107 pages • 3 hours read
Margaret AtwoodThe Year of the Flood
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Year of the Flood”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Toby. Year Twenty-Five: The Year of the Flood”
Toby, one of the novel’s two third-person narrators, climbs to the rooftop to watch the sunrise. She used to be one of God’s Gardeners, but now she works at the AnooYoo Spa, which is located in a “derelict city” (3). Toby watches vultures plummet as they notice carrion and remembers the Gardeners’ comment that “vultures are [their] friends” (3). At this point, however, she finds it hard to believe their words. Everywhere around her, nature is taking over the destroyed landscape; what used to be the spa’s pond is becoming a swamp with frogs, while kudzu is spreading all over the once-perfect lawn.
In various places, Toby spots “a swatch of fabric, a glint of bone” (3), which remind her that these are the spots where people fell when they were trying to save their lives. Toby had watched them trying to escape from the roof, but she couldn’t do anything to help them.
Toby constantly worries about some kind of danger, although she cannot define it exactly. At night she listens to every sound, scared that someone or something might attack her, although she is unsure who has survived. Because of this fear, Toby keeps her doors locked at all times, but even this doesn’t soothe her, as she is sure that “every hollow space invites invasion” (6).
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Ren. Year Twenty-Five: The Year of the Flood”
Chapter 2 opens with Ren, the other third-person narrator, recalling the Gardeners’ warning against writing things down instead of relying on memory. Although Red heard this when she was “a child among them” (7), she remembers clearly how the sect members urged them to restrain from writing because their enemies could “use [their] words to condemn [them]” (7). Yet Ren decides that since the Waterless Flood killed almost all humanity, it is safe for her to write because people who might have used her writing against her are likely dead.
Afraid of forgetting who she is, Ren writes her name many times, using an eyebrow pencil. She is trapped inside a strip club called Scales and Tails; the door is locked from the outside, but she still has water and some food. Shortly before the Waterless Flood hit, Ren was placed in the Sticky Zone—a kind of quarantine—after a client bit her. Although she wasn’t worried about catching an infection, this was a mandatory procedure at Scales and Tails, where workers were known as “the cleanest dirty girls in town” (8). The Sticky Zone room has a minifridge with snacks and filtered water, which helped her survive; she was not only on the well-protected premises but also had a supply of food.
The strip club is located in the SeksMart, which was under CorpSeCorps control, the security agency run by the government. Ren’s supervisor, Mordis, protected his workers from clients when they stepped over the line. Despite treating the girls at Scales and Tails well, Mordis despised those sex workers who were left outside the SeksMart, and the Scales and Tails workers called them “hazardous waste” (9). Recalling this, Ren feels they should have had more compassion toward those women, “but compassion takes work, and [they] were young” (9). Mordis, together with Amanda and Toby, were the few people in Ren’s life whom she could trust.
Part 1 Analysis
Chapter 1 begins with a seemingly ordinary action: Toby climbing to the roof to watch the sunrise. Yet, considering that everything around was destroyed by the Waterless Flood, this act ceases to be mundane and instead signifies Toby’s struggle to look for beauty even amid destruction.
Although this section starts with a symbol of hope and renewal—the sunrise—the mood in the first chapter is one of fear and suspicion. Since readers don’t yet know what exactly happened to nature and humankind, they are left to wonder what kind of natural or manmade disaster swept through the planet. The little snippets of information that the narrator provides suggest that because of this cataclysm, almost all wildlife was destroyed. Thus, Margaret Atwood uses the setting of an uninhabited, ruined city to create a mood of unease and even horror.
Both Chapters 1 and 2 open with Toby and Ren recalling the Gardeners’ words and teachings. That they remember the exact wording of the Gardeners’ doctrine even amid disaster and distress testifies to how much the sect influenced their thinking.
Yet early in Chapter 1, Toby already questions the Gardeners’ statements. She no longer trusts them blindly, but instead analyzes their words critically and begins to doubt her obedient devotion to them.
Ren, in like manner, shows her disobedience to the Gardeners by going against the doctrine that discouraged handwriting. Chapter 2 begins with Ren writing her name repeatedly because she is scared of forgetting her identity. Although Ren has been working as a trapeze dancer in an isolated, government-controlled SeksMart, she counted herself lucky because the job gave her a sense of protection and security. Since Ren considered herself different from everyone else, she lacked a sense of compassion toward those who weren’t protected by the CorpSeCorps. This realization only strikes her only when she is on her own in a desolate city.
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By Margaret Atwood
