Critical Dystopian Resilience in Swastika Night, If Beale Street Could Talk, and The Handmaid’s Tale

Abstract

This article compares and scrutinizes three novels—Swastika Night, If Beale Street Could Talk, and The Handmaid’s Tale—to better understand their employment of critical dystopian elements to represent resistance, solidarity, and resilience amidst institutionalized discrimination. The study takes into consideration themes such as masculinity, memory, and education, developed in these narratives to critique systemic oppression and generate a sense of hope. Burdekin, Baldwin, and Atwood all depict protagonists in defiance. These three writers lived in different historical eras, but each perceived the conditions of their time as threatening to people’s freedom, and their novels are a reactionary and emancipatory instrument by which readers might understand reality better and work toward a more just world.