Reflexos da contemporaneidade: maternidade em O Conto da Aia, de Margaret Atwood, e em Westworld, de Jonathan Nolan e Linda Joy

Abstract

With technological advances, human relations have suffered serious interference. The world here and now has evolved, carrying questionable principles in various sectors of humanity, including conception and the generation of life, and, concomitantly, the relationship between mothers and their children. These new visions of society have resulted in various readings of the present world through the writings of various writers, screenwriters, in various artistic ramifications. In this Course Conclusion Paper, two of these works that reflect a possible future for this postmodern universe were verified: Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale (2017) and Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s television series Westworld (2016-). In this sense, this study aims to analyze motherhood in the context of science fiction, specifically in these two texts. For theoretical foundation, regarding the studies of science fiction, the readings of Raymond Williams (2011) were important. Feminine theories, such as Simone de Beauvoir’s (1967), Michelle Perrot’s (2017), and Marciano Vidal’s (2005) were also analyzed. This study, therefore, concluded that motherhood, in addition to affecting the development of the characters in the plot, appears as a reflection of the dehumanization of our current society that values individualism.