An Eco-critical Interpretation Of Margaret Atwood's The Year Of The Flood

Margaret Atwood(1939-) is a prolific Canadian writer who enjoys world-wide fame. Atwood is best known for her novels, and most of her novels express her concern about the world. Since early 1980 s ecological crisis has become a major concern in her works, and she has created a number of this kind of works, such as The Handmaid's Tales(1985), Oryx and Crake(2003), and The Year of the Flood(2009), which are labeled speculative fictions by Atwood herself.The Year of the Flood is the 12 th novel of Atwood, which is also the second book of an anticipatory trilogy with the first one being Oryx and Crake(2003). The story alters between two female survivors of the Waterless Flood, and from their reminiscence and narration, readers come to know a dystopia world and a special religious group�God's Gardeners.This thesis tries to analyze The Year of the Flood from the perspective of ecocriticism. On the basis of representing the ecological crisis embedded in the novel, this thesis analyzes the underlying reasons for the ecological crisis, and then points out possible solution to the crisis.This thesis consists of three chapters in addition to Introduction and Conclusion. The introduction covers three parts, a sketch of Atwood, a literature review of The Year of the Flood and a brief introduction of the development of ecocriticism and connotation of it.Chapter One presents the ecological crisis embodied in the narration. On the part of nature, the climate is in a mess, and natural disasters come one after another; wild animals either become extinct or suffer biotechnological metamorphoses which are conducted by man at their will. In the social context, the situation is even worse. The society is bifurcated into strict class divisions. Under the coercion of Corporations, democracy and civil rights could not get guaranteed. Women are commercialized. And cultural violence is pervasive in the society.Chapter Two explores the roots of ecological crisis, mainly from three aspects. The primary social problem is the disordered social condition. The surveillance of Corporations and CorpseCorps over ordinary people is panoptic, which results in the fact that people could seek self-realization from nothing but physical satisfaction. The second problem is that technology and science are highly developed in the pre-catastrophic world, and what's more dangerous is that irresponsible men are in charge of technology and science. Consumer culture is another severe social problem leading to ecological crisis. The consumption pattern in The Year of the Flood is a typically capitalist one, in which the consumer need is created and stimulated rather than appeased by commodities. The production continues at the cost of big waste in sources.Chapter Three analyzes the possible solution to the ecological crisis. In the novel, most of the survivors are pre-members of a religious group�God's Gardeners, which means that their non-anthropocentrism philosophy and the ecological holism belief provide people with a possible way out of the ecological crisis.The conclusion part summarizes the discussions in the previous chapters, and points out that, with The Year of the Flood, Atwood rings an alarm bell for men and highlights the urgency for a healthy ecology that is able to sustain humanity.