Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2011

Publication Title

LATCH: A Journal for the Study of the Literary Artifact in Theory, Culture, or History

Volume

4

Pages

63-73

Abstract

Margaret Atwood's novels of speculative fiction Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood articulate a currently possible future world of corporate control marked by profitable practices of death. Narrated by both individuals of privilege and also of the underclass, the novels reveal insidious systems of self-perpetuating diseases and cosmetic enhancements that ultimately bankrupt or kill the consumers. As the state is policed by CorpSECorps, the corporate security forces, individuals have very little protection or recourse, and groups such as God's Gardeners, conservationists who resist consuming the corporate products, are in danger of annihilation. Yet when humanity is destroyed by a bioengineered virus, it is those who have shunned the corporate materialism who are able to avoid death.

Comments

First published in LATCH: A Journal for the Study of the Literary Artifact in Theory, Culture, or History.

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Original Publication Citation

Appleton, S. A. (2011). Corp(Se)ocracy: Marketing death in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. LATCH: A Journal for the Study of the Literary Artifact in Theory, Culture, or History, 4, 63-73.

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