Author | Doris Lessing |
---|---|
Language | English |
Publisher | Octagon Press (UK) Alfred A. Knopf (US) |
Publication date | 1974 |
ISBN | 0-900860-30-8 |
OCLC | 1208042 |
823/.9/14 | |
LC Class | PR6023.E833 M4 PR6023.E833 |
The Memoirs of a Survivor is a dystopian novel by Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing. It was first published in 1974 by Octagon Press, and Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. in 1975. It was made into a film in 1981, starring Julie Christie and Nigel Hawthorne, and directed by David Gladwell. [1]
The story takes place in a near-future Britain where society has broken down due to an unspecified disaster, referred to as "The Crisis." The new society that emerges after the collapse retains many features of the old world but is fundamentally different. What serves as a government in the post-crisis nation is unable to consolidate its authority and exercises little control over the populace. Newscasts can be heard and law and order are upheld by vigilantes and a handful of policemen. Education exists for those who pass as the wealthier survivors, while schools for the poor act as an apparatus of the army and are designed to control the population. Limited commercial activity continues, but scavenging is required to obtain rare goods.
By the start of the novel, the situation in the society is starting to deteriorate as the edifice of the past society crumbles. The narrator describes people moving out of the city, and empty shelves indicate a food shortage. Rationing is in effect, and gangs migrate through the city block by block attacking residents. Many of the narrator's neighbours want to move out of the city as the situation becomes worse.
The narrator, a middle-aged woman who lives a quiet life in a flat, unexpectedly ends up with 'custody' of a teenage girl named Emily Cartwright and her cat Hugo. The narrator seeks to please the new arrival and works hard to ensure that Emily has a high opinion of her. She often comments on Emily's competence and neatness and ponders the purpose of the girl's existence. Emily herself is intelligent and insightful but is also quite distant. The narrator and Emily somewhat enjoy each other's company and seem to form a tacit arrangement of tolerance between them.
This idyllic time (in the words of the narrator) ends when a gang of young people take up residence in the community. Emily goes out to meet them but retreats when they tease her and threaten Hugo. Later that evening she meets with the gang again, and this time enjoys herself. Upon returning home, she remarks to the narrator that the gang members are at least able to enjoy themselves. Many different gangs pass through the community in the next few months, and Emily always interacts with them. This, coupled with Emily's abrasive wit, creates friction between her and the narrator, though the latter weathers Emily's remarks and remains stoic.
As Emily grows older, she exhibits more and more signs of adolescence. She designs her own clothes, gains then loses weight, and works ardently to become more attractive. As the story progresses, a group of similar minded young people from the community begin to form a gang of their own, modelled after the previous gangs that visited the community. Emily happily joins them in their nightly revelry. Soon it becomes apparent that the gang is going to depart from the community, and the narrator believes that Emily will leave with them. However, Emily is conflicted about leaving Hugo behind. She tries to introduce him to the gang, but no progress is made. The next day three of the gang members go to the flat where Emily and the narrator live with the intent to eat Hugo but are dissuaded by the presence of the Narrator. Emily learns of this occurrence and decides that, for the moment, she cannot leave her longtime companion behind. The gang soon splits into two groups, and Emily stays with the group that chooses not to depart.
The story continues to progress as Emily grows older. Outside of the narrator's flat, society begins to revert to a pre-industrial state, with agriculture becoming more and more common in the city. A few blocks away, a young man named Gerald organises dispossessed children into a new group and begins to establish a new gang. Emily becomes infatuated with Gerald, and it is implied that they form a physical relationship. Emily's influence in the community continues to grow, and she is soon seen as one of the leaders of the young people. One day the narrator returns home and finds items missing from her flat. Emily finds out about this thievery, and orders the thieves (who are some of the children that she leads) to return the stolen goods, displaying her authority over the children and her ability to protect the narrator, who up until this point had protected her. She then leads the narrator upstairs, where a thriving market has formed in the upper floors of the apartment building.
Emboldened by his successes, Gerald continues to solidify his control over his group of followers. Emily often helps him, though friction is created between the two when Gerald seeks out other partners. Eventually, Gerald (who, according to the narrator, has too kind a heart) adopts feral children who had inhabited the sewers into his gang. However, the children are filthy and vicious, with their behaviour leading to the collapse of Gerald's formerly well-managed gang. The people of the community gather to discuss what should be done about the children when the police arrive and break up the meeting. Fearing that the eyes of the authorities (described as "them") have fallen upon the community, many of the narrator's neighbours flee in the following months.
Months go by and society continues to collapse. The feral children are ostensibly under Gerald's control, but often run wild in what remains of the neighbourhood. Water is in short supply, caravans and traders are often attacked, and it is implied that even the government is starting to abandon parts of the city. Emily and the narrator spend most of their time in the flat and are able to interact with the children due to Emily's relationship with Gerald, but both fear an attack in the future, as the children are actively raiding and killing other humans at night. By this point, most of the residents of the neighbourhood have departed for the lands to the north and west of the city, lands from which there is forebodingly no news. Eventually, the children turn on Gerald and attack him, while he remains incredulous that such young children could betray him. Emily is able to save Gerald and hurry him into the flat. Faced with a bleak existence, the small group of Emily, Gerald, Hugo, and the Narrator fall asleep, expecting an attack from the children. The narrator awakes to find that the wall has opened before her and a new world lies on the other side. Emily leads the group through, whereupon they step into a new, better world as the walls dissolve away.
Periodically, the narrator is able, through meditating on a certain wall (see above) in her flat, to traverse space and time. Many of these visions are about Emily's sad childhood under the care of her harsh mother and distant father. At the end of the novel, the main character's strange new family breaks through dimensional barriers via the wall and walks into a much better world.
Author Doris Lessing says this novel grew out of a "very hubristic" ambition to write an autobiography in dreams. [2]
According to Jenny Diski, Emily is partly based on Diski, who lived with Lessing for some years as an adolescent. [3]
"Doris Lessing is not afraid to break through the barrier separating the mainstream from the fantastic, to let go of man's world," writes Marleen S. Barr in her essay in A Companion to Science Fiction. She argues that feminist science fiction novels such as Memoirs of a Survivor provide an alternate viewpoint that "dissolve walls that imprison women within a sexist reality." [4] However, the warping of space and time presented in this novel led scholar Betsy Draine to label it a "failure", saying the shifts between realistic and mystical frames are impossible to follow. [5] The New York Review of Books felt the ending, in which Emily leads the other main characters through the walls into another reality, was "reminiscent of a Technicolor fade-out into the sunset." [6]
The New York Times wrote, "Lessing's message, recognizable from her previous work, is close to W. H. Auden's 'We must love one another or die'." Although we will inevitably be defeated and disillusioned, we still need to care about other people." [7]
Consciousness becomes a physical boundary represented by the wall of the narrator's home: "the rooms and garden beyond it are areas of the unconscious which she explores." [8] The mystical dimension is given the author's tacit approval when she allows the principal characters to escape the dystopian reality by passing through the wall. [9]
Another theme is that of breakdown, both of mechanised Western culture and of adult, mechanical personality. [6]
Doris May Lessing was a British novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia, where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–1969), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II, to the post-war years. Throughout the novel, Billy frequently travels back and forth through time. The protagonist deals with a temporal crisis as a result of his post-war psychological trauma. The text centers on Billy's capture by the German Army and his survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, an experience that Vonnegut endured as an American serviceman. The work has been called an example of "unmatched moral clarity" and "one of the most enduring anti-war novels of all time".
Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta is a 1979 science fiction novel by Doris Lessing, and is the first book in her five-book Canopus in Argos series. It was first published in the United States in December 1980 by Alfred A. Knopf, and in the United Kingdom in November 1979 by Jonathan Cape. Shikasta is also the name of the fictional planet featured in the novel.
He, She, and It is a 1991 cyberpunk novel by Marge Piercy. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1993. The novel's setting is post-apocalyptic America and follows a romance between a human woman and a cyborg created to protect her community from corporate raiders. The novel also interweaves a secondary narrative of the creation of a golem in 17th century Prague. Like Piercy's earlier novel Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), He, She, and It also examines themes such as gender roles, political economy, and environmentalism. In the mid-twenty-first century, Norika is a toxic wasteland. Dominated by powerful corporations known as "multis," the region includes environmental domes, independent "free towns," and the chaotic "Glop," where most Norikans live in violent, polluted conditions ruled by gangs and warlords.
Jenny Diski FRSL was an English writer. She had a troubled childhood, but was taken in and mentored by the novelist Doris Lessing; she lived in Lessing's house for four years. Diski was educated at University College London, and worked as a teacher during the 1970s and early 1980s.
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five is a 1980 science fiction novel by Doris Lessing. It is the second book in her five-book Canopus in Argos series, the first being Shikasta (1979). It was first published in the United States in March 1980 by Alfred A. Knopf, and in the United Kingdom in May 1980 by Jonathan Cape.
Parable of the Sower is a 1993 speculative fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler. It is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth heavily affected by climate change and social inequality. The novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman who can feel the pain of others and becomes displaced from her home. Several characters from various walks of life join her on her journey north and learn of a religion she has envisioned and titled Earthseed. The main tenets of Earthseed are that "God is Change" and believers can "shape God" through conscious effort to influence the changes around them. Earthseed also teaches that it is humanity's destiny to inhabit other planets and spread the "seeds" of the Earth.
Survivor is a science fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler. First published in 1978 as part of Butler's "Patternist series", Survivor is the only one of Butler's early novels not to be reprinted after its initial editions. Butler expressed dislike for the work, referring to it as "my Star Trek novel."
The Four-Gated City, published in 1969, is the concluding novel in British Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing's five-volume, semi-autobiographical series The Children of Violence, which she began, in 1952, with Martha Quest. In The Four-Gated City Lessing moves the setting from Zambesia, a fictionalized version of Southern Rhodesia, to London. Martha "is integrally part of the social history of the time - the Cold War, the Aldermaston Marches, Swinging London, the deepening of poverty and social anarchy." The novel extends into science fiction, depicting a dystopian future following the destruction of Britain.
Microsoap is a children's sitcom, co-written by Mark Haddon and produced by the BBC in association with Disney Channel. A total of 26 episodes were made, lasting over four series, and airing from 1998 to 2001. It starred Suzanne Burden, Ivan Kaye, Paul Terry, Jeff Rawle and Rebecca Hunter. The program aired in the UK, the US, and internationally.
The Good Terrorist is a 1985 political novel written by the British novelist Doris Lessing. The book's protagonist is the naïve drifter Alice, who squats with a group of radicals in London and is drawn into their terrorist activities.
Escape to Last Man Peak is a popular Jamaican novel written by Jamaican author Jean D'Costa. First published in 1975, it chronicles the adventure of ten orphans who embark on a dangerous journey across Jamaica in search of a new home, after a deadly pneumonia epidemic kills the caretakers of their orphanage and propels the country into a state of anarchy and desolation.
Memoirs of a Survivor is a 1981 British science fiction film directed by David Gladwell, with some scenes filmed at the location of Argyle Street, Norwich. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. It is based on the 1974 novel of the same name by Doris Lessing.
The Wall is a 1963 novel by Austrian writer Marlen Haushofer. Considered the author's finest work, The Wall is an example of dystopian fiction. The English translation by Shaun Whiteside was published by Cleis Press in 1990.
The Three Doors is a series of three fantasy novels written by Australian author Emily Rodda. The series follows a sixteen-year-old boy named Rye as he journeys through three mysterious doors in search of his missing brothers. The story takes place on an island called Dorne, located in the same ocean as the land of Deltora, the prominent setting in Rodda's Deltora Quest series. The series was first published in 2011 by Omnibus Books, a corporate division of Scholastic Press. It was published in the United States in October, 2012 and a compiled set was published in 2013.
Ben, in the World is a novel written by Doris Lessing, published in 2000, in which she stages a parody of the 'objectivity' of the narrator's voice. The story delves into the life of Ben Lovatt following the events of the first book dedicated to this character, The Fifth Child.
The Mehlis Report is a book by Lebanese author Rabee Jaber. Published in 2005 in Arabic by Jaber, it tells the story of an architect, Saman Yarid, who is waiting for the United Nations' Mehlis Report to be released in late 2005. The Mehlis Report takes the reader on a journey through Lebanese history regarding the lead up to the release of German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis’ report to the United Nations on October 21, 2005 regarding the February 14, 2005, car bombing assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Planetfall is a 2015 science fiction novel by British writer Emma Newman. It was first published in the United States as a paperback original in November 2015 by Roc Books, and in the United Kingdom by Gollancz in paperback in February 2018. An audio edition of the book, narrated by Newman, was published in the United States by Blackstone Audio in November 2015, and in the United Kingdom by Orion Publishing in December 2017.
The 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the British novelist Doris Lessing (1919–2013) as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny." Lessing was the oldest person ever, at age 88, to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature followed by the German historian Theodor Mommsen, who received the prize at age 85. She is also the third-oldest Nobel laureate in any category. She became the 11th woman to be awarded the prize.