‘You just know when the world is about to break apart’: Utopia, Dystopia and New Global Uncertainties in Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army

Abstract

In her article ‘Survivor’s Tale’ Sarah Hall, the author of The Carhullan Army (2007a), states that ‘[f]or its speculations to be taken seriously, dystopian fiction must be part of a discussion of contemporary society, or the wringing of present jeopardy for future disaster’ (Hall, 2007b). Raffaella Baccolini expresses a similar sentiment asserting that the function of dystopia ‘is to warn readers about the possible outcomes of our present world and entails an extrapolation of key features of contemporary society’ (2003, p. 115). The Carhullan Army can be seen as a proper attempt to imagine a possible and plausible future for the historical circumstances under which the author is writing. In the future society depicted by Hall, one can identify an amplification of contemporary Britain, a dystopian portrayal of what it might become, crippled by economic collapse, fighting resource wars and introducing increasingly draconian legislation to control a deteriorating domestic security situation, all set against a backdrop of escalating global warming and rising sea levels.