A Narratological Study Of Margaret Atwood's The Year Of The Flood

Margaret Atwood(1939-)is a prolific Canadian writer of poetry,fiction,prose and literary criticism,with her passion in different genres of literature and constant concerns on social issues.In recent years,Atwood has transferred her focus to the relationship between human beings and nature,and to the question of how technology would change people's future.This shift leads to her MaddAddam trilogy.As the second part of the trilogy,The Year of the Flood holds a unique place,with its detailed descriptions of God's Gardeners and its different perspectives from two women protagonists.Based on classical and spatial narrative theory,this thesis explores the narrative techniques Atwood adopts from three perspectives:narrative localization,narrative time and narrative space.First,this thesis aims to analyze how the variable focalization enables the readers to understand the central image of the Garden from the perspectives of an adult and a child.Moreover,readers can learn about the characters' doubts towards the Garden and its profound influence on them.The analyzation of narrative time from "order","duration" and "frequency" further explores the techniques Atwood uses to control the flow of time and the effect they achieve in presenting the changes in the two focal characters.The analyzation of narrative space focuses on the spatial structLire and the connections between the implied meanings of different spaces and its theme---the relationship between human beings and nature.This thesis aims to illustrate the point that the narrative structure in The Year of the Flood does have a close relation to its theme and the Garden.The narrative techniques Atwood employs plays an indispensable role in revealing the tense relatioiiship between human beings and nature and in triggering readers to reflect on the ecological crisis.