Exploitation
Exploitation—exercising power over a person to unfairly benefit from them—is a dominant theme in The Heart Goes Last. The novel's dystopian premise sees thousands of Americans falling victim to a financial collapse that devastates the Rust Belt region. Desperately poor and living in fear of gang violence, Stan and Charmaine are willing to give up their freedom in exchange for guaranteed employment and secure housing within the walled town of Consilience. As the story progresses, it turns out that the couple are among many people whose poverty has been exploited for the financial gain of a powerful few. Once inside Consilience/Positron, Charmaine is coerced into euthanizing "undesirables" who attempt to revolt against the totalitarian conditions. Soon, the principle of prison labor that the project is premised on transforms into even-more twisted forms of exploitation, with the selling of body parts and the abduction and brainwashing of women to turn them into sex slaves. In this way, Atwood depicts a dystopian society in which greed fuels increasingly more depraved forms of exploitation.
Loss of Human Rights
The deprivation of human rights is another important theme in the novel. In order to carry out the exploitative aims of the Consilience/Positron project, the organizers make participants sign away their basic human rights. Once inside the walled town, residents are prohibited from choosing their profession or where they will live or contacting anyone outside the town, and they are limited in the media they can consume. Bound by a contract that forces them to labor in exchange only for the basics of survival, people in the program see none of the profit created by their labor and thus have no chance of social advancement or escape. While people like Stan and Charmaine have some awareness that they are accepting these conditions, as the novel progresses, the more sinister implications of their loss of basic freedoms emerge. Because there is no way to leave the project, anyone who doesn't comply is either killed to have their organs harvested or subjected to a nonconsensual procedure that effectively turns them into sex slaves for paying customers. Ultimately, Atwood portrays a nightmarish world in which the restriction of a few fundamental human rights quickly brings about a totalitarian society in which corrupt leaders exercise complete control over the lives of the masses.
Greed
Greed—intense, selfish desire for wealth—is a major theme in The Heart Goes Last. When Charmaine and Stan first learn about the Consilience/Positron project, they are told that it has the potential to solve the issues of crime and unemployment by creating an equal and symbiotic relationship between prison labor and middle-class economic security. As a cofounder, Jocelyn believes that she is engaged in a virtuous project. However, her cofounder, Ed, is more focused on keeping investors happy with ever-increasing profits and expansion to other cities. Driven mad by his desire for greater wealth, Ed branches out into immoral new markets in which he sells the body parts of euthanized prisoners and kidnaps women to turn them into sex slaves. Outraged by Ed's greed, Jocelyn orchestrates his downfall and assumes power over the project. However, Jocelyn is not immune to greed herself. Rather than dismantle the exploitative project, Jocelyn restructures the business, cutting off the most disagreeable revenue streams while continuing to profit from the exploitation of people desperate enough to sign away their freedom.
Infidelity and Devotion
The tension between infidelity and devotion is another major theme in the novel. Atwood introduces the theme early in the book when the narrator comments on how the economic collapse has strained Charmaine and Stan's relationship: Without a home that offers privacy and security, their sex life has suffered, and Charmaine considers the benefits of engaging in sex work as a paradoxical means of helping her relationship. The theme becomes more explicit when Charmaine finds herself hopelessly attracted to "Max," Stan's alternate. Unlike Stan, Max has a confidence and dominance that exposes Charmaine's desire to be sexually submissive. Throughout the affair, however, Charmaine's passion doesn't erase her feelings of devotion to Stan, whom she still loves. When Jocelyn sets up Charmaine to euthanize Stan, Charmaine struggles through with the procedure, ultimately deciding that if she doesn't kill him, someone else will. To make up for putting the couple through such tribulations, Jocelyn pretends to have Charmaine brainwashed into being hopelessly devoted to Stan again. Though he can't forget her infidelity and the fact she believed she was killing him, Stan is pleased that Charmaine has become passionate about him. He also knows he betrayed the relationship in his own way by fantasizing about "Jasmine" and plotting to ambush her. But unbeknownst to Stan, Charmaine never underwent the surgery, meaning she is liable to be seduced by a man like Max again. In this way, Charmaine will continue to struggle with the tension between infidelity and devotion.
Manipulation
Manipulation—controlling or influencing someone through the use of unscrupulous tactics—is another key theme in The Heart Goes Last. The theme first arises when Charmaine and Stan visit the town of Consilience to consider whether they would like to join the project. Believing it is their choice, the couple has been manipulated into signing up; to emphasize how much better life in Consilience would be, the organizers make the couple stay in a "nasty hotel" that is seemingly staged to appear and smell disgusting and sound violent. Once they've joined the community, Charmaine and Stan find that they have become pawns in Jocelyn's plot to undermine Ed's authority. Using Machiavellian cunning, Jocelyn arranges for her husband to start an affair with Charmaine, forces Stan to reenact the affair with her, and then coerces Charmaine into believing she is euthanizing Stan. Jocelyn continues to control others' fates by giving Ed and her husband brain operations that make them become devoted to Lucinda Quant and Aurora, respectively. Ultimately, Jocelyn possesses a sociopathic disregard for the independence and free will of the people around her, manipulating whoever she pleases so she can accrue greater personal power.
The Prison-Industrial Complex
The prison-industrial complex is another important theme in The Heart Goes Last. A term that refers to the overlapping interests and profit-making relationships between government entities, private prison corporations, and various industries that benefit from incarceration, the prison-industrial complex is a system characterized by extensive reliance on imprisonment as a solution to social problems, the increasing privatization of prisons, and the exploitation of prisoners for cheap labor. With the Consilience/Positron project, Atwood depicts a dystopian exaggeration of the real-life complex. Running with the idea that prison labor can sustain a town, Ed and Jocelyn create a walled community where every resident spends half their time laboring in prison, and the other half working another job and living in a comfortable house. What participants don't realize is that the entire community is akin to a prison, as their labor is creating profit in which they do not share. And because no one can leave Consilience and anyone who doesn't comply will be killed, the participants are effectively enslaved by the corporation for the rest of their lives. Through this dystopian premise, Atwood highlights the issue of the real-life prison-industrial complex, which incentivizes high incarceration rates and labor exploitation in a system that many consider akin to slavery.
Surveillance
As a complement to the theme of the loss of human rights, Atwood explores the theme of surveillance in The Heart Goes Last. Surveillance enters the narrative when Stan becomes obsessed with "Jasmine" and tracks her movements by hiding a mobile phone in the seat of the scooter she shares with Charmaine. On the day he plans to ambush the woman he believes to be Jasmine, Stan is confronted by Jocelyn, head of Surveillance at Consilience/Positron. From her, Stan learns that his tracking activities showed up on the mass surveillance network deployed throughout the town. Jocelyn also explains that Charmaine and Phil's entire affair has been captured on CCTV cameras planted throughout the community. She then forces Stan to watch the surveillance footage and reenact the affair, role-playing as each other's spouses. As head of Surveillance, Jocelyn is able to keep watch over all the community's goings on, putting her in an ideal position to manipulate people and orchestrate Ed's downfall. In this way, Atwood shows how the invasion of privacy that comes with mass surveillance precipitates corruption, blackmail, and a perverse amount of power being vested in those who know everyone's secrets.
