Margaret Atwood's 'Year of the Flood'. Meanings of Climate Change

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, University of Bayreuth, language: English, abstract: In her book The Year of the Flood (YOF) the Canadian author Margaret Atwood gives us an insight in how our future might look like and this foresight is not so unthinkable at all. The novel is placed in what is today the United States of America, probably somewhere on the East Coast. The time it is set in a not so far away future where the Apocalypse had already occurred. The plot is situated around the two main characters Toby and Ren who give us insights into the pre-apocalyptic time throughout the book. The environment which is portrayed is disturbed in many ways: the effects of a global climate change are apparent; society has split up into different groups. YOF is centered in the pleeblands where the lower social classes are situated. The picture of the society we get is that it is in an ‘unhealthy condition’. It has mainly lost its ethics and moral and there is an increased willingness of violence not only by individuals but also by the leading CorpSeCorps forces, a private security firm. Eventually, the whole human race is extinguished by a pandemic and only a few survive. Next to Toby and Ren, the survivors mainly consist of the members of eco-activist groups. Now, they have to face the question of survival and have to deal with a new species of ‘man’ – the Crakers.