Reading Response: Atwood

As someone with minimal experience with Science Fiction or Fantasy literature, delving into Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood has been really invigorating for me. Familiarizing myself with the foreign vernacular, behaviors and belief systems of The Gardeners keeps me on my feet; as I read I’m continuously adding to a mental Venn diagram comparing their society with ours. And yet, despite the challenge of keeping track of all these distinctions, the strangeness of their world has an exciting and liberating effect on me as a reader; I like that it provides such an easy escape from reality.

Still, I’m conflicted by the appeal of The Gardener’s lifestyle and what I consider their detestable belief systems. In other words, the anarchist farmer in me would love to squat an abandoned building decked out with a rooftop garden, beehives, mushroom dens, etc., living simply and harmoniously with my environment. And yet, I don’t think I’d tolerate the social atmosphere of The Gardener community for more than a few days. My skepticism towards organized religion surely plays a part, but I’m critical for deeper reasons as well: the drastic power imbalance and social stratification of members, for one, and the fact that this hierarchy is corroborated by their insistence on “avoiding the original sin of desiring too much knowledge” (102). In other words, faith and acceptance are encouraged over epistemological endeavors.

Another alarming aspect of Gardener lifestyle is their upholding of superficial gender binaries. Even though we have only encountered female narrators so far in the novel, it is clear that men are the subjects of their community and women the objects. Indeed, this characteristic highlights some of the more frustrating similarities between our cultures, which for fantasy’s sake, I would have hoped had been overcome in theirs. I’m grateful, at least, that Toby, one of the primary narrators, shares my skepticism and resistance to their indoctrinating ways, as is revealed by her response to the following interaction with fellow Gardener Nuala:

“You’ll want to grow your hair,” said Nuala. “Get rid of that scalped look. We Gardener women all wear our hair long.” When Toby asked why, she was given to understand that the aesthetic preference was God’s. This kind of smiling, bossy sanctimoniousness was a little too pervasive for Toby . . . (46)

Indeed, Gardener values are rife with contradiction. For example, while they manipulated Toby’s fear from her sexual enslavement from Blanco to get her to join their cult in the first place, once a member, their addressing of sexual harassment shifted toward utter laxity. When Toby approaches Pilar, with whom she has a relatively close bond, about Mugi sexually assaulting her, Pilar’s response is coded and non-committal: “We never make a fuss about such things . . . There’s no harm in Mugi really. He’s tried that on more than one of us – even me, some years ago . . . The ancient Australopithecus can come out in all of us. You must forgive him in your heart” (104). Because Pilar’s response is seriously problematic in a wide variety of ways, I will focus simply on its reflection of The Gardener’s hypocritical tendencies. They show zero tolerance for meat-eating, for instance, despite such behavior being present in our Australopithecines ancestors, but non-consensual sexual acts warrant, in their opinion, not just acceptance, but forgiveness.