Research Question: How does Margret Atwood and Jenny Offill use fragmented temporal structures to convey human anxiety and a sense of responsibility in the Anthropocene?

(Some of these sources are subject to change but I feel overall confident with my first three sources)

• de Freitas Massuno, Tatiana. “The Wish to Stop Time: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Journal of Big History, vol. 4, no. 1, 2020, pp. 13–20, https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4170.

Tatiana, the author of this article, employs in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake to use fragmented temporal structures to embody the disorienting experience of human anxiety amid ecological catastrophe and the Anthropocene’s challenge. Tatiana mentions the novel juxtaposes Snowman’s fractured, liminal present that is marked by the “zero hour”, a suspended time that denotes both a beginning and an end. It jumps between moments played as flashbacks to a human altered past setting a destabilized linear progression. Atwood’s narrative disrupts chronological time to reflect the collapse of the human centered historical narrative. I can correlate this into my research paper to argue Snowman’s fragmented memories and the return to the “zero hour” amplify the anxiety and temporal dislocation and the ethical dilemma of balancing human needs with long term environmental health in a post apocalyptic world where these boundaries begin to blur.

• SNYDER, KATHERINE V. “‘TIME TO GO’: THE POST-APOCALYPTIC AND THE POST-TRAUMATIC IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S ‘ORYX AND CRAKE.’” Studies in the Novel, vol. 43, no. 4, 2011, pp. 470–89, https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2011.0057.

Kathrine V. Snyder’s analysis in Margret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake views the novel through the lens of trauma theory which emphasizes the fragmented, doubled temporality that mirrors Snowman’s disrupted consciousness. Snyder argues Atwood’s narrative structure alternates between a post apocalyptic present and a pre-apocalyptic past which aligns with trauma characteristics of temporal delay and the interplay of remembering and forgetting. This form of fragmentation embodies Snowman perfectly and mimics how humanity views the ecological devastation and ethical responsibility in the Anthropocene. Where the mass of individuals tend to be aware of the ongoing ecological crisis but because of the anxiety of the scale of the mass of the problem makes us want to forget about it and push it away into the back of our mind. Snyder highlights how Snowman is portrayed both as a witness to and survivor of personal grief that is connected to the huge loss of humanity. The temporal disruptions, such as memory blanks and repeated traumatic scenes, evoke the ethical complexity of living with the consequences of human-made apocalypse

• Kruger, Katherine. “Aging through Precarious Time: Maintenance and Milling in The Cost of Living and Weather.” Poetics Today, vol. 44, no. 1–2, 2023, pp. 89–110, https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-10342099.

Kahtrine Kruger explores how Deborah Levy’s The cost of living and Jenny Offill’s Weather uses fragmented narrative temporalities to represent midlife aging amid an environmental crisis and an unstable economic state. Kruger uses the terms “Maintenance” and “Milling” to represent these temporal structures, they disrupt traditional progress driven narratives comparing it to structures such as the Künstlerroman structure. Kruger emphasizes the endurance through repetitive care and aimless waiting as a response to uncertain futures shaped by unstable economic status and climate anxiety. Kruger connects these forms to broader feminist and critical theories on time, care, and labor.

• Caracciolo, Marco. “Short Forms for Eco-Anxiety: Cognitive Realism in Climate Fiction.” Theory Now (Online), vol. 8, no. 2, 2025, pp. 10–29, https://doi.org/10.30827/tn.v8i2.30745.

Marco Caracciolo offers a detailed exploration of how fragmented temporal structures in contemporary climate fiction represent the embodiment of the pervasive human anxiety and sense of responsibility characteristic of the Anthropocene. Caracciolo argues that Offill’s narrative structure of short fragmented paragraphs and aphoristic statements mirror the attention span induced by online media and the influx of overwhelming climate related information. This fragmentation effectively conveys the phenomenology of ecological anxiety. Offill uses the present tense narration and disjointed sentence structure to reflect the disoriented mental state as she juggles with parenthood, being there for her brother, and the broader ecological crisis, emphasizing the intimate entanglement of individual responsibility with planetary scale threats

• Sylvia Mayer. “Narratives of Resilience in Times of Climate Crisis: Angry Optimism and Utopian Minimalism in Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 and Jenny Offill’s Weather.” Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2025, https://doi.org/10.47060/jaaas.v6i2.227.

Sylvia Mayer argues that Offill’s novel, through disjointed diary-like entries, vividly convey the pervasive climate anxiety experienced by individuals immersed in the present moment of an escalating ecological crisis. This narrative form of fragmentation mirrors the mental and emotional confusion and distraught caused by climate change. Mayer highlights how Offill’s portrayal moves beyond despair by fostering a form of “angry optimism” encouraging a relational ethic grounded in solidarity and collective responsibility.

 How does Margret Atwood and Jenny Offill use fragmented temporal structures to convey human anxiety and a sense of responsibility in the Anthropocene?

https://jbh.journals.villanova.edu/index.php/JBH/article/view/2508

https://cuny-hc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_informaworld_taylorfrancisbooks_10_4324_9781003605515_9_version2&context=PC&vid=01CUNY_HC:CUNY_HC&lang=en&search_scope=IZ_CI_AW&adaptor=Primo%20Central&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,Anthropocene,%20Weather,%20Jenny%20Offill&offset=0&pcAvailability=true

https://cuny-hc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_proquest_ebookcentralchapters_31309128_9_36&context=PC&vid=01CUNY_HC:CUNY_HC&lang=en&search_scope=IZ_CI_AW&adaptor=Primo%20Central&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,Anthropocene,%20Weather,%20Jenny%20Offill&offset=0&pcAvailability=true/ 

https://www-jstor-org.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/stable/41319888?sid=primo&seq=2

https://read-dukeupress-edu.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/poetics-today/article/44/1-2/89/365622/Aging-through-Precarious-Time-Maintenance-and

• de Freitas Massuno, Tatiana. “The Wish to Stop Time: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Journal of Big History, vol. 4, no. 1, 2020, pp. 13–20, https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4170.
• Lehtimäki, Markku. “Living on Multiple Planes: Daily Life, Global Crisis, and Narrative Fragmentation in Jenny Offill’s Weather.” Nature and Narrative, 1st ed., vol. 1, Routledge, 2025, pp. 188–209, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003605515-9.
• Lehtimäki, Markku. “Daily Life and Global Crisis: Human Experience and Narrative Fiction in the Age of the Anthropocene.” Storying the Ecocatastrophe, edited by Katarina Leppänen and Helena Duffy, 1st ed., Routledge, 2024, pp. 25–44, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032726953-2.
• SNYDER, KATHERINE V. “‘TIME TO GO’: THE POST-APOCALYPTIC AND THE POST-TRAUMATIC IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S ‘ORYX AND CRAKE.’” Studies in the Novel, vol. 43, no. 4, 2011, pp. 470–89, https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2011.0057.
• Kruger, Katherine. “Aging through Precarious Time: Maintenance and Milling in The Cost of Living and Weather.” Poetics Today, vol. 44, no. 1–2, 2023, pp. 89–110, https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-10342099.

The majority of my sources are derived from the Hunter Libraries one search engine because I’ve used the search engine before for previous research papers and I felt most comfortable navigating it to find the necessary sources I need to help articulate my argument. I did try using the other search begins like the JSTOR search engine and works similarly to the One search engine to find specific or niche topics. The key words I would rotate around would be “Anthropocene”, “Time”, “Temporality”, “Weather”, “Jenny Offill”, “Oryx and Crake”, and “Margaret Atwood”. I tried to focus on more broad searches and quickly skimmed through the sources and narrowed the ones that would best fit under the topic of my argument. I might tweak the questions that I created just a little bit as I keep searching for more sources to articulate the best argument I can make.

    In chapter 2 of Jenny Offill’s Weather, the novel’s fragmented structures begin to expand more than just showing Lizzie’s everyday life and starts to blend with her growing climate anxiety. It presents this by showing how climate anxiety and global chaos are starting to creep in more and more into her everyday thoughts. Offill greatly shifts the narrative compared to the first chapter — moving from the focus of how our everyday responsibilities preoccupy us from facing other global crises, to now showing how difficult it is to separate our personal worries from the ever so inevitability of the issues in the Anthropocene.

    Lizzie’s awareness of the world’s environmental crises deepens and she gets more involved with Sylvia and her podcast. What once started as a simple favor to respond to listener emails, exposed Lizzie to questions that steamed from fear and warnings of the global crisis that would slowly start to invade Lizzie’s own thinking. It becomes evident that it increasingly gets more difficult to ignore the realities of climate change as it starts to affect people around the world. On page 88, it talks about Lizzie was forced to learn about climate departure and even talked about it with her husband Ben, Sylvia comments on this saying “Lizzie’s becoming a crazy doommer.” This moment serves as a turning point and signals us that Lizzie’s thoughts are absorbing more of these anxieties on top of her already preexisting ones. The fragments continue to alternate to describing Lizzie’s everyday life with spiraling fears about ecological disaster. Offill does this to depict how impossible it becomes for Lizzie to separate her personal life from planetary fear. Climate change begins to no longer be something that she can push into the background of her mind and has begun to weave into her daily routines.

    Lizzie in this chapter represents how many of us feel with the current global situation we are currently living in. With the internet being so accessible to anyone, many of us have seen or heard the current trajectory our planet is heading towards as climate change worsens. On page 72, it talks about people who are sick about being lectured to about the melting glaciers and this red faced man asked “what’s going to happen to the American weather?” Many of us only begin to worry when the crisis feels close to home, much like how it starts to affect Lizzie’s daily routines. This connection between her growing anxiety and the public’s growing fatigue shows how Offill uses Lizzie as a reflection of our collective tendency to look away until the consequences begin to touch our own lives.

    Chapter 2 of Weather shows how impossible it becomes to keep global crises separate from the everyday rhythms of life. Through fragmented narration, Offill illustrates the way climate anxiety bleeds into Lizzie’s ordinary thoughts, transforming simple tasks into moments of existential dread. Offill is able to capture a universal reality of living in the current Anthropocene, where the world’s unavoidable problems become imminent.

   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.

    Within Weather’s first batch of narrative fragments, Jenny Offill crafts a portrait of contemporary life defined by constant motion and pressing responsibilities. Her protagonist, Lizzie Benson, seems just like your everyday average person. She works at a university library, a mother who cares for her son, a support wife, and a sister who worries about her brother’s sobriety. Through Offill’s introspective style of writing, Lizzie in a way serves as a mirror to us in how we juggle everyday tasks while only intermittently confronting larger crises. This narrative structural choice encapsulates how the majority of us are so occupied by our day to day lives it majorly occupies our minds leaving little room to fully engage with the problems of the Anthropocene.

    Much of Lizzie’s attention is consumed by ordinary but demanding roles she has to carry. She worries about her brother’s road to recovery, making sure to take care of her son, being emotionally present within her marriage, and still be able to work. While these responsibilities don’t seem very dramatic in the large scheme of things, it still requires constant energy and attention at almost every given moment. Offill presents these everyday pressures as the realities of being alive where every one of us must choose what to give our attention to. Lizzie’s urgency is focused on what feels most immediate. Through this, Offill demonstrates how survival in the present often overrides concern for the future.  In Lizzie’s world, personal stability becomes a priority, even when we are aware that much bigger threats are looming outside the frame of our daily routines.

    Despite how often Lizzie is exposed to these looming crises, she rarely pauses long enough to engage with them on a deeper level. Even when Lizzie is constantly exposed through Sylvia’s podcast and answering her emails for her, those thoughts only really seemed as brief interruptions that fade away quickly when other tasks demand her attention. This is the emotional reality many of us experience today. Oftentimes we constantly encounter headlines about global disasters, but we never truly have the time or focus to fully absorb what it means for our future. Offill’s episodic like narrative structure captures this perfectly. The scattered fragments and abrupt shifts between topics mimic the overwhelming nature of just getting by in the present while the future still presses on. In this way, Lizzie’s life becomes a commentary to the problem with the Anthropocene, where awareness does not always lead to action. It isn’t because we don’t care but more so how modern life is always in a constantly quick rhythm pace, it leaves little to no room for us to think about  anything beyond what is immediately in front of us.

    Rather than Lizzie being portrayed as someone who is cold hearted and doesn’t care about the crisis at hand, Offill reveals how caring about the future and acting upon it gets buried beneath the challenges of simply getting through each day. The Anthropocene requires us to think of it in a planetary scale, however Lizzie’s life remains rooted in the immediate tasks of parenting her son, managing work, and keeping her brother in check. Part one suggests that the greatest obstacle to address climate change is our inability to slow down long enough to imagine a different future. Lizzie’s story becomes a mirror of self reflection that if we want to confront the Anthropocene, we must first carve out space in our lives to look beyond the urgent demands of the present.