The Mask of The Vigilante: Age, Gender, and Justice in Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead

Abstract

Polish author Olga Tokarczuk raises questions about the moral and ethical concerns regarding vigilantism in her novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. The novel presents an alternative perspective regarding truth and justice, and interconnects this with the themes of revenge and ecological activism. This paper will examine how Olga Tokarczuk portrays the narrator, Janina Duszejko, who uses negative ageist stereotypes to mask her vigilante identity. Robert N. Butler’s concept of “ageism” provides the basic framework for analyzing the text
and understanding how the concepts of age, gender, and crime overlap in the novel. The paper will further draw upon Italian Criminologist Cesare Lombroso’s work on female criminality, and will thereby explore how the narrator’s maternal instincts influence her involvement in crime. It will also examine how the narrator uses her old age and gender to disguise her vigilante identity, enabling her to carry out the murders in a clandestine manner.