Indledning
In the dark world of dystopian fiction, we are presented with undesirable and often frightening societies. These stories can often serve as cautionary tales, as they often reflect some of the darker aspects of our own world.
Margaret Atwood's short story “Time capsule found on the dead planet” from 2009, is one of those tales. Like so many other stories of its kind, Time capsule uses the framework of a dark future world, to comment on current societal issues. What makes Time Capsule different however, is the unique way in which it is written.
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Uddrag
In contrast to the vast majority of other dystopian fiction, the story does not take place in an actual dystopian future.
It is instead set long after the downfall of one such society, and the text takes the form of a time capsule, that is found an unspecified amount of time into the future.
This unique presentation, raises a couple questions about the story’s genre. The text is clearly a short story, but the writing style makes it very hard to pinpoint the genre beyond that.
I personally think that the writing style is most akin to an old myth or legend. More specifically, I think Time Capsule bears resemble to an origin myth.
The origin myth is a myth which purpose it to explain the origin of some feature or concept within the natural world. In Time Capsules case, we are told the origins of the “gods”, money and how it all led to the creation of the “deserts”, and the eventual death of this world.
In addition to this, the story is written in very vague and nonspecific manner, where the language is more symbolic than literal, which is very typical of these types of myths.
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