Pushing the Boundaries of Dystopia: Anna Burns’s Milkman

Abstract

ABSTRACT By viewing the Troubles in Northern Ireland through the lens of dystopia, the 2018 novel Milkman provides insight into how the genre of dystopian fiction may be changing as it moves into the twenty-first century. Milkman’s innovative depiction of 1970s Belfast strikes many as totalitarian, and the novel shares central features with other dystopian novels: an oppressive society with no room for individualism, a protagonist that challenges it, and a plot that hinges on an unfair trial. At the same time, it makes several interesting adaptations. It is more interested in the ways a noncombatant community embraces dystopian practices in a dysfunctional attempt to cope with chaos than in the ways a totalitarian state uses them strategically to maintain power. Secondly, the historical setting should be recognized as a significant innovation in the genre because it spurs reexamination of assumptions about how dystopias relate to the present. Finally, the novel opens consideration of how a society could move past dystopia, which until now has been little explored.