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Death Is Sacred: Being and Non-Being in Sarah Hall's "Theatre 6".
- Source :
-
East-West Cultural Passage . Jun2023, Vol. 23 Issue 1, p51-60. 10p. - Publication Year :
- 2023
-
Abstract
- The short story "Theatre 6" is one of three post-apocalyptic short stories included in Sarah Hall's collection Madame Zero, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013. The story is inspired by the real-life case of Savita Halappanavar, who died of septic shock at Galway University Hospital in 2012 because of being denied an abortion on grounds of septic miscarriage. The text paints a dystopian vision of a not so far away future where the Hunter fetal care act legislatively places the life of unborn babies higher than the one of mothers. The protagonists are a genderless anaesthesiologist, Dr. Rosinski, and a nameless patient, brought to a London hospital in septic shock, following a denied abortion in spite of a miscarriage suffered several days before. The time of narration is uncertain; however, the story is generally taken to be placed in a future where present-day anti-abortion tendencies have taken over the British judicial system. The story discusses the being/non-being dichotomy from a variety of perspectives: life-death, morals-hypocrisy, religion-secularism, male-female, empathy-bureaucracy, truth-duplicity. The ultimate question the text raises is what or whose life is sacred in a world that has jettisoned all semblance of sanity? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 15836401
- Volume :
- 23
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- East-West Cultural Passage
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 176011718
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.2478/ewcp-2023-0005