Analysis of Margaret Atwood's "The Year of the Flood"
Julie Stover
Honors 200-012
Essay #3 In Margaret Atwood’s novel The Year Of The Flood she unfolds a bizarre, futuristic world of nature; one in which we see the primal instinct to survive. After a super disease wipes out the vast majority of the population, the few remaining characters endure dangerous creatures, strange weather, and other risky survivors. Why did certain individuals live while others perished? Was it simply fate, or was their survival predetermined by their beliefs? Atwood’s cunning style of writing leads me to believe that both were necessary factors to these characters survival in this version of nature. The Year Of The Flood is set into the future, where conditions are horrible even before the start of the killer disease. Corruption is too common, which includes, rape, murder, and theft in the area known as the Pleeblands (rephrase-awkward). The local police have collapsed due to lack of funds and a private organization called the CorpSeCorps, who is controlled by corporations, have taken the role of law enforcement.. There is facility called Painball, in which condemned criminals have the to option to be killed or join a Painball team. Painball is a game, “You got enough food for two weeks, plus the Painball gun – it shot paint, like a regular paintball gun, but a hit in the eyes would blind you, and if you got the paint on your skin you’d start to corrode, and they you’d be an easy target for the throat slitters on the other team” (Atwood 98). Painball was available to watch on television, similar to a reality show. (total change of subject)There is little nature in this world, species such as tigers and other animals have gone extinct, and scientists have replaced these creatures by gene-splices of other animals such as the lions and lambs to create the liobam. In this distorted world there were groups such as the gardeners. (Weak transition, big jump) The gardeners were a religious group of naturalists. They lived in abandoned
Honors 200-012
Essay #3 In Margaret Atwood’s novel The Year Of The Flood she unfolds a bizarre, futuristic world of nature; one in which we see the primal instinct to survive. After a super disease wipes out the vast majority of the population, the few remaining characters endure dangerous creatures, strange weather, and other risky survivors. Why did certain individuals live while others perished? Was it simply fate, or was their survival predetermined by their beliefs? Atwood’s cunning style of writing leads me to believe that both were necessary factors to these characters survival in this version of nature. The Year Of The Flood is set into the future, where conditions are horrible even before the start of the killer disease. Corruption is too common, which includes, rape, murder, and theft in the area known as the Pleeblands (rephrase-awkward). The local police have collapsed due to lack of funds and a private organization called the CorpSeCorps, who is controlled by corporations, have taken the role of law enforcement.. There is facility called Painball, in which condemned criminals have the to option to be killed or join a Painball team. Painball is a game, “You got enough food for two weeks, plus the Painball gun – it shot paint, like a regular paintball gun, but a hit in the eyes would blind you, and if you got the paint on your skin you’d start to corrode, and they you’d be an easy target for the throat slitters on the other team” (Atwood 98). Painball was available to watch on television, similar to a reality show. (total change of subject)There is little nature in this world, species such as tigers and other animals have gone extinct, and scientists have replaced these creatures by gene-splices of other animals such as the lions and lambs to create the liobam. In this distorted world there were groups such as the gardeners. (Weak transition, big jump) The gardeners were a religious group of naturalists. They lived in abandoned
Cited: Atwood, Margaret. The Year Of The Flood. New York: Anchor Books A Division of Random House, Inc: 2009. Print. “Ararat,” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 19 Dec. 2011. <Dictionary.com