Survival Takes More Than a Stockpile

Dystopian Discussion No. 1
The Year of the Flood

By Margaret Atwood

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Our first novel in the Dystopian Discussion series is the second book in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. The narrative takes the perspective of two women, Toby and Ren, as they experience life in an environmentalist Christian cult and survive a global apocalypse. Atwood chooses to end the world with a…pandemic! Take a deep breath to recover from any Covid-19 PTSD (which, thankfully, has not wiped out the entire population of earth) and let’s get into the discussion.

The Year of the Flood was not the easiest novel to read. I personally found its content overly vulgar and sexual. Atwood has a reason for being so explicit, however. Cannibalism, violence, and rape belong in stories that portray humanity at its worst. How much worse can it get when the environment is destroyed, nearly all animals are extinct, a government corporation poisons its citizens, and then the apocalypse results from an act of bioterrorism? The character, Crake, generates the pandemic as a means to erase all human life and repopulate the world with a new immortal species of intelligent creature. Yet some humans do survive. The God’s Gardeners cult expected the apocalypse imminently, so they prepared. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually.

How did they do this and how does this connect to the pandemic we are all living through right now?

Survival is a key theme throughout Atwood’s narrative. The novel is not only concerned with the apocalypse, but also what precedes it and the future following after. The God’s Gardeners look forward to a clean slate, when the dystopia will give way to a utopia. I don’t see any sort of utopia resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, but there are certain things we can learn from the approach Atwood’s characters take in weathering the viral storm.

Survival was possible through sustaining one’s whole self. Many people associate doomsday prep with hoarding canned food, and now toilet paper. We are in the middle of our own kind of doomsday, but the emotional and mental toll is just as significant if not more so than the toll of rising coronavirus cases. Covid cases are in the millions, but pandemic fatigue may be in the billions along with growing anxiety and depression.

In addition to physical needs, the God’s Gardeners survival tactics encompassed health for the soul. This is shown by Ren when she reminds herself of a God’s Gardeners proverb just as the pandemic begins: “Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. Which meant that even bad things did some good because they were a challenge and you didn’t always know what good effects they might have” (Atwood  279). Ren was mentally prepared for a challenge. Challenges in life, like Covid-19, can illuminate the things we for which we can be grateful, the light. Ren’s perspective allows me to consider what opportunities I have to “dance” in this season. I can spend more time reading scripture and in prayer. I can make my living space beautiful. I have time in my schedule for cooking delicious meals, for exercise, for rest. There is a lot of dark in a season with a global pandemic, but without those trials and heart aches, I would have missed many good things that come alongside them. This mental and emotional technique is paramount in helping the Gardeners survive.

​Most of us have heard the message of the importance of self-care recently. I would encourage you to take it to heart. It is encouraging to me that Atwood reminds us of this message in her apocalyptic narrative that seems all too relevant now more than ever.

​Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance.
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