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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Gender In Dystopia: The Persistence Of Essentialist Ideologies In Octavia Butler's Parable Of The Sower, Elijah Drzata Jun 2020

Gender In Dystopia: The Persistence Of Essentialist Ideologies In Octavia Butler's Parable Of The Sower, Elijah Drzata

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

If we were living in a dystopian society, we might view gender, sexuality, and race differently. When survival is on the line, it would be a privilege to fight back against any remaining bigotry. Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower provides us with possible answers to these situations, as well as a look into the future of society if we do not change. In this essay, I situate Octavia Butler's dystopic novel in the context of gender. Laura Olamina, the protagonist, is seemingly forced to perform a new gender and sexual identity. My goal is to queer the straightness …


The Machine, The Victim, And The Third Thing: Navigating The Gender Spectrum In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Lindsay Mccoy Anderson Jan 2012

The Machine, The Victim, And The Third Thing: Navigating The Gender Spectrum In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Lindsay Mccoy Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Atwood's depiction of gender in Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. In an interview from 1972, Margaret Atwood spoke on survival: "People see two alternatives. You can be part of the machine or you can be something that gets run over by it. And I think there has to be a third thing." I assert that Atwood depicts this "third thing" through her characters who navigate between the binaries of "masculine" and "feminine" in a third realm of gender. As the female characters—regardless of their passive or aggressive behavior—engage in a quest for agency, …