Narrating the Non-Human: Strategic Representations of Climate Change in Barbara Kingsolver and Margaret Atwood

Abstract

Authors have attempted various narrative and representational strategies to depict climate change in literature in such a way that the works create an impact and spur socio-political and cultural transformations. However, the representation and the expected transformations pose formidable challenges for the author, given the complex background and the evasive scalar dimensions of the climate change phenomenon. Most fictional narratives in climate fiction are set in an anthropocentric framework depicting the consequences of the change for human beings. However, as the scale and dynamics of the crisis are massive and situated in a chaotic socio-cultural scene, it becomes imperative that authors resort to innovative perspectives and take novel narrative dimensions to properly grasp the theme. Moreover, diverging from the anthropocentric framework is also essential to bring to focus the ubiquitous nature of the issue. This article explores how authors  Barbara Kingsolver and  Margaret Atwood represent climate change as affecting non-human life forms, thus using a strategic narrative technique to overcome the representational challenges. The novels considered for the study are  Prodigal Summer, Flight Behavior and Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver and the Maddaddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood. Moving beyond anthropocentric frameworks, both authors foreground ecological interdependence by giving narrative space to animals, plants, and ecosystems, thereby expanding the scope of climate discourse in fiction. Through a close reading of selected texts, this study investigates how their narrative techniques function not merely to depict environmental degradation, but to evoke a multispecies consciousness essential to grasping the magnitude of the climate crisis. The article argues that such representations are not only ethically significant but also rhetorically powerful in unsettling human exceptionalism and reimagining the ecological stakes of climate change. By positioning non-human entities as narrative agents or symbols of vulnerability and resilience, Atwood and Kingsolver offer a strategic reframing of perceptions on climate change — one that calls for expanded empathy and redefined notions of coexistence.