Sunday, April 15, 2012

When the frame is more interesting than the picture...: "I'm Starved for You" by Margaret Atwood

This is a review for a short story, so it will be a short review. I recently read Margaret Atwood's famous novel The Handmaid's Tale for the first time, so when I found out that she had recently released a short story set in another dystopian future, I jumped on it immediately. (That, incidentally, is the number-one reason why I love e-book readers. The fact that I can go from reading about a new novel or story by an author that I like to reading that very novel or story within minutes is the most amazing and wonderful thing that could have ever happened to an avid reader like me. In fact, the reboot of this blog probably would not have happened if it hadn't been for e-books. Yay technology!)

The story itself was a love triangle scenario whose initial twist I actually saw coming (something that never happens) and thereafter failed to hold my interest, but the dystopian society that Atwood wrote to hold the story was fascinating. In a not-so-distant future where the US has been ravaged by crime, joblessness, and prison overcrowding, a corporation has stumbled on the solution to all the country's problems! Using a small town whose only remaining industry after the economic collapse was a massive prison, it decides to run a social experiment that turns the entire town into a prison. It walls the town off, makes it almost entirely self-sustaining, and signs up volunteers from the outside to come and live there. The catch? Half of the population are prisoners and the other half are productive citizens who run the prison and the town, and every month they switch places. In effect, this company has decided that the best way to deal with the growing prison population is to create communities in which everyone--criminals and normal citizens alike--are treated the same, like criminals half of the time and like ordinary citizens the other half.

The idea is crazy, but it makes for an interesting thought experiment around the freedoms that people will give up in order to ensure their personal security and futures. If the violence, the degradation, and the personal danger could be removed from the prison experience, how many people do you think would be willing to spend half of their lives wearing an orange jumpsuit and sleeping in a cell for a chance at a stable job, a roof over their heads, and a place as a productive member of a community the other half of the time? More importantly, what do we need to do as a society to ensure that no one will ever be asked to make that choice? What can we be doing better for the people who would say yes to giving up their basic freedoms for the chance at a normal, stable, middle-class lifestyle?

Just something to think about...

"I'm Starved for You", by Margaret Atwood

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