Surviving the End: Toward a Reappraisal of Climate Apocalypse

Abstract: Through an analysis of voice in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake , John Un calls attention to the survival implicit in eschatological narration. He argues that the formal constraints in representing the end of the world mean that climate apocalypse is more than a tutor in the reality of climate change, encompassing a language of hopes, anxieties, and demands. He shows how Atwood's configuration of eschatological narration, whereby the character-narrator is sequestered in a corporate saferoom, calls into question the possibility of an ethical response to climate catastrophe within sociopolitical stratification. Only upon exiting his sequestered position, and abandoning the safeguards it represents, can the protagonist develop an ethical comportment to those who occupy the postapocalyptic world of the novel.