Margaret Atwood Dystopic World Analysis

Thinking About the Dystopic World Year of the Flood takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, one that has been ravaged by the “Waterless Flood”, which is revealed in the series to be a manmade disease designed to eradicate humans from the planet. While the virus that ravaged the planet and the cults such as God’s Gardeners that arose because of it were created by humans, I still believe that such a dystopia is possible in our current world. In fact, one could even say that many of the dystopic aspects that appear in Atwood’s novel exist in todays current society. For instance, the concept of “pleeblands”, which are areas of lawless land where the poor live, can be seen as the slums of many underdeveloped countries. In many slums throughout

In return, the CorpSeCorps let the pleebmobs run the low-level kidnappings and assassinations, the skunkweed gro-ops, the crack labs and street-drug retailing, and the plank shops that were their stock-in-trade.” (52)

This happens in the slums of our society as well, with crime and corruption running rampant due to lack of enforcement of laws and being aided by the police through bribes. Another aspect of Atwood’s world that can be seen in our own is the mass extinction of animals due to mankind’s tampering with nature. In the novel, mankind’s tampering and disrespect of nature has caused the environment to degrade to the point the many of the natural animals have become extinct. Even the animals remaining risk extinction from the slightest change in the environment, as evidenced by a quote from one of Adam One’s speeches; “we rejoice that they were spared, unless a change in ocean temperature and salinity caused by the great downpour of fresh waters did harm to some Species unknown to us.” (125) While extinction of this level may not have happened yet in our world, it is not a stretch to say that we are certainly on our way there. Time and time again people have warned that we as humans need to take serious efforts to stop the spread of global warming and respect the environment, or face dire consequences. Rachel Carson’s essay Silent Spring paints a picture of a world that has been ruined due to our heavy

They are group of people that are a result of mankind’s tampering with nature and the chaos that resulted from it; they are essentially environmentalists, albeit extreme ones. They believe in nature above all else, and see all of God’s creation as important, to the point that they refuse to eat any meat unless it is absolutely necessary for survival. Whenever they kill something, no matter how significant the creature may be, and no matter if it was intentional or not, they preform a ritual to honor it. They see themselves as the chosen people, who’s responsibility it is to “save” those that they can. The Gardeners have their own mini-society, with its’ own hierarchy and set of rules. Once one has belonged to the Gardeners for long enough and proven their worth, they are given a rank, with the most important becoming Adams or Eves. Each Adam or Eve has a specialty, and has a duty to teach the other Gardeners how to utilize it in the best way. The Gardeners are staunchly anti-materlistic, and believe in only using the minimum comforts needed to survive. They use “natural alternatives” whenever they can, making use of what nature has provided them. For instance, they do not believe in using dryers because “God made the sun for a reason”. (92) Throughout their many hymns and speeches, it is clear that they have both a respect of nature and God,