Identity in Doris Lessing’s Space Fiction By David Waterman

Chapter 2

Helpless Ignorance, Helpless Awareness?: Social Identit(ies) in The Memoirs of a Survivor

L’Histoire ne peut se faire que par des asociaux sans lesquels il n’y aurait pas de changements; en même temps, il n’y a pas de société possible, par définition, avec les asociaux.

—Eugè ne Ionesco

The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) is a novel about fear, especially fear of freedom, and the games we all agree to play as a means of coping with, of reducing, of denying, our fear. General anarchy is the funda­mental social problem which provides the setting for the novel, with the ongoing breakdown of public services and administrative authority, none of which is surprising given Lessing’s warning, throughout her work, that civilization as we know it rests on a very fragile foundation.