“Animals R Us” — A Study Of The Question Of The Animal In The Year Of The Flood

Honored as the Queen of Canadian literature, Margaret Atwood is the winner of Booker Prize(2000) and has been nominated for Nobel Prize for literature several times. Published in 2009, The Year of the Flood is another masterpieces of hers. As the sequel to Oryx and Crake(2003), the novel speculates on possible conflicts of tomorrow’s world on the global scale, among which the question of the animal is in the central position. As literary imagination, the novel participates in the discussion of the question of the animal by exposing the nonhuman animal victimization, reflecting on the human and nonhuman animal relationship, and constructing the human animal.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One provides a general introduction to Margaret Atwood and her novels, conducts a literature review of the novel The Year of the Flood and presents Atwood’s concern for the animal, theoretical perspective and layout of the thesis. Chapter Two demonstrates the nonhuman animal victimization in the novel and explores the parallel between the victimization of the nonhuman animal and human others specifically in terms of experimentation, consumption and power control. Both human and nonhuman animal victimization share the same root of persecution because of the category to which they belong. Chapter Three focuses on the reflection on the human-nonhuman animal relationship by discussing the life and creeds of the God’s Gardeners in a world created by their own theology. Thinking themselves as the aware ones out of the world dominated by anthropocentric thinking, the Gardeners criticize human superiority, recognize the connection with the nonhuman animal, and propose to build a fellowship among all the creatures. Chapter Four gives a detailed analysis of the meaning of the human animal that the novel would finally arrive at. The non-anthropocentric construction of the human animal can be unveiled from three relationships, namely the human animal’s reversed position with the nonhuman animal, the circular progression that they are embodied in, and the individual-population relationship of the human animal.Chapter Five is the conclusion of the thesis, in which the author of the thesis points out the multi-leveled discussion of the question of the animal in the fictional world combined with multi-media interaction with the reader in the real world further explore the function of literature in presenting ethical choices. Margaret Atwood, as an author and ethicist, via criticizing and reforming ethical order, demonstrates in The Year of the Flood, the unique function of literary fabrication in the discussion of the question of the animal.