Ethics for Survival in Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood
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Abstract
Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood presents a story about ethics and survival in the wake of apocalypse. Environmental ethics is the key factor that allows God’s Gardeners to survive in both the pre- and post-apocalyptic time. The group champions a non-materialistic, self-sufficient lifestyle and a belief in the equal and intrinsic value of all lives. The chance of survival and salvation is credited to the group’s environmental ethic which bears a resemblance to that of the deep ecology philosophy propagated by Arne Naess. Nonetheless, it must be noted that Atwood portrays God’s Gardeners in an equitable manner, despite their commendable belief system, so as to foreground the complexity of the actual application of ethics and call into question the perfectibility of human beings, human society, and ethics itself.
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