The ethico-religiousness of Atwood’s “God’s Gardeners” vis-à-vis Kierkegaard’s thought

Abstract

This study aims to ascertain the ethico-religiousness of “God’s Gardeners” in Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, an eco-religious cult featured by the “self-rescue effort” rather than “God-relationship”. Through examining Atwood’s secularist imagination vis-à-vis Kierkegaard’s ideas about ethico-religiousness, the relationship between Atwood’s post-Christian speculation and Christianity will be re-estimated. Starting with a comparative overview of the two writers’ situatedness in their own “post-Christian” milieu, the discussion then focuses on Kierkegaard’s thought to facilitate the investigation into the religiousness of Atwood’s ethical type. Ultimately, a certain “crossroads” is testified between the secularized vision and the Christian understanding of being ethical and religious.