Dianoosh Sanei - Department of English Language Translation, College of Humanities, Shahr Qods Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Naeimeh Tabatabaei Lofti - Department of English Language Translation, College of Humanities, Shahr Qods Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Present paper has prioritized an ecocritical reading of Margaret Atwood’s three novels including Surfacing(1972), The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), and Oryx and Crake (2003). This study illustrates a close examination of thechronological investigation of the novels written in a period of thirty years, from 1972 to 2003 that coincides with theexpansion of ecological study. In these novels multiculturalism, migration, colonization, and a sequence of landscapesbrings the characters into intimate contact with natural environment and Canadian wilderness. The issues turn fromlocal to a more global sense in the post-wilderness and post-apocalyptic setting of her later speculative novels: TheHandmaid’s Tale (1985) and Oryx and Crake (2003). Atwoodian characters fuse together making use of the parallelparadigms between literature and ecology in terms of an interdisciplinary approach of ecocriticism. The ‘toxicdiscourse’ represents the wilderness quest to signal a call to today’s environmental crisis and an impending apocalypse.In order to articulate an ethic of friendship and caring to the earth, the author has also transformed the role of herreaders as participants in nature by unfolding ecological diversity

Ecocriticism-Environmental apocalypse- Wilderness -Toxic Discourse-Margaret Atwood