Genre
Science Fiction / Speculative Fiction
Setting and Context
Set in the year 2049 on a space station called CIEL and also on Earth.
Narrator and Point of View
Told in first person from the point of view of Christine Pizan and in third person from the perspective of an unnamed narrator.
Tone and Mood
Horrific and self-deprecating at first but also optimistic and funny.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist: Joan, Christine Pizan; Antagonist: Jean de Men
Major Conflict
Most of human civilization resides in a space station under the rule of a tyrannical administration that exploits the last of Earth’s resources. The inhabitants are mutated and sexless beings who are euthanized after they reach the age of fifty. The rest of the humans live on the wasteland that is now Earth with Joan leading the rebellion against Jean de Men, the leader of CIEL.
Climax
The climax occurs when Jean de Men mutilates Leone and eats her uterus and shortly after he is revealed to be a woman.
Foreshadowing
The calamitous occurrences from the past in the opening foreshadow the dark existence now led by inhabitants of the universe.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
The novel references the Bible, classical mythology, and also Shakespeare. It alludes to Joan of Arc as the protagonist shares similarities with the historical figure.
Imagery
“Through the wall-size window, I can see a distant nebula; its gases and hypnotic hues make me hold my breath. What a puny word that is, beautiful. Oh, how we need a new language to go with our new bodies. I can also see the dying ball of dirt. Earth, circa 2049, our former home. It looks smudged and sepia. A fern perched in the window catches my eye. Well, what used to be a fern. I never had a green thumb, even those long years ago when I lived on Earth. This fern is mostly a sad little curve of stick flanked by a few dung-green wisps; it wilts and droops like a defunct old feathery cock.”
Paradox
“People are forever thinking that the unthinkable can’t happen. If it doesn’t exist in thought, then it can’t exist in life.”
Parallelism
“…tragedy and comedy, love and hate, life and death, were never really opposites; when language and being and knowing themselves are revealed to have been blinded by dumb binaries. We’re living one version of ourselves. You are simply this version of yourself. Endless matter changing forms. In another version of yourself, exactly next to this, you are dead matter.”
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“A laughable Noah’s Ark—all the undesirables cloned and perfected!”
Personification
“The sun’s eye smote.”
