Page - 36 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

MARGARET ATWOOD’S MADDADDAM TRILOGY Assuming a meta-perspective, Atwood’s trilogy takes up the phenomenon of the apocalyptic cultural imaginary, both on the story level and on the level of genre. The first novel, Oryx and Crake (2004 [2003]), begins in the chronolog- ical middle of the story with a description of a post-apocalyptic scenery: “On the eastern horizon there’s a greyish haze, lit now with a rosy, deadly, glow. Strange how that colour still seems tender. The offshore towers stand out in dark silhouette […] the ersatz reefs of rusted car parts and jumbled bricks and assorted rubble sound almost like holiday traffic”.15 The typical description of a post-apocalyptic landscape filled with absence is rendered through the eyes and mind of Jimmy/Snowman, who, as a typical “last man figure”, func- tions as the perceiving character or focaliser16 of the first novel. Like most of the central characters, he has two names: Jimmy in the pre-apocalyptic world, and the name he has given himself to assume a new identity, Snowman, in the post-apocalyptic present, alluding to the mysterious Abominable Snowman. In his mind, he constantly shifts back and forth between his reconstructed past and the post-apocalyptic present. Mediated by his memories and judgements, the reader learns about the state of the pre-apocalyptic society and about the why and how of the apocalyptic event, which has been caused by the scientist Glenn/Crake, who wilfully engineered a deadly virus killing almost the entire hu- man population on earth. In the second novel, The Year of the Flood (2010 [2009]), two narrators pro- vide different perspectives mainly on the unfolding of the plague itself. While Ren’s account is rendered in the first person, Toby’s perspective is mediated by an external narrator, assuming her point of view. The doubling of narrative perspective highlights the narrative construction of pasts and realities, or of collective worlds that constitute realities. Before the breakdown, Toby and Ren were at some point in their lives both part of the eco-religious group the God’s Gardeners, and through their narrative point of view, the world of the Garden- ers as a space of difference in pre-apocalyptic society is represented very in- tensely in the second book. The final part of the trilogy, MaddAddam (2014 [2013]), focuses on narrative world building in the post-apocalyptic world, in which there are only very few human beings left, together with a new biotechnologically enhanced humanoid species created by Crake, the so-called Crakers. Again, it is told by an external narrator and Toby is the main perceiving character, this time however with sev- eral others co-creating and shaping the narrative. Here, even more than in the 15 Atwood 2004, 5. 16 A focaliser character is the character from whose perspective the story is told, although that character is not necessarily the narrator. 36 | Stephanie Bender www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 31–50