Category: Corps
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Corporations Compounds
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Toby’s Life Journey
The Corps is the totalitarian government of the world of The Year of the Flood. They exercise a degree of control over most of the industries, e.g. SeksMart, and businesses, e.g. AnooYoo and SecretBurger. They can track their citizens through fingerprinting technology, and all citizens are required to have an identity. Those without one could get into serious trouble and would be barred from obtaining a legitimate jobs. The Corps even have their own police force, the CorpSeCorps, which although is corrupt, Flooders believed it “better than total anarchy”(34).
The Corps control over their citizens can be seen through Toby’s life:
After Toby’s parents died, Toby had to leave home and everything had to go out into the world alone and support herself. She couldn’t sell the house without revealing that she had inherited from her father, or without questions being asked about what had happened to her parents and where their corpses were. She merely burned her identity and “walked out of the house” (28).
The CorpSeCorps was unlikely to trace her—something it might do if she had been wealthier or of a higher social class—because there was nothing to be gained. If anyone asked about her disappearance, the Corps would make up a rumor that she’d been picked up by a pimp, which in the world of The Year of the Flood, “is what you’d expect in the case of a young woman like her—a young woman in desperate financial straights, with no visible relations and no nest egg or trust fund or fallback,” and no one would feel guilty because at least she wouldn’t starve (28).
Without an identity and money to purchase a new one, Toby couldn’t get a legitimate job because those too were controlled largely by the Corps. She resorted to working as a furzooter, selling her hair and eggs until there were complications and she could no longer donate her eggs or have any children of her own, and then to working at SecretBurgers before joining the God’s Gardeners.
Working at SecretBurgers had turned out not to be the blessing it seemed (“Toby was pleased . . . she could pay the rent, she wouldn’t starve”) as her aggressive, misogynistic boss Blanco took an interest in her and made her his unwilling sex slave. Blanco’s connections with CorpSeCorps men who were his friends helped him avoid punishment for his morally questionable actions (e.g. killing a Scales and Tales girl), so the power of the Corps allows for considerable corruption.
Toby escaped Blanco and SecretBurger to live with the God’s Gardeners where she would be protected from Blanco’s wrath because the CorpSeCorps declared the God’s Gardeners’ and their space “off-limits” because it would be bad for the Corps’ image interfere with anything with God in its name (48).
*All quoted references were made from:
Atwood, Margaret. The Year of the Flood. New York: Random House, 2009. Print
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Ren’s Life Journey
The Corporations are a totalitarian regime in the world The Year of The Flood and naturally have an extensive control over most industries and businesses in the novel whether it be security, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and even the sex market. This also means they have considerable influence in the lives of Flooders. Here we look at the world and the Corps’ influence through Ren’s life:
Ren is born and lives in the Corporations’ Compounds because her father works for Helthwyzer and all employees of Helthwyzer and other Corps-controlled scientific enterprises lived and worked in closed communities created by the Corps to isolate them from the outside world (which indubitably creates a group of elite and elitist attitudes).
Ren and her family live comfortably, as the Corps provide everything for their employees: housing, a school system for children, a considerable amount of wealth seeing as Ren’s mother Lucerne doesn’t have to work and lives a pampered life—she can afford to go to go to AnooYoo for spa treatments whenever she pleases.
Lucerne falls in love with God’s Gardener Zeb and leaves the Compounds with Ren to live with the God’s Gardeners, which feels little influence from the Corps because it is a religious cult and one that the Corps respect because it would be bad for it’s reputation to get in the way of a group with “God” in its name.
When Lucerne leaves Zeb and the God’s Gardeners to crawl back to Compounds husband, the Corps power and influence becomes very apparent in Ren’s new life. Ren’s identity (as someone who was born to a Corps employee) allows her to re-enter the community without any problems. Lucerne finds Ren’s cell phone, which ren has been using to communicate with her best friend Amanda, who is living with the God’s Gardeners. Lucerne disposes of the phone immediately and warns Amanda to dispose of her phone too—there is a great deal of surveillance at the Compounds and if the Corps ever found the phone, Ren would get into serious trouble.
Ren attends the school set up by the Corps, and eventually attends Martha Graham Academy. She attends a job fair and claims to not be a very valuable employee for more serious companies because she isn’t a “numbers” or science person, something valued by the Corps as it is constantly improving and advancing the technology available (294).
One of the businesses at the job fair is Scales and Tails, a, well scales and tails, fetish strip-club-brothel. Scales and Tails is a part of SeksMart, the sex market controlled and regulated by the Corps after the Corps “outlawed the pimps and street trade—for public health and the safety of women” (7). Ren sees a job at Scales as a great opportunity: Scales provided health benefits and a dental plan (“so it wasn’t like being a prostitute”), it “took care of you” and provided its girls with “good food, a doctor if you needed one, and the tips were great,” and Mordis who really liked Ren from her dance audition was kind to her (294, 7). The Corps’ SeksMart ensured that prostitutes like Ren would receive health services and protection from professional abuse from what would be a pimp.
*All quoted references were made from:
Atwood, Margaret. The Year of the Flood. New York: Random House, 2009. Print
