Strangers in Strange Worlds: Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy

Abstract

Strangeness, based on the ambivalence of the uncanny, characterises both the preand post-apocalyptic worlds of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. Whereas Spiegel (2010) makes a convincing case for the neomedievalism of the corporationdominated pre-apocalyptic world in Oryx and Crake, Atwood’s post-apocalyptic world can perhaps more aptly be described as Palaeolithic or Neolithic in the special sense of a return to the Stone Age. However, both these worlds are fictional constructs, set in the near future, allowing Atwood to critique trends in the contemporary world. Both worlds make disturbing and alienating reading, despite – or pehaps because of – the dark sense of humour that Atwood exhibits and the strange familiarity of her imagined worlds. Besides the more general concepts of the sinister and the eerie, Russian Formalism’s defamiliarisation and Freud’s unheimlich (uncanny) are employed to understand different aspects the alienating effects that Atwood achieves. The animal gaze and the unmasking of the absent referent are also considered, particularly as experienced through Jimmy and Toby, Atwood’s main narrative focalisers.