Research background:
Dudek locates the role of the child protagonist in critical dystopia as central to the masked utopian reading that the text invites: ‘an impulse whose imperative it is to see difference and to resist uniformity, into a dystopian space’ (2005: 65). Ming Tan argues that the role of the child resistor protagonist in dystopic spaces is a vehicle for contemporary adult concerns: ‘this phantom – the child who never existed … is often indicative of fears for the future. Child sacrifice is a common trope in our society … beneath it lurks questions of desire, identity, and humanity’ (2013: 55).'