Year of The Flood :Part III

After finishing this book, I’m still as confused as I was before. The pieces of the plot fit in, but the plot itself is so bizarre, that it didn’t feel satisfying.

I’m glad that elements of the book like the characters Shackie, Crozie and Oats, as well as Jimmy come back in the end. I wasn’t aware that Shackie, Crozie and Oats are named after three British explorers, Ernest Shackleton, Francis Crozier and Lawrence Oates. When they were first introduced in the book, it felt as if they didn’t serve any purpose, and I ended up not even mentioning them in my first two blog posts. In the final section of the book, the two timelines finally end up coming together. We start off with Ren taking up the job offer at AnooYoo, but later moving to Scales and Tails, in an effort to distance herself from her past as much as possible. She reunites with Amanda, and learns that Amanda is dating her boyfriend from Helthwyzer, Jimmy. Ren tries to hide that she is heartbroken, but I cannot relate to her feelings at all. Their relationship didn’t feel that serious in the first place that she would still be in love with Jimmy after numerous years. Jimmy also ends up being one of Ren’s customers at Scales and Tails, ands asks Ren weird questions about happiness. The Waterless Flood finally arrives, while Ren is locked in a containment unit in the club. Amanda ends up saving her, and guesses the password, which was just Ren’s name backwards. This was very cliche. Both of them take refuge at the club for a few days, until they unexpectedly come upon the three boys, who have now just escaped from Painball. They are all now trying to hide from Blanco and two of his goons, who have now also escaped Painball. Blanco manages to catch Oates, and hangs him from a tree. Ren and Amanda are abducted by Blanco, but Ren is ultimately saved by Toby. By this point, the plot is already so much more chaotic than the rest of the book. This sudden change of pace made it very hard to follow along. Skipping over some unecessary events, it was satisfying to see Blanco suffer a gruesome death at the hands of none other than Toby herself. He is shot in the leg, and then poisoned to death. Toby and Ren stumble upon Oates’ dead body. At this point I realised that I didn’t feel sympathetic towards any of the characters in the book. From the scenes of Toby’s abuse at the hands of Blanco, to Oates death, none of the scenes managed to invoke sadness for me. The characters were just so unrelatable. They reunite with members of MaddAdam who had also survived the Flood. How had so many characters survived the flood? Speaking of the Flood, we finally learn about its cause. Jimmy, along with his partner Glenn (who hold the aliases Oryx and Crake, the protagonists of the first book in the trilogy) create a sex pill, BlyssPluss, that spreads a virus all over the world. At this point, the plot is so ridiculous that it is laughable. But it gets even weirder. Jimmy and Glenn were working on herbivorous humanoid creatures, that have big blue penises and only have sex for the purposes of procreation.

This reminded me of the Handmaid’s Tale, where the act of having sex for recreation is prohibited under the Gilead rule.

The book ends with Amanda being rescued, Jimmy being captured, and some members of MaddAdam in search for Adam One, who has also survived the Flood. In the last scene, Jimmy hallucinates about seeing an owl, while a horde of the blue humanoids march towards the rest of the survivors.

I have absolutely no idea what this is supposed to mean. Why does Atwood have to make the ending so indecipherably cryptic, while the beginning was unneccesarrily straightforward? I’m satisfied that the all the elements end up coming together at the end, but the mere ridiculousness of the plot ruins the overall story. I had some hopes for the book till the end of the second section, but they have all been crushed now.

Thanks for reading my blog! Now off to somehow defending the book for the presentation.