ASSIGNMENT

PAPER NO XIII – PANDEMIC LITERATURE

TOPIC:– THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD BY

MARGARET ATWOOD

NAME: ANITA JOSEPH

CLASS: MA (PART 2)
ROLL NO – 2317403

ACADEMIC YEAR – 2023-2024

SUBMITTED TO: PROFESSOR – MADHAVI NIKAM

INTRODUCTION:
The Year of the Flood is a novel by Canadian author
Margaret Atwood, the second book of her dystopian trilogy,
released on September 22, 2009, in Canada and the United
States, and on September 7, 2009, in the United Kingdom.The
novel was mentioned in numerous newspaper review articles
looking forward to notable fiction of 2009.
The book focuses on a religious sect called God's Gardeners,
a small community of survivors of the same biological
catastrophe depicted in Atwood's earlier novel Oryx and
Crake. The earlier novel contained several brief references to
the group. The novel is told through the perspective of
protagonists Ren and Toby, with the main characters of Oryx
and Crake, including Jimmy and Crake having minor roles.
Atwood continues to explore the effect of science and
technology that has caused this plagued world, focusing on
the theme of religion through the environmentally focused
religious movement of God's Gardeners.
It answers some of the questions of Oryx and Crake, develops
and further elaborates upon several of the characters in the
first book, and reveals the identity of the three human figures
who appear at the end of the earlier book. This is the second
of Atwood's trilogy, with the final book being MaddAddam.
[Although, Atwood sees them as 'simultaneous' with the three
novels all taking place at the same time and not in sequence.
The story is dystopian/post-apocalyptic science fiction set in
the not-too-distant future after a global pandemic has wiped
out much of humanity. The world before the fall was none too
ideal either, with greedy corporations controlling nearly
everything. Gene splicing and experimentation was rampant,
heinous acts were presented for entertainment, and the world
was in the midst of a complete ecological collapse. This novel
follows two women who have managed to survive the
pandemic, jumping between the day-to-day tribulations after
“the Flood,” and their shared history with the ecological
religious group the Gardeners before human civilization fell
to ruin.

Though presented as a sequel to Oryx and Crake, it’s much

more of a parallel novel, telling the stories of two perspective
characters, Toby and Ren, at roughly the same time as events
in the first novel. In keeping with the first novel, the
perspective of these survivors after the pandemic is used as a
narrative frame. The bulk of the novel’s content takes place
before the pandemic, for a while only offering glimpses into
the lives of these women as they eke out survival in the ruins
of their world..

BACKGROUND:
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian
poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist,
and inventor. Since 1961, she has published eighteen books of poetry,
eighteen novels, eleven books of non-fiction, nine collections of short
fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of
small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won
numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker
Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award,
the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National
Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards.A
number of her works have been adapted for film and television.

Atwood's works encompass a variety of themes including gender and

identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change,
and "power politics". Many of her poems are inspired by myths and
fairy tales which interested her from a very early age.

Atwood is a founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Writers' Trust
of Canada. She is also a Senior Fellow of Massey College, Toronto.
She is the inventor of the LongPen device and associated technologies
that facilitate remote robotic writing of documents. Atwood realized
she wanted to write professionally when she was 16. In 1957, she
began studying at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where
she published poems and articles in Acta Victoriana, the college
literary journal, and participated in the sophomore theatrical tradition
of The Bob Comedy Revue. Her professors included Jay Macpherson
and Northrop Frye. She graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in
English (honours) and minors in philosophy and French.

In 1961, Atwood began graduate studies at Radcliffe College of

Harvard University, with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained
a master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued doctoral
studies for two years, but did not finish her dissertation, The English
Metaphysical Romance. In this novel, the middle of trilogy, Atwood
gives us more detail surrounding the childhood of Crake, highlighting
his connection with the God's Gardeners that inspired his plague, and
the conception of the MaddAddam group. The Year of the Flood uses
alternative perspectives than that of Snowman in Oryx and Crake,
though the character has a minor role. Atwood explains who the
people that Snowman had seen at the conclusion of Oryx and Crake
are, with it being Toby, Ren, Amanda and the criminals they
incapacitate. At the end of The Year of the Flood these survivors,
similar to the end of the previous novel, listen and see a passing group
of people coming towards them, wondering who they could be. Using
the primary religious sect of the God's Gardeners, Atwood presents an
environmentally focused religious movement. Adam One, the
religious leader, leads the God's Gardeners in a pacifist and greener
life style. The novel is littered with his sermons and hymns, where the
religious sect revere environmental activists in their own calendar of
special saints, such as Saint Euell Gibbons, Saint James Lovelock and
Saint Jane Jacobs, amongst others. As a result, the Gardeners do not
eat meat, having taken 'Vegivows', and are horrified by the
carnivorous lifestyle

CHARACTERS AND THEIR ROLES:

Ren - a trapeze dancer and sex worker who works at the
brothel Scales and Tails, who survives the plague by being
isolated in the club's biohazard containment chamber. She had
grown up with the God's Gardeners and is rescued by her
childhood friend Amanda. She previously dated and fell in
love with Jimmy (Snowman) in school.

Toby - a God's Gardener who goes into hiding, escaping a

dangerous stalker by working in a high-end spa, which she
locks herself in to survive the plague.

Blanco - known as the 'Bloat', is the manager of the

SecretBurgers that Toby works at, where he attempts to force
her into sexual slavery.[7] He participates in Painball, as a
condemned criminal, surviving the plague by staying in the
enclosed arena.[8] After this he tries to have his revenge
against Toby, searching and abducting her.

Adam One - the founder and leader of the God's Gardeners,

giving sermons throughout the novel and cautioning the
'Waterless Flood'. Throughout, he professes the theological
practices and beliefs of the religious sect, particularly in songs
from 'The God's Gardeners Oral Hymnbook'.[9]

Minor characters

Lucerne - mother of Ren. She leaves her husband, a

HelthyWyzer scientist, to join the God Gardener's and follow
her lover Zeb.
Amanda - best friend of Ren. Helps her escape the sex-club
Scales and Tails, and is captured by the group of criminals
including Blanco.

Zeb - lover of Lucerne. He is the least committed to the creed

of the God's Gardeners so becomes part of MaddAddam with
other defectors like Crozier and Shackleton.[8]

Crake (aka Glenn) - friend of Ren's at the high school in the

HelthWyzer Compound. He is a friend of Pilar, staying in
contact with the God's Gardeners.[6] He is connected to and
has much knowledge surrounding the religious sect. Whilst
working at Scales and Tails, Ren meets him once again.[4]
The God's Gardeners inspire the Crakers, the humans that
Crake makes, and his plague directly resembles the 'Waterless
Flood'.

Jimmy (aka Snowman) - a lover of Ren's, during their time at

school.

Oryx, Crake (aka Glenn) and Jimmy (aka Snowman) - the

main characters of Atwood's first book in the series Oryx and
Crake, appear in minor roles over the course of the book, with
the protagonists Ren and Toby unaware that these characters
are responsible for the pandemic. While the first book in the
series, Oryx and Crake, is told from the perspective of
Jimmy/Snowman, The Year of the Flood is told from the
point of view of two women, Ren and Toby.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS:
The Year of the Flood details the events of Oryx and Crake
from the perspective of the lower classes in the pleeblands,
specifically the God's Gardeners who live in a commune at
the Edencliff Rooftop Garden. God's Gardeners are a
religious sect that combines some Biblical practices and
beliefs with some scientific practices and beliefs. They are
vegetarians devoted to honoring and preserving all plant and
animal life, and they predict a human species-ending disaster,
which they call "The Waterless Flood". This prediction
becomes true in a sense, as Crake's viral pandemic destroys
human civilization. God's Gardeners have their own set of
saints, all honoured for their environmental activism, such as
Saint Dian Fossey and Saint Rachel Carson.

The plot follows two characters, Toby and Ren, whose stories
intertwine with each other and, at points, with major
characters from Oryx and Crake. Much of the story is told
through flashbacks with the two main characters separately
surviving the apocalypse described in the previous novel,
each reminiscing about their time in the God's Gardeners
religious movement and the events that led to their current
situations. Atwood uses third-person narration for Toby's
accounts and first-person narration for Ren's.

Toby is a young woman who loses her parents under tragic

circumstances that may or may not be due to the corporations
and is forced to live off of the grid in a shady meat burger
joint working as a meat barista at SecretBurgers. She soon
encounters the unwelcome attentions of Blanco, the
psychopathic manager of the chain, who has a reputation for
sexually assaulting and murdering the women in his employ.
Toby is able to escape when a group of God's Gardeners
arrive at the restaurant. She follows them to the rooftop
garden, where she finds her former colleague Rebecca.

The leader of God's Gardeners, Adam One, is admired as a

charismatic holy man within the group, but he is perceived by
outsiders as a cult leader. The novel is filled with sermons and
hymns Adam One gives to the religious sect. Although she is
skeptical, finding it difficult to follow the theology and follow
the religious traditions, Toby becomes an influential member
of the gardeners. She even rises to the official position of an
Eve. Within the sect Toby encounters Ren, a child member of
the gardeners.

Ren joined the God's Gardeners when her mother, Lucerne,

left her HelthWyzer scientist husband after falling in love
with Zeb, a member of the sect. Ren grows up in the religious
sect, befriending Amanda, until Lucerne decides to go back to
the Compounds. Ren goes to school, where she meets Jimmy
(Snowman) and Glenn (Crake), who is particularly interested
in the God's Gardeners. Later, Ren enrolls in a Dance
Calisthenics courses at the Martha Graham Academy, until
Lucerne is unable to pay and she drops out. Eventually, Ren
becomes a sex worker and trapeze dancer in the sex-club
Scales and Tails, part of SeksMart. Here, Ren happens to be
locked in a bio-containment unit in the club called the Sticky
Zone when the pandemic occurs. Amanda rescues Ren from
the club.

Blanco is able to find out where Toby is and raids the

Gardeners. Toby is able to flee, relocating to the AnooYoo
spa. In fear, she changes her outward appearance through
cosmetic surgery to hide from Blanco. Toby barricades
herself in the luxury spa as the plague spreads, utilizing the
skills of foraging she learned with the God's Gardeners to
survive.

Blanco participates in the televised game Painball, where

teams of criminals try to kill each other in the surrounded
arena. Blanco and three companions escape the Painball
forest to find Toby at the spa. They capture and torture Ren
and Amanda. Toby is able to shoot one of the criminals and
free Ren, but the others escape with Amanda. Both Toby and
Ren come together to search for Amanda. Toby poisons
Blanco, and she and Jimmy incapacitate the two criminals.
The novel ends much like the ending of Oryx and Crake, with
the remaining survivors witnessing an unknown group
approach, carrying torches and playing music.
CONCLUSION:
Societal changes based on human action and sexual
objectification of women may not seem to have any
connection or relation to each other, however, Atwell claims
otherwise in her novel. Atwell creates a society in which
women are the most susceptible targets to life itself and
especially to men. Although some of the happenings in the
novel may appear to be far-fetched Atwell attempts to counter
that, saying what she writes is not far-fetched at all but rather
closer than we know. The argument is that in a world that is
focused solely on the well-being of humans and lacking any
touch with outside forces such as the natural environment,
human nature will prevail and we will see huge exploitation
of individual groups. Atwell chose to write her novel
specifically isolating the exploitation of women in terms of
their sexuality, but there are arguably many different
examples of similar happenings today. Atwell successfully
tied sexual objectification to societal changes based on
humans’ actions by telling her story through two female
protagonists, explaining their past lives before the world
started to deteriorate and then the changes that occurred in
their lives after. The contrast Atwell described was vast, the
women talked about their pasts explaining their free-will to
live the way they wanted without fear of anything, much less
death. Atwell was successful in explaining this connection
especially because she went back and forth between past and
present so the connection really jumped out at the reader.
REFERENCES :
1. "The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood".
FantasticFiction. Retrieved 2009-08-08.
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_the_Flood
3. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/29/
margaret-atwood-year-of-flood
4. https://edubirdie.com/examples/the-year-of-the-flood-
analysis/