“How would you know if you were the last man on Earth?” A Comparison of Margaret Atwood’s and Cormac McCarthy’s Post-Apocalyptic fiction Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz vorgelegt von Lucy STELZHAMER am Institut für: Anglistik Begutachter: Ao. Univ. - Prof. Mag. Dr. phil. Martin Löschnigg Graz, 2016 STATUTORY DECLARATION Ich erkläre ehrenwörtlich, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig und ohne fremde Hilfe verfasst, andere als die angegebenen Quellen nicht verwendet und die den benutzten Quellen wörtlich oder inhaltlich entnommenen Stellen als solche kenntlich gemacht habe. Die vorliegende Fassung entspricht der eingereichten elektronischen Form. I hereby declare that the submitted work is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original and the result of my own investigations. Where I have consulted the work of others, my sources are clearly stated and referenced. Graz, 14.06.2016 _____________________________ (Lucy Stelzhamer) Acknowledgments I want to thank my family for their continuous support and encouragement; in particular, I am grateful to my father for always believing in my strengths and for providing me with the chance of fulfilling myself: Danke Papa! I would also like to thank my supervisor Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. phil Martin Löschnigg for his support, guidance, and understanding during the process of writing my thesis. Thank you for introducing me to the world of post- apocalyptic fiction. My appreciation goes out to my friends for their encouraging words and their company. Thank you for understanding my absentmindedness during this chapter in my life. I am indebted to C. for believing in me when I couldn’t. Thank you all! At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. –Albert Schweitzer Table of Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 2. Theoretical Background – Dystopia and Post-Apocalypse ............................................. 3 3. Plot and Narrative Structure ............................................................................................... 9 3.1. Oryx and Crake ................................................................................................................. 9 3.2. The Year of the Flood ...................................................................................................... 10 3.3. MaddAddam ..................................................................................................................... 11 3.4. “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy ............................................................................. 11 4. Analysis .................................................................................................................................. 13 4.1. Religion and Spirituality ............................................................................................. 13 4.1.1. Finding Hope in Religion .......................................................................................... 14 4.1.2. Religion Misused as a Means to an End ................................................................... 31 4.2. The Role of Women ...................................................................................................... 37 4.2.1. Is a Bad Mother Worthy of Our Sympathy? – Motherly Malfunction in the Novels ....................................................................................................................... 38 4.2.2. Ecofeminism and the Exploitation of Women .............................................................. 57 4.3. Nature and Science .......................................................................................................76 4.3.1. One Step Ahead Equals One Step Back – The Drawbacks Of Science .....................76 4.3.2. An Ecocritical Approach – A Return to Nature and a Fearful Outlook to the Future ...................................................................................................................... 84 5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................92 6. Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 94 ABBREVIATIONS The Road TR Oryx and Crake OC The Year of the Flood YF MaddAddam MA 1. Introduction "Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave." — Cormac McCarthy (The Road p. 169 ) "After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? Because it is." — Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake p. 429) When I started studying English back in 2009, one of my major drives was my passion for literature. However, while writing this thesis, I often found myself in doubt of the purposefulness of literature in general, and my diploma thesis in particular, especially when compared to applied sciences. However, in the midst of the writing process, I started to understand that literature and the arts are a mouthpiece for humanities’ concerns. Dennis Sansom argues that “the artist’s imagination, especially in literature, pictures what can happen…enables us to imagine what the pure reason of science and the practical reason of moral universalizability cannot enable us to know” (Sansom 2007:3). Worldwide epidemics, nuclear disasters, and radioactive incidents, terrorism, thousands upon thousands of people fleeing their home countries due to inhuman treatment and ongoing wars – in 2016, it seems that end of the world is nearer than ever before. Without any doubt, humanity is constantly being exposed to continual unrest, and in a society that has been undergoing tremendous upheavals, post-apocalyptic and dystopian novesl are more popular than ever. The amount of literature and media concerned with apocalypses has dramatically increased. It seems that readers are especially interested in literature which deals with the question: “What is going to happen after the end of the world as we know it?” The novels I deal with in my thesis can be seen as a warning of what will happen to the earth and humankind if we continue 1 to live the way we are used to. To some extent, they offer solutions and new ways of thinking about our behaviour. Margaret Atwood, undoubtedly one of Canada’s most prominent writers, has published more than 30 books, among them several dystopic novels. Her most prominent is The Handmaid’s Tale, which was published in 1985. In 2016, she released another dystopic novel, The Heart Goes Last. In this thesis, I will deal with her dystopic MaddAddam trilogy, which includes: Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013). In these three novels, Atwood creates a terrifying future landscape, and a world which has been subjected to extended consumerism at the cost of both humanity and nature. Cormac McCarthy has written about rising and falling civilizations a lot in his border trilogies, but The Road is his first novel to deal with a post-apocalyptic world. It was published in 2006 and has achieved great popularity, which consequently led to the book being awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The Road paints a picture of a deserted microscosm, with a father and son wandering in an abandoned world, presumably destroyed by a nuclear disaster– the only “good guys” left on the road. In this thesis, I want to take a deeper look at the dystopic societies created by Atwood and McCarthy. The main purpose of this thesis is to compare and contrast Cormac McCarthy’s The Road with Margaret Atwoods trilogy, which includes Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam, by examining certain thematic aspects, namely, the role of religion, women, and nature in those four novels. First, I will give a brief overview of the novels’ plots, their narrative structure, and their settings. Since it is impossible to summarize the content of four novels in detail, this section will simply provide a short but necessary glimpse of the plot in order to facilitate the understanding of my thesis statement. The second part of the thesis will provide a short definition of dystopian science fiction and discuss how it has evolved, in order to clarify the term, and provide examples of other similar works. Furthermore, it will describe the development of utopian and dystopian fiction as a genre and then proceed to give a definition of post- apocalyptic fiction. The third part of this thesis will consist of a thorough analysis of the novels. It will place the most emphasis on how humanity is presented within the novels, as well as on what values humans attach great importance to, in particular, religion, the 2 treatment of women, and nature. I will discuss these aspects with regard to their effects on the post-apocalyptic society in order to obtain a more understandable picture of the fictive societies the authors have created. Ultimately, this analysis will attempt to achieve a better understanding of the post-apocalyptic worlds world created by Cormac McCarthy and Margaret Atwood. 2. Theoretical Background – Dystopia and Post- Apocalypse The term ‘utopia’ was coined by the English politician Thomas More in 1516, when he published his literary work Utopia. Its title was compounded from two Greek words: “no” (ou”) and “place” (“topos”) and therefore can