The Function of Black Humor and Satire in the Dystopian Novel "Oryx & Crake" by Margaret Atwood

The Function of Black Humor and Satire in the Dystopian Novel

Author: Jule Grassmann

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2017-03-08

Total Pages: 20

ISBN-13: 366841260X

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Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, University of Rostock (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Proseminar: Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake. Contexts and Criticism, language: English, abstract: This essay sets out to analyze Margaret Atwood’s use of black humor and satire in her novel "Oryx and Crake". Furthermore, it examines the function of such. Especially this essay looks at Atwood’s intention to provide a satiric tone and black humor and shows that they are based on social observations and concerns that are evident in the early twenty-first century. To achieve this, the paper is structured into two main chapters. In the first chapter on "Black Humor and Satire" the author gives an overview of these terms, serving as a framework for further investigations. Additionally, the paper deals with laughter, to show which kind of laughter derives from Atwood's humor. In the next chapter on "Observations on Black Humor and Satire in Oryx and Crake", the paper focuses on the satirical tone and the black humor in the novel, based on the author's own reception of the text.

Oryx and Crake

Oryx and Crake PDF

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 2010-07-27

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0307400840

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A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize. Margaret Atwood’s new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers of Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again. The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief. With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter.

Exploring dystopia

Exploring dystopia PDF

Author: Lea Aures

Publisher: neobooks

Published: 2022-02-02

Total Pages: 35

ISBN-13: 3754184172

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The United Nations report 2019 warns of mass extinction. One million species might vanish from our earth within the next years. Thoughtless human action is largely to blame for this development. Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake, published in 2003, predicted the situation we currently find ourselves in. This paper is an analysis of characteristic themes in Oryx and Crake with regard to the warnings they convey to us as well as to future generations.

African American Satire

African American Satire PDF

Author: Darryl Dickson-Carr

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0826263747

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"Satire's real purpose as a literary genre is to criticize through humor, irony, caricature, and parody, and ultimately to defy the status quo. In African American Satire, Darryl Dickson-Carr provides the first book-length study of African-American satire and the vital role it has played. In the process he investigates African American literature, American literature, and the history of satire." --Book Jacket.

The Heart Goes Last

The Heart Goes Last PDF

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2015-09-29

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0385540361

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From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments—in the gated community of Consilience, residents who sign a contract will get a job and a lovely house for six months of the year...if they serve as inmates in the Positron prison system for the alternate months. “Captivating...thrilling.” —The New York Times Book Review Stan and Charmaine, a young urban couple, have been hit by job loss and bankruptcy in the midst of nationwide economic collapse. Forced to live in their third-hand Honda, where they are vulnerable to roving gangs, they think the gated community of Consilience may be the answer to their prayers. At first, this seems worth it: they will have a roof over their heads and food on the table. But when a series of troubling events unfolds, Positron begins to look less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled. The Heart Goes Last is a vivid, urgent vision of development and decay, freedom and surveillance, struggle and hope—and the timeless workings of the human heart.

Oryx and Crake

Oryx and Crake PDF

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Emblem Editions

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 9780771008696

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A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author ofThe Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize Margaret Atwood’s new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers ofOryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again. The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief. With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. From the Hardcover edition.

The Year of the Flood

The Year of the Flood PDF

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 2010-07-27

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0307398927

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From the Booker Prize–winning author of Oryx and Crake, the first book in the MaddAddam Trilogy, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Internationally acclaimed as ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by, amongst others, the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Village Voice In a world driven by shadowy, corrupt corporations and the uncontrolled development of new, gene-spliced life forms, a man-made pandemic occurs, obliterating human life. Two people find they have unexpectedly survived: Ren, a young dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails (the cleanest dirty girls in town), and Toby, solitary and determined, who has barricaded herself inside a luxurious spa, watching and waiting. The women have to decide on their next move—they can’t stay hidden forever. But is anyone else out there?

Laughing Fit to Kill

Laughing Fit to Kill PDF

Author: Glenda Carpio

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-07-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0190293977

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Reassessing the meanings of "black humor" and "dark satire," Laughing Fit to Kill illustrates how black comedians, writers, and artists have deftly deployed various modes of comedic "conjuring"--the absurd, the grotesque, and the strategic expression of racial stereotypes--to redress not only the past injustices of slavery and racism in America but also their legacy in the present. Focusing on representations of slavery in the post-civil rights era, Carpio explores stereotypes in Richard Pryor's groundbreaking stand-up act and the outrageous comedy of Chappelle's Show to demonstrate how deeply indebted they are to the sly social criticism embedded in the profoundly ironic nineteenth-century fiction of William Wells Brown and Charles W. Chesnutt. Similarly, she reveals how the iconoclastic literary works of Ishmael Reed and Suzan-Lori Parks use satire, hyperbole, and burlesque humor to represent a violent history and to take on issues of racial injustice. With an abundance of illustrations, Carpio also extends her discussion of radical black comedy to the visual arts as she reveals how the use of subversive appropriation by Kara Walker and Robert Colescott cleverly lampoons the iconography of slavery. Ultimately, Laughing Fit to Kill offers a unique look at the bold, complex, and just plain funny ways that African American artists have used laughter to critique slavery's dark legacy.

The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale PDF

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Published: 2011-09-06

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0771008791

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An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning.