The Heart Goes Last Literary Elements

Speculative Fiction; Dystopian Fiction

The novel is set in an imagined version of the Rust Belt region of the United States where a financial crash has devastated the local economy.

The story is narrated by a third-person limited omniscient narrator; the point of view switches between Charmaine and Stan.

The tone is conversational and darkly comic; the mood is bleak and oppressive.

Stan and Charmaine are the protagonists; antagonists include Jocelyn, Ed, and Phil.

The major conflict is that Charmaine and Stan want to regain the stability and comfort they've lost. But to attain the illusory security offered by the Consilience/Positron project, they relinquish their human rights and find that they are pawns in Jocelyn's plot to accrue power.

The story reaches its climax when Lucinda Quant breaks the news of the evil things Ed has been doing behind the scenes at Positron Prison and Charmaine and Stan reunite, more devoted to each other than ever.

During her affair with Max, Charmaine contemplates what she would do if Stan found out and became violent. She considers stealing needles from work and injecting Stan in his sleep. This dark thought foreshadows the moment when Charmaine is coerced into giving her husband what she believes is a lethal injection.

Atwood uses comic understatement when the narrator comments, "Being a third-hand Honda, it's no palace to begin with."

Midway through the novel, Atwood alludes to the American celebrities and sex symbols Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, both of whom became cult figures following their premature deaths.

An example of olfactory imagery occurs when Atwood writes that Charmaine "can smell the stale odour coming from her clothes, from her hair, from the rancid fat smell of the chicken-wings place next door."

By signing up for the Positron Project, Stan and Charmaine hope to improve their lives, believing their relationship will be better if they are living in a real house again. However, their relationship falls apart as soon as their living conditions become more comfortable.

Atwood personifies foliage with the line: "Stan found the hedge trimmer in the garage, its blade gummed up with slaughtered foliage." By using the verb "slaughter," Atwood repurposes a term usually reserved for animals and humans.