Lessing
Most utopian or dystopian novels provide a social critique by demonstrating what is best or what is wrong, and point to ideals whose adoption will correct social ills and injustices, thereby establishing a new (better) social order. Memoirs of a Survivor appears to offer this promise, yet escapes doing so, offering no solid mandate of political ideologies, except perhaps creativity. Instead, Lessing offers a way of thinking about the difficulties of social change. Memoirs of a Survivor critiques a government of Talkers who do not see or hear the people they are supposed to govern and protect. In the absence of a concerned government, a new social unit emerges possessing tremendous potential, but its development is simultaneously enriched and restricted by old hierarchies. Lessing suggests, as many have before her, that we bring the past into any future that we will inhabit. But her means of presenting this axiom, and potential for change, follow a trajectory unlike that of many social critiques. Bordering on fantasy, Memoirs of a Survivor provides us with two worlds separated by only a wall; one world is "real" and the other is a world of disordered rooms, gardens and symbolic images and activities.