The Legacy of Last Men : Narrations on Ecocatastrophe and Ecophobia

In her recent novels Oryx and Crake (2003) and The Year of the Flood (2009), Margaret Atwood stages two parallel plots in a post-apocalyptic scenery of great ecocritical interest. I focus on the debate on the value of literature and language in a technocratic society. Crake’s catastrophic actions – the use of genetic engineering to wipe out the human species and replace it with a new one – are clear manifestations of his ecophobia, as related to the question of control and dominion over nature.