49 pages • 1 hour read
Margaret AtwoodThe Heart Goes Last
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Posidollars
Once they decide to sign up for the Positron Project and live their lives in Consilience, Stan and Charmaine are given a stipend of posidollars. These posidollars can be spent at any stores in Consilience, or to order things from the corporate online catalogue. Consilience is a corporate-run town, and in this way, it is more of a product meant to extract maximum profit than an actual community. The posidollars play an important role in this process, symbolizing corporate rule and exploitation. It is established several times throughout the novel how profitable the project is, yet none of that profit trickles down to the people producing it, because they are paid in a currency that has no value outside of Consilience.
This serves a dual purpose. First, it is a means of social control, as it ensures all members of Consilience remain poor unless they stay in town—while they are not allowed to leave anyway, limiting their access to resources provides further incentive. Second, it creates a market with no competition and over which they have complete control. It allows them to effectively create an economic system in which they pay everyone in a fake currency that has no real value, to buy goods that they produce, while keeping all the real profit for themselves.
Confined Spaces
Throughout the text, Charmaine and Stan continually find themselves in confined or restrictive spaces: their small Honda, a prison cell (or their home, which becomes equally confining), the town of Consilience, being strapped to a medical table, or placed in a tightly packed shipping crate. This motif of confinement reflects the lack of control they have over their lives, and how they either have no say in what is happening to them, or are presented with a decision that is no genuine choice at all.
The novel opens with them stuck in their cramped, smelly car. Stan cannot find work, they struggle to sleep, and it makes them constantly irritable. At one point, Charmaine suggests they go for a jog to cheer themselves up and to give them some energy, but Stan can only scoff at the idea because it is impossible. The car is the only barrier between them and the violent roaming gangs, and they cannot afford to leave it unattended. On top of that, ironically, the car does not even provide the usual freedom a car would, because they cannot afford the gas to travel across the country where it is rumored things are better. Thus, the cramped, oppressive interior of the car reflects the lack of options in front of them.
The confinement of the car is replaced by a different kind when they sign up to join the Positron Project. The choice to sign up is not really a choice at all—they are starving and homeless, and now they are promised food and shelter—and the initial restrictions seem like a fair trade-off (e.g., what does it matter if they cannot leave when they do not want to?). However, these restrictions quickly mount: They can only consume corporate-curated media, they are under constant surveillance, and productivity quotas always increase. It is also not long before Charmaine is spending subsequent months inside a prison cell, while Stan is made a prisoner in his own home. Again, the confined spaces reflect their lack of agency as they become Jocelyn’s pawns in her attempt to bring the Positron Project down from the inside. Even when Stan finally escapes Consilience, it is in a tightly packed box while wearing an uncomfortable costume. Even freedom is not his choice, as he is coerced into it and can see no other option.
Possibilibots
Possibilibots (also known as “prostibots”) are a line of sex robots that symbolize male desire for dominance and control. They come in a variety of models, ranging from generic, mass-produced ones on the low end, celebrity lookalikes in the mid-tiers, and custom, made-to-order models on the high end. While the low-end models are essentially expensive sex toys—they do not come with programmed personalities, respond to touch, or look like a real person—the features that come with the mid- and upper-tier models reveal their true intent: providing a completely subjugated woman that satisfies the most toxic and misogynistic elements of male desire.
This becomes evident in the many discussions the male characters have about women and possibilibots. Frustrated by his lack of control over Charmaine and Jocelyn, Stan reflects that “[m]aybe all women should be robots” because “the flesh-and-blood ones are out of control” (393). One of the engineers working on the bots agrees, adding that the trouble with “some of the real ones, [is] there’s no Turn-on button” (396). However, even having a woman completely subjugated to male needs and desires is not enough: The higher models even come with a feature that allows them to feel pain, suggesting that physical dominance is desirable as well.
While the supporters of the bots argue that their existence will cut back on real-life violence against women, the evidence suggests otherwise. When his Charmaine replica-bot malfunctions, Ed turns his sights on the real thing. His plan involves kidnapping and brainwashing her with a neurosurgical procedure so that she is forced to fulfill his every perverse wish. Thus, rather than providing an outlet, the possibilibots encourage and exercise the most dangerous and misogynistic elements of male desire.
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By Margaret Atwood
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