ABSTRACT
As happened in The Handmaid’s Tale—in which the epilogue points to the reconstruction of the values behind Gilead—MaddAddam has in its hopeful and utopian ending the seeds for the original dystopia in its narrative. Thus, this chapter analyzes the ideological position of MaddAddam in the construction of human and posthuman identities with special attention to gender roles and relationships. Moreover, as a dystopia with an ethical purpose of warning, MaddAddam is sending a message of social criticism that is analyzed in depth. The first section centers on how the characters represent the human and the posthuman being, the novel’s attitude toward human imbrication with technology, and, through a narratological approach to different sections of the novel, whose voice is heard and what the effect of this changing perspective represents. Issues such as how the novel depicts environmental damage; the relationship among time, nature, myths, history, and identity; and MaddAddam as an example of a cli-fi novel in the Anthropocene era are approached in the second section. Finally, in the last section, the ending of the novel is analyzed as a crucial part to decide both the ideological message MaddAddam conveys and a more specific generic classification of the novel within the utopian field.
