QUEST FOR UTOPIAN IMPULSE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY DYSTOPIAN NARRATIVE: P. D. JAMES’S CRITICAL DYSTOPIA, THE CHILDREN OF MEN
Öz
Dystopian narrative has gained enormous worldwide recognition and
popularity with an upsurge in the number of literary dystopias and
dystopian films. Dystopia presents alternative world scenarios, which
project a relatively worse dystopian social order than the current
experienced one, thereby functioning as a cautionary tale. Twentieth
century witnessed the emergence and gradual rise of dystopia in the
aftermath of the socio-political conjuncture and led dystopia to be
generally interpreted as pessimistic. However, twentieth-century
dystopian fiction is not completely pessimistic since it signifies hope
through open-ended narratives, especially in the critical dystopias of
the century. The experiential journey motif, which facilitates potential
transformation in the character’s stance on the dynamics of the
projected system, plays a significant role in eliciting the utopian
impulse. The aim of this article is therefore to discuss the possibility of
hope in twentieth-century dystopian fiction through a comprehensive
analysis of P. D. James’s critical dystopia, The Children of Men (1992),
which has not achieved critical and scholarly acclaim it deserves,
probably due to the success of Alfonso Cuaron’s film, Children of Men
(2006).
Anahtar Kelimeler
Kaynakça
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