Essay Questions

Explain the title of the novel.

The novel is entitled The Year of the Flood and it is revealed in the novel as being the name given to the year in which the actions take place by a religious group called God’s Gardeners. The name is a reference made to the story of Noah, the man who was saved by God when a flood destroyed every person on the planet. In the story, the flood is the term through which the narrator makes reference to the pandemic which killed almost every person on earth. Just like the Biblical flood left alive only a small number of people, the pandemic in the novel destroyed almost every human being on the planet. The title is at the same time used to transmit the idea of rebirth and to transmit the possibility of regeneration.

Who are the saints worshiped by the God’s Gardeners?

The narrator mentions two names in the novel, Dian Fossey and Jacques Cousteau, as being the main saints for the group. The two people are linked with environmentalism and had made their lives mission to protect the earth, at all costs. Dian Fossey, for example, studied gorillas in Rwanda and tried to pass laws to protect them against poachers and to protect their natural habitat. Because of her work, Dian was eventually killed in 1985, most likely because of the work she was involved in. the second person is a French explorer and conservationist who lived in the 20th century and his main interest was the conservation and exploration of marine life. Both people tried to protect the environment and suffered as a result. Because of this, they two people were named as being the saints by the God’s Gardeners who tried to protect the environment.

How is the pre-apocalyptic world described in the novel?

The characters describes the pre-apocalyptic days through flashbacks. The flashbacks are used in the novel as a way to explain why the situation was so dire in the present time when the characters lived. The pre-apocalyptic world is described as being a modern Sodom and Gomorra, a place where no one was free and no one was safe. The situation was extremely dire for the women in those times who were forced to either become prostitutes or glorified wives who were more than often abused by their husbands. In this context, the pandemic is presented as being a divine intervention through which the world is purged from those who almost destroyed the world completely.