Power, pain, and manipulation in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood

Vol.36,No.1(2010)

Katarína Labudová

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/105100

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Abstract
The paper deals with motifs of power, pain and manipulation in Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction novels Oryx and Crake (2003) and The Year of the Flood (2009). The conflict of the real and the fictional, the real and the virtual, resulting in emotional death, is the main topic of the paper. This aspect is discussed from the perspective suggested in Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulations (1994). In her two books, Atwood concentrates on the speculative and experimental aspects of the genre of speculative fiction (SF) to respond to contemporary situations of political, ecological and cultural crisis.

Keywords:
Margaret Atwood; power; pain; manipulation; victimization; Jean Baudrillard

Pages:
135–146
References

Atwood, Margaret (2004) Oryx and Crake. New York: Anchor Books.

Atwood, Margaret (2009) The Year of the Flood. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland: Doubleday.

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Baudrillard, Jean (1994) Simulacra and Simulation. The University of Michigan Press.

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