Maria Anna Banaś
The College of Foreign Languages
The Technical University of Silesia
Gliwice, Poland
Homo Hierarchicus in Modern Utopia
(on the Basis of The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood and The Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell)
Abstract: The paper explores the hierarchical model of society as shown in the dystopian novel The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood and in one of the narratives of Cloud Atlas – Orison of Sonmi 451 by David Mitchell. The chief aim of the paper is to identify both similarities and differences manifested in the construction of the social world. A special emphasis has been placed on the role of a hierarchical order present in these narratives which has a direct impact on the structure of communities operating within the social world. In the analysis the author refers to the theory of a French sociologist and anthropologist Louis Dumont, who sees hierarchy as a fundamental principle organizing social life typical of traditional societies and perceived as an anomaly and deviation in Western culture, and to the model of social structure as shown by Jacek Szmatka, who sees it as an indispensable tool in grasping and understanding processes taking place within the community.
Keywords: sociology of literature, utopia, social stratification
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No. 36 (2018)
Published: 2018-09-28
10.31261/errgo
English
Język Polski