Dictatorship In Erika Gottlieb's The Passion Of New Eve

Erika Gottlieb, an academic scholar, warns against totalitarianism and dictatorship in her definition of dystopia. “Dystopian fiction looks at totalitarianism and dictatorship as its prototype, a society that puts its whole population continuously on trial, a society that finds its essence in concentration camp, this is, in disenfranchising and enslaving entire classes of its own citizens a society that, by glorifying and justifying violence by law, preys upon itself”(Gottlieb). Gottlieb compares dystopian literature to dictatorship. Carter also comments on dictatorship in The Passion of New Eve through the character Zero. Eve, after Mother turns her into a woman, is captured by Zero. Zero is a psychotic man obsessed with killing the film …show more content…
In a turn of fate, Eve discovers that the film star she had a crush on since childhood is actually a man. Together the two live in questionable bliss in the desert for a few days. Although the two are slowly dying from dehydration and starvation, the two find solace in each other. In this part of Carter’s book, readers can finally see Eve viewing and enjoying herself as a woman. The dissociation Eve used to feel between her new body and mind rapidly disappears during her time in the desert with Tristessa. “Yet we peopled this immemorial loneliness with all we had been, or might be, or had dreamed of being, or had thought we were- every modulation of the selves e now projected upon each other’s flesh, selves- aspects of being,”(144). She begins to not only accept her new life as a woman but also enjoy the benefits of her new body. This acceptance of her new sense of self is unfortunately short lived. A colonel of an army discovers the two and, believing that Tristessa must have been taking advantage of Eve, kills Tristessa in retaliation. The colonel’s action speaks volumes of the meaning Carter is trying to get across with The Passion of New Eve. By creating a colonel of