Global warming has been a strong presence in the social debate for the last couple of years. Many people, both politicians, experts and regular citizens, seem to have many different opinions about the severity of global warming. The United Nations held a climate change conference, commonly known as COP15, in Denmark in 2009 as an attempt to adopt a plan of action. In that connection Helen Simpson wrote the short story “Diary of an Interesting Year” for the American magazine The New Yorker. “Diary of an Interesting Year” is a humorous post-apocalyptic story that begins in February 2040 from where it extends over nearly one year where the reader gains an insight into a world that has sustained the severe consequences of the
As a last resort, the narrator gets M. to beat her up and finally she looses the baby. M. gets drunk and the narrator kicks him down from the tree, where they sit. She wraps the remains of the baby in a shirt and decides to bury it along with the diary: “sorry I couldn’t let you stay on board, but there’s no future for any baby aboveground. I’m the end of the line!” The plot of the story is told through a series of diary entries making it an epistolary text. A diary is always written with a first person narrative and the point of view is very personal and subjective which can leave the reader uncomprehending to the plot because what you write in a diary is often internal and implicit – something only the writer understands. Another characteristic for a diary is that the writing is primarily based on feelings that are not intended for others to read and that fact makes it a very honest and personal genre. When using a diary as a fictional genre you can write it exactly as you see fit and create interesting characters by defining their feelings. Simpson uses the genre to bring more realism and to immerse the reader into the narrator’s universe. “Diary of an Interesting Year” is in many ways a dystopian text, where the society can be seen as the antagonist that is actively working against the protagonist’s aims and desires. The story is clearly meant to be critical of society as it dramatically depicts the potential