Chapter 5 - Margaret Atwood and Environmentalism

Summary

This chapter offers a comprehensive analysis of Atwood’s ongoing environmental concerns over five decades and her increasingly urgent warnings, referencing her fiction, nonfictional prose, and recent interviews. Framed by extensive discussions of contemporary writings on the deep ecology and radical environmentalism that have influenced Atwood’s thinking, the chapter includes brief critical analyses of Surfacing, Life Before Man, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Payback, with its main focus on the MaddAddam trilogy. In an extended analysis of Atwood’s speculative fiction across the three volumes, Bouson addresses multiple topics relating to environmentalism and bioengineering: “The Perils of the Anthropocene Age: Humanity’s Ecocidal Exploitation of Nature,” “Green Religion and Green Anarchism,” “Crake as Eco-terrorist and Radical Environmentalist,” which features a critical discussion of his Crakers, and “Deep Ecology and Ecospiritualism.” The chapter argues that Atwood leaves the question of future human survival open to speculation.