<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>The short story “Theatre 6” is one of three post-apocalyptic short stories included in Sarah Hall’s collection <italic>Madame Zero</italic>, 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?</p>
</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?

Death Is Sacred: Being and Non-Being in Sarah Hall’s “Theatre 6”

East-West Cultural Passage

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"Death Is Sacred: Being and Non-Being in Sarah Hall\u2019s \u201cTheatre 6\u201d"}

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...

Death Is Sacred: Being and Non-Being in Sarah Hall’s “Theatre 6”

Publié en ligne: 13 mars 2024

Pages: 51 - 60

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ewcp-2023-0005

Mots clés
Sarah Hall, being, non-being, life, abortion rights, feminism, post-apocalyptic fiction

© 2023 Maria-Miruna Ciocoi-Pop-Vecsei et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Death Is Sacred: Being and Non-Being in Sarah Hall’s “Theatre 6”

Publié en ligne: 13 mars 2024

Pages: 51 - 60

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ewcp-2023-0005

Mots clésSarah Hall, being, non-being, life, abortion rights, feminism, post-apocalyptic fiction

© 2023 Maria-Miruna Ciocoi-Pop-Vecsei et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Mots clés
Sarah Hall, being, non-being, life, abortion rights, feminism, post-apocalyptic fiction