Critical Dystopia Reconsidered: Octavia Butler's Parable Series and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake as Post-Apocalyptic Dystopias

Abstract

This paper calls for a more nuanced assessment of current dystopian literature and questions the feasibility of lumping together all dystopian works after the 1980s under the umbrella term ”critical dystopia.” According to current definition, critical dystopia is open-ended, harbors an eutopian enclave, and entertains some kind of hope. However, this definition fails to identify crucial aspects of dystopias around the millennium. Octavia E. Butler's Parable series (Parable of the Sower, 1993; Parable of the Talents, 1998) and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003) are investigated to pinpoint the limitation of the term ”critical dystopia.” Both the diminished utopianism of Butler's Parable series and the apocalypse and despair in Atwood's Oryx and Crake testify that dystopias around the millennium have undergone some significant transformation. They should more properly be labeled ”postapocalyptic dystopias.”