Coping With Grim Dystopia: A Re-Reading of The Fire-Dwellers

Abstract

Canadian writer Margaret Laurence’s novel The Fire-Dwellers has long been critically dismissed as too paltry and insignificant to warrant in-depth treatment. This paper attempts to identify the novel as a significant one in theme and technique incorporating traits of postmodernism and expresses the need for a deeper critical evaluation of the work. Through the novel, Laurence records the terrors of the 1960s counterculture, one of the most turbulent times in recent history. She portrays the struggle of the individual to cope with the fires of an increasingly violent and insane dystopic world which fragments the self. Laurence, in the novel, develops an innovative narrative technique to recreate the protagonist’s fractured consciousness in the fragmented cultural context.