the human body; a power which can permeate all facets of life. This thesis is a collection of essays which argues that speculative fiction contains multitudes of approaches to biopolitical discourse, permitting the reader of the text to approach politics from their own set of experiences, but not allowing the political to be ignored. These chapters contain three separate but interrelated arguments regarding the nature of power: “Law, Technology, and the Body,” “Weaponized Media,” and “The Subversive Politics of Doing Anything at All.” This thesis creates working definitions of critical or political concepts which the chapters engage, defining terms such as speculative fiction, formalism, and biopolitics. The texts which these chapters primarily rely upon to convey examples of the visibility of these concepts—the work of Margaret Atwood and David Foster Wallace—will also be explored in these pages, prescribing specific interpretations of their plots and suggesting possible readings of the way the narratives describe technologies. The first chapter, “Law, Technology, and the Body,” posits that computational metaphors for humans are used to enforce power, particularly through the construction of law, which is prominent in works of speculative fiction. This chapter will use biopolitical theory as well as formalist readings to approach the texts: it begins by explaining the biopolitical approach to the texts which permits for such readings, then elaborates upon law, power structures, and technology which affect the body within Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. It ultimately concludes by suggesting that these structures will be visible within all narratives, but particularly prominent in speculative fiction due to the way speculative fiction engages with and responds to the technologies of the real world. The second chapter, “Weaponized Media,” shows that the trope of weaponized media is a compelling lens through which to approach text and an apt metaphor for the relationship between art and power, elucidating its prominence within speculative fiction. This argument relies primarily upon structuralism, linguistic theory, Russian formalism, and conflict theory to explain the highly-politicized use of weapons in these texts. Beginning with a survey of examples of this trope in speculative fiction, particularly within David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, the chapter concludes by reflecting upon the biopolitical structures which contribute to and are reflected by this trope. The final chapter, “The Subversive Politics of Doing Anything at All,” is a cumulation of the prior arguments. Supporting the chapter’s titular thesis, Russian formalism, media theory, and the surveillance and race theory of Simone Browne are used as central tenets to support this argument’s progression. This chapter argues that media propagates norms, that all things are now media. The consequences that follow from the nature of media entail that due to a hyper-connected world and the conflation of fear and terrorism, almost all things can be considered outside the norm—that doing almost anything at all is viewed as subversive by some, particularly by normative structures and governments. Speculative fiction questions these structures, specifically asking the reader to consider the political structures inherent in every action that they might commit to.

In this thesis, I explore the textual strategy of feminist revision employed by contemporary women writers. After investigating Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea as a prototype of feminist revision, I focus specifically on Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” as a revision of Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” Michèle Roberts’s The Book of Mrs Noah as a revision of the Old Testament Flood narrative, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad as a revision of Homer’s Odyssey and the Troy narratives, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lavinia as a revision of Vergil’s Aeneid. Through investigating the historical and literary contexts of each revisioned text, I identify the critical focus of the revision and analyse the textual effect produced by the revision. In each case, the feminist revision exposes the underlying ideological assumptions of the source text. By rewriting the canonical narrative from an alternative perspective, each revision extends beyond the source text, altering meaning and reinterpreting key symbols for feminist ends.

語言是人們用以思考與表達思想的媒介。長久以來，人們相信語言為溝通的工具，可以傳達個人思想。但是由後現代的角度看來，語言一旦被使用，就具有自己的生命。一段文字的意義不再固定於創作出該段文字的人原本所要表達的意思，而在於聽者與讀者對於該段文字所產生出的不同的解碼。 本論文旨在討論艾德伍德《女僕的故事》中的語言力量。藉由探討小說中不同立場對語言的使用，希望能夠印證話語/語言絕不可能中立的看法，話語總是含有價值判斷的。而且，話語本身就是不同立場角逐的領域；只有權力最大的一方，才能輕易掌握發言權，並得以以最顯著的音量發聲。而這也是為何發聲是如何重要的事，只有發聲，才能表達自己的立場，也才能替自己爭取權益。 本論文分為六個部份：除了導論和結論外，第一章、第二章和第三章分別討論小說中三種不同的聲音，它們亦代表三種不同的思考模式；第四章討論小說作者艾德伍德本人的加拿大經驗對她的思考與寫作 (皆為使用語言的過程) 所產生的影響。話語在小說中不僅是被用以壓迫人的工具，但亦為受壓迫者得以反壓迫的方法，因為話語是具有強大力量的。 Table of Contents Acknowledgement………………………………………………………iii Chinese Abstract…………………………………………………………v English Abstract…………………………………………………………vi Chapter Introduction………………………………………………………1 Chapter One: Discourses of the Republic of Gilead…………………17 Discourses of Sexuality in Gilead ……………………………… 18 Althusser's Ideology and Language of Gilead ……………………26 Chapter Two: Offred's Story: A History of Wome …………………42 Offred's Language and Her Subjectivity …………………………45 A History of Women……………………………………………56 Chapter Three: The History Notes: Pieixoto's Story…………………62 Pieixoto's Appropriation of Offred's Tale…………………………64 A History of the Dominant Males ………………………………66 Chapter Four: The Canadianness in the Novel………………………73 Conclusion ………………………………………………………82 Bibliography………………………………………………………88 / Language is a medium by which people think and express themselves. For a long time, language was seen as a tool used by people to communicate and reveal thoughts. In postmodern time, language is viewed as having its own life. Once a speech or a statement is produced, it is beyond the control of the producer. It is, instead, in the hand of the listener or the reader. My thesis aims to discuss the language power in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. By analyzing the novel's three different language systems, I hope to demonstrate that language is never value-free and that it is always by someone and for someone. Moreover, language is itself a place where different positions struggle with each other. Only the most powerful people can dominate language as they wish and express themselves loudly. This thesis will be divided into six parts: introduction, three chapters dealing with three kinds of language systems underpinned by different thinking, a chapter dealing with the influence of Atwood's Canadian experience on her thought and language, and the conclusion. In the novel, language is not only used as a tool to oppress people, it is also used as a weapon to resist and subvert the oppression. This is all because there is power in language.