Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood in the Age of the Anthropocene

Abstract

The Anthropocene, a phenomenon that is too complex to be entirely grasped and which instead only marks itself through signs like climate change and the other environmental disasters, offers challenges to the treatment of the natural environments by humans.  Accordingly, in order to manifest the Anthropocene epoch through literature, writers need to address a variety of the interrelated issues to be able to render the complexity of the phenomenon. In The Year of the Flood, Atwood places the issue of the Anthropocene in the context of social, political and economic conditions and attempts to narrate the story of the Anthropocene as a part of cultural memory to encourage the readers to take responsibility towards the environmental degradation.