| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系碩博士班 === 101 === This thesis aimed to use a Derridean perspective to explore apocalypse in respect to hope and justice in Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood. The idea of apocalypse has existed since the very beginning of human history and has penetrated many aspects of life, including religion, philosophy, literature, and science. It is commonly associated with terms such as “doomsday,” “Judgment Day,” “Armageddon,” or “the End of history.” Noticeably, the apocalyptic happening threatens the existence of human beings, and therefore, it surfaces human developments throughout history in order to seek ways to avoid its happening. Literary representations of the apocalypse mainly imagine its arrival and the possibility of survival as reflections of contemporary day crises. In The Year of the Flood, Atwood does not present a natural apocalypse, but instead a man-made one. In the eco-religious “God’s Gardeners,” she shows their vision of surviving the apocalypse then restoring the long-lost harmony with nature, as they hope that the Waterless Flood will wipe away all injustices. For Derrida, the apocalypse is always situated as a messianic without the Messiah—an event without the physical arriving but which continues to demand action from the living in the name of justice. Yet, the Derridean apocalypse never arrives and justice is always posed as a to-come that invites those now alive to improve it. There is never a “post-” in the Derridean apocalypse. Based on this non-arriving justice, this thesis links the apocalyptic theme in Atwood’s novel with Derrida’s messianic eschatology in terms of hope, justice, and spectral haunting. The main issues examined are how to categorize the apocalypse in the novel, whether justice is achieved in the post-apocalyptic world, and in what time should action be taken in relation to fulfilling a hope for the justice-to-come.
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