Surviving Oppression: Political Transformation in a Fractured Society

In a world where silence is survival and loyalty can be weaponized, the act of bearing witness becomes an act of courage. Exposure, the final volume in Sue Parritt’s dystopian trilogy, unfolds in a future Melbourne where order is enforced with chilling efficiency. At the heart of this unraveling system stands Emma Cartwright, a 71-year-old woman who has already endured loss, betrayal, and the slow erosion of trust. Her journey in this concluding chapter is not one of explosive rebellion, but of quiet, deliberate resistance shaped by emotional resilience and political clarity.

Emma’s strength is not in her defiance alone, but in her ability to endure the daily theatre of pretense. As a doorkeeper—both a literal guardian of regulated spaces and a symbolic figure positioned between compliance and subversion—she walks a knife-edge. The personal cost is steep: sleepless nights, postponed love, the burden of secrets. Yet it is in these very sacrifices that her humanity sharpens. When confronted by brutality and systemic cruelty, she does not retreat into despair. Instead, she acts—sometimes subtly, sometimes boldly—but always with the weight of moral reckoning behind her.

The oppressive structure of the Melbourne City Productive Citizens Bureau reflects a society so consumed by surveillance and control that even empathy has become a liability. In such an environment, the notion of political transformation seems implausible. And yet, it is Emma’s unrelenting hope, her belief in truth and accountability, that becomes a quiet engine for change. Her decision to record the history of Citizens’ Voice is not just archival—it is an act of legacy, a refusal to let the erased remain forgotten.

Throughout Exposure, Parritt explores the corrosive effects of fear and power, particularly in how institutions isolate individuals to maintain authority. The elimination suite—hidden, whispered about, eventually exposed—becomes a haunting symbol of what happens when bureaucratic detachment replaces ethical conscience. That it is discovered behind doors Emma herself once guarded underscores the paradox of her role: she is both enforcer and liberator, complicit and subversive.

But perhaps the most poignant theme running through the novel is survival—not just of individuals, but of ideals. Survival here does not look heroic. It looks like compromise, aging, damaged relationships, grief, and the persistent act of remembering. Emma's story is one of navigating contradiction without surrendering to cynicism. Her final act—retirement not into silence, but into authorship—signals a shift from surviving within the system to rewriting its narrative from the outside.

In portraying political transformation not as a sudden rupture but a series of small, often painful reckonings, Exposure leaves us with a sober but hopeful truth: meaningful change requires not only protest, but patience. And sometimes, the most radical thing one can do is to stay, to endure, and to speak the truth when the world has trained you to look away.