A Study Of Margaret Atwood's View Of Animal Rights In MaddAddam Trilogy

Margaret Atwood(1939-),crowned as "the queen of Canadian Literature",is one of the most versatile and prolific female writers in contemporary literature.She has repeatedly made observations about human relationship to animals in her works,which is an important ramification of ecocriticism as well as environmental ethics.This thesis explores Margaret Atwood's view on animal rights reflected in three of her novels,namely,Oryx and Crake(2003),The Year of the Flood(2009)and MaddAddam(2013).The thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter One presents an introduction to Margaret Atwood and her works.It also offers an overview of Margaret Atwood studies and her concern with animals.Then it explains the structure of this thesis.Chapter Two,Three and Four constitute the main body of the thesis.Chapter Two investigates how human maltreat nonhuman animals by utilizing science and technology and Crake 's utopian way to eliminate human-over-animal hierarchy in Oryx and Crake.Atwood argues against the so-called shallow environmentalism that tries to be panacea for drastic unbalance between human and animal.Chapter Three focuses on God's Gardeners'attitude and behavior towards animals in The Year of the Flood:vowing to become vegetarians,they appeal for stewardship instead of ownership of the world as well as biodiversity.It is indicated that more deep thought is made on animal rights so as to find a remedy to humanity's illness on the backdrop of Peter Singer and Tom Regan's animal rights theory.Setting against Cary Wolfe's animal rights theory,Chapter Four reveals the stern realities in MaddAddam.Decentered as subjects and dethroned from their mastership,human sapiens are in danger of extinction.On the contrary,the world constantly runs on its own track as the course of evolution of Crakers and other genetically modified hybrid animals,such as the pigoons,are out of human control.The only means for human beings to survive is through "tans-species affinity" between human and animals.Atwood tends to take the questions of animal rights seriously as a penetrating problem for reflection,not as a ready-made ideological position.Chapter Five concludes that the MaddAddam trilogy reflects that Atwood has constantly updated and refined her view on animal rights.By setting her characters in a post-apocalyptic world,Atwood intends to give recognition to animal rights and offers wise suggestions for her contemporaries.