Prisoners of the Present: Tense and Agency in J. M. Coetzee’s „Waiting for the Barbarians” and M. Atwood’s „The Handmaid’s Tale”
Prisoners of the Present: Tense and Agency in J. M. Coetzee’s „Waiting for the Barbarians” and M. Atwood’s „The Handmaid’s Tale”

Summary/Abstract: [...] This paper sets out to observe the particularities of the use of the present tense in Waiting for the Barbarians in comparison with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), a work that both Cohn and Phelan list as another example of sustained use of the homodiegetic simultaneous present. In particular, the focus will be on the relationship between the choice of tense and the scope of the narrator’s agency. Phelan (1994: 223) has persuasively argued that the device deprives Coetzee’s narrator of possible teleological designs he might entertain regarding his narrative, as his not knowing where he will end up does not allow him to fashion the story to serve a final purpose. Proceeding from this premise the question can be raised if there is a correlation between the narrator’s insufficient mastery over his tale and the agency he is entitled to in the story world; further, we may enquire if similar observations can be made about Atwood’s novel.[...]

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