The Corporations are a totalitarian regime in the world The Year of The Flood and naturally have an extensive control over most industries and businesses in the novel whether it be security, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and even the sex market. This also means they have considerable influence in the lives of Flooders. Here we look at the world and the Corps’ influence through Ren’s life:
Ren is born and lives in the Corporations’ Compounds because her father works for Helthwyzer and all employees of Helthwyzer and other Corps-controlled scientific enterprises lived and worked in closed communities created by the Corps to isolate them from the outside world (which indubitably creates a group of elite and elitist attitudes).
Ren and her family live comfortably, as the Corps provide everything for their employees: housing, a school system for children, a considerable amount of wealth seeing as Ren’s mother Lucerne doesn’t have to work and lives a pampered life—she can afford to go to go to AnooYoo for spa treatments whenever she pleases.
Lucerne falls in love with God’s Gardener Zeb and leaves the Compounds with Ren to live with the God’s Gardeners, which feels little influence from the Corps because it is a religious cult and one that the Corps respect because it would be bad for it’s reputation to get in the way of a group with “God” in its name.
When Lucerne leaves Zeb and the God’s Gardeners to crawl back to Compounds husband, the Corps power and influence becomes very apparent in Ren’s new life. Ren’s identity (as someone who was born to a Corps employee) allows her to re-enter the community without any problems. Lucerne finds Ren’s cell phone, which ren has been using to communicate with her best friend Amanda, who is living with the God’s Gardeners. Lucerne disposes of the phone immediately and warns Amanda to dispose of her phone too—there is a great deal of surveillance at the Compounds and if the Corps ever found the phone, Ren would get into serious trouble.
Ren attends the school set up by the Corps, and eventually attends Martha Graham Academy. She attends a job fair and claims to not be a very valuable employee for more serious companies because she isn’t a “numbers” or science person, something valued by the Corps as it is constantly improving and advancing the technology available (294).
One of the businesses at the job fair is Scales and Tails, a, well scales and tails, fetish strip-club-brothel. Scales and Tails is a part of SeksMart, the sex market controlled and regulated by the Corps after the Corps “outlawed the pimps and street trade—for public health and the safety of women” (7). Ren sees a job at Scales as a great opportunity: Scales provided health benefits and a dental plan (“so it wasn’t like being a prostitute”), it “took care of you” and provided its girls with “good food, a doctor if you needed one, and the tips were great,” and Mordis who really liked Ren from her dance audition was kind to her (294, 7). The Corps’ SeksMart ensured that prostitutes like Ren would receive health services and protection from professional abuse from what would be a pimp.
*All quoted references were made from:
Atwood, Margaret. The Year of the Flood. New York: Random House, 2009. Print
