Margaret Atwood says Greta Thunberg is the ‘Joan of Arc’ of environmentalism

‘I think she needs a big white horse,’ says author

(Getty Images for Tory Burch Foun)

Margaret Atwood has compared Greta Thunberg to Joan of Arc, praising the teenage environmentalist as “wonderful”.

Speaking on the Extinction Rebellion podcast, the Handmaids Tale author described the 16-year-old climate change activist as similar to the 15th century French saint who was burnt at the stake after she helped reclaim land from the English.

“She’s wonderful and she’s impervious to people slagging her off,” Atwood said of Thunberg. “She’s sort of the Joan of Arc of the environment. I think she needs a big white horse.”

Atwood continued: “I’m very happy to see that this message is finally getting out there and penetrating, because it’s been a long time coming.”

The author, whose Maddaddam trilogy features a group of characters who seek to preserve plant and animal life, went on to discuss how writers can effectively make political points about the environment in their work.

“You can’t write a whole novel with [climate change] as the protagonist, but it has become the background or, indeed, the foreground,” the 79-year-old said.

“You cannot dictate to artists what they should do,” Atwood added. “They’re figuring it out. You can’t tell them what to do, or it will be agitprop all over again, and socialist realism. You can’t tell artists what to ‘art’.”

Atwood’s comments come after Collins Dictionary revealed that Thunberg was the inspiration behind its word of 2019: Climate strike.

Helen Newstead, language content consultant at Collins, said the politically charged atmosphere of recent years is “clearly driving our language”.

“’Climate strikes’ can often divide opinion, but they have been inescapable this last year,” Newstead added.