The Entrapment of Women in Atwood: "The Year of the Flood" and "The Heart Goes Last" Anonymous 12th Grade

Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last and The Year of the Flood are cautionary, post-apocalyptic novels that tell two different stories with many similarities. The Heart Goes Last follows Stan and Charmaine, a married couple struggling to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss forces them to live in their car as they desperately try to maintain a life worth living. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers; inside, no one is unemployed and everyone lives comfortably for six months out of the year. Every other month, residents must leave their homes and become inmates in the Positron prison. The Positron Project seems like a dream come true for Stan and Charmaine until Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the alternate that lives in their house when they are in prison. This romantic affair sets off a chain reaction which leads Stan and Charmaine to unearthing the true intentions of the Positron Project and its leader, Ed. The Year of the Flood is the second novel in the Maddaddam Trilogy. It focuses on a religious sect called the God’s Gardeners, which is a small vegetarian community of survivors of the waterless flood that destroyed most of...