How does Margret Atwood and Jenny Offill use fragmented temporal structures to convey human anxiety and a sense of responsibility in the Anthropocene?
I want to compare both novels where Oryx and Crake use fragmented timelines and memory shifts to reflect the consequences of our choices that will lead to ecological devastation. While Weather focuses more on short stories like narrative structure to mimic human thought and anxiety of the current Anthropocene.
I think there’s an argument here. It’s true that:
* time is central to the novel as a form, and different novel genres have different ways of imaginatively warping time
* time is central to the cognitive problem of grasping the Anthropocene and of imagining agency within it (as Bracke, Haraway, Ghosh, et al. argue)
* these two novels experiment with time/temporality in different ways, presumably in order to spark readers’ imaginations re: the cognitive problem mentioned above.
But you’ll need to say more about the “comparison and contrast.” To me, the contrast is especially important, since the two novels do orient themselves to time in very different ways. As you research, look for critics who help you frame these differences in clear, useful ways.