Girlfriend in a coma by Douglas Coupland

Girlfriend in a coma novel written by Douglas Coupland was published in 1998. This utopian novel this utopian novel is a twist between reality, dystopia and begins with a group of adolescents in the 1970’s. In a sudden turn of event a young girl by the name of Karen, the main character started having dystopian visions of the future “Dystopian literature has been characterized as fiction that presents a negative view of the future of society and humankind”(Janet Witalec). Karen foreseen that she would fall into a coma, she gave her child father a letter outlying her dystopian version of her dreams. Karen wanted to prevent this nightmare from occurring. She told her boyfriend that she wants to sleep for twenty years to avoid this dystopian dream. Karen ends up falling into a coma a short while after as she had predicted. Karen was comatose for seventeen years and during that seventeen years Richard who is left to raise the couples child on his own, while Karen is in coma. Richard’s emotional state starts to take a toll on him; during this time Richard is struggling with an addiction while waiting for Karen to wake up out of her coma. Karen whom awakes seventeen years later from her coma, she had the mind state of her teenage years. Karen finds difficulty in accepting and adapting to her current society. Karen finds it hard to adapt to things because she is focused on a utopian version of what she expects the world to be. Karen goes on to speak about everyone in society wanting to work and not enjoy the simple things in life “Nobody seems to be able to endure simply being themselves, either- but at the same time they’re isolated. People work much more, only to go home and surf the Internet and send e-mail rather than calling or writing a note or visiting each other. They work, watch TV, and sleep. The whole world is