The Year of the Flood

Shortly after the plague spreads, Toby journeys to her parents’ former house to get her father’s rifle. Although it is dangerous and Toby has to walk quite far, moving mostly at night, she doesn’t question the necessity of being armed in extreme conditions. Despite dealing with her mother’s death and her father’s suicide, Toby had the foresight to bury the rifle in a safe place, which foregrounds her pragmatism and rationality.

Once Toby has the rifle, they are inseparable, and the weapon symbolizes Toby’s resistance and willingness to fight for her life. Whether Toby uses it to scare the pigs or to keep her enemies at bay, the rifle becomes essential to her survival. When Toby has to deal first with the Painballers, and then the Crakers, she uses the rifle not to show force but to create a level playing field.

Toby is the only female character who is armed, though plenty of male characters have sprayguns or other weaponry. Toby’s possession of the rifle blurs the lines between male and female attributes, becoming another manifestation of her androgyny. Thus, the rifle also represents a phallic, traditionally male signifier of power, one Toby successfully appropriates.

Before leaving the AnooYoo Spa together, Toby and Ren cut their hair, then leave the trimmings on the roof for birds to use as nesting material. This act acquires a symbolic meaning. It represents not just the shedding of hair, but the shedding of their former selves. Venturing into the unknown postapocalyptic world means facing a completely new reality. By cutting their hair, Toby and Ren are stepping away from their old lives and into their new ones, symbolizing both an end and a beginning. What’s more, birds can use the hair to create the conditions necessary for new life.

Similarly, when Lucerne and Ren are about to run away from the apartment they share with Zeb, Lucerne shears off her long hair, leaving “the pile of hair in the middle of the dining-room table” (245). Here, Lucerne’s decision to cut her hair represents her decisiveness and desire to begin her life anew.

Throughout the novel, the Garden of Eden serves as a symbol of utopia, where humans live in perfect harmony with nature. The God’s Gardeners set up the Edencliff Rooftop Garden as a prototype of the Garden of Eden, striving to create an oasis of harmonious and love-filled life in the middle of a neighborhood notorious for violence. Amid total disregard for both nature and human life, the Gardeners keep their eyes on the imaginative Garden of Eden, which becomes a beacon of hope and an example to follow. They work hard to make sure that their own Rooftop Garden “has blossomed as the rose” (13), even though it used to be a wasteland. Just as their garden represents hope for people living in the pleeblands, so too does the Garden of Eden symbolize a possibility of revival for all living creatures.