Storytelling as survival in Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" and "The year of the flood"

Abstract

This thesis examines Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, speculative fiction novels by Margaret Atwood. I argue that storytelling is a means of survival in both novels, since protagonists rely on telling their own stories in order to be able to deal with their situations of survivors of apocalypse. First, I discuss how storytelling works as a theme in both novels, adopting Linda Hucheon's and Patricia Waugh's considerations on fragmented narratives. Second, I articulate both novels self-awareness narratives with dystopian theory, based on the notions by Tom Moylam, drawing on his concept of critical dystopia. Finally, I consider the ways in which Atwood rewrites the traditional narrative of apocalypse in the two novels. In this thesis I propose a reading of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood as counterpart novels in the sense that, when read together, they amplify the discussion of the dystopian scenario presented. Storytelling as survival resonates in the many narrative levels of both works and I argue that even though the connection between storytelling and survival is a common theme in the two texts, it is worked differently in each of them. Oryx and Crake presents a discussion on the impossibility of telling a story straightforwardly and on the consequences of a society which devalues storytelling. The Year of the Flood, in turn, explores storytelling as a means of conveying survival knowledge and as well the consequences, both positive and negative, of the sharing of experience through oral stories.