Decoding the dystopia of The water knife

  • Taylor Sheppard

Western Sydney University thesis: Master's thesis

Abstract

In dystopian fiction, texts contain speculations of a nightmarish future, which can be uncovered through a close literary examination. Paolo Bacigalupi's timely dystopia The Water Knife offers insights into the environmental issues around water resourcing that currently shape the southwestern United States water crisis, imagining a future for that crisis in social upheaval, unending drought, the displacement of populations and bitter political-and para-military- contests over water. This project aims to conduct a reading of The Water Knife as a contemporary dystopia, and to contextualise that reading by use of the non-fiction texts about the Southwestern United States water crisis. In what ways does this text demonstrate the dystopian genre is rising to the challenge of environmental crisis?
Date of Award2019
Original languageEnglish

Keywords

  • Bacigalupi
  • Paolo. The water knife
  • dystopian fiction
  • environmental degradation
  • droughts
  • water supply
  • social change
  • fiction

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