Page - 40 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

On the whole, Oryx and Crake and the second novel, The Year of the Flood, point out the major shortcomings of the pre-apocalyptic world ruled by global capital: it is a world in which monetary profit and efficacy determine all values, including the value of human and non-human life. Owing to a lack of spirituality in this world of big business, nothing can be sacred (apart from monetary value perhaps). In- stead, an overruling positivism justifies the supremacy of the natural sciences that work towards fantasies of complete mastery over nature, and whose findings can be turned into profit. In an argument with her husband on genetic engineering, Jimmy’s mother declares: “You’re interfering with the building blocks of life. It’s immoral. It’s … sacrilegious.”30 The lack of sacredness here stands in harsh oppo- sition to other worldviews and world versions of the novels, such as that of the eco-religious sect the God’s Gardeners, whose world is depicted very prominently in The Year of the Flood. Tate even goes so far as to argue that “[a] debate on what might be considered to be ‘sacred’ – life, community, art or a shared history of the planet – is fundamental to Atwood’s trilogy”.31 The trilogy certainly seeks to explore how human beings and collectives create values in their attempt at meaning-making via discourse and storytelling, which results in the production of different coexisting worlds with their respective maps of morality and values. In parallel to its biblical original, the apocalypse also functions as a moral structuring device, expressing their differences in worldmaking and morality. THE APOCALYPSE AS A MORAL STRUCTURING DEVICE In total, there are at least four different but partly overlapping belief systems with their respective moral compasses in The MaddAddam Trilogy: neoliberal capitalism, the natural sciences, the eco-religion of the God’s Gardeners, and what can be summed up under “the arts”, represented mainly by the “words person” Jimmy and on a metafictional level by the novels themselves. The apoc- alypse and what follows makes them and their narrative strategies of worldmak- ing visible and functions as an ethical testing ground for their maps of morality. It is fairly obvious that Crake’s plans to re-create a “better” humanity have failed in certain respects, not least owing to inconsistencies in his worldview, which os- cillates between a critique of techno-scientific capitalism and a deep alliance and indebtedness to it.32 However, it is impossible to simply depict him as the villain of the novels, owing to the ambiguous portrayal of the post-apocalyptic set- ting in the last novel, MaddAddam.33 Despite some critics arguing that Atwood’s novel, like most other (post-)apocalyptic fictions, is not very subtle in conveying 30 Atwood 2004, 67. 31 Tate 2017, 63. 32 Cf. Korte 2008, 157. 33 Criticism written before the publication of MaddAddam therefore often condemns Crake and the God’s Gardeners for their fundamentalism and inhumanism. 40 | Stephanie Bender www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 31–50