Discussion Questions (2)

1.       Despite Crake’s best efforts to remove the “G-spot” in the brain, the Crakers still acted in ways that defied his attempts. What does this say about human nature? In order to keep them fundamentally human, are there some things that cannot be removed?

2.       In the book, does Nature beat out science? The spliced animals did go feral, but the Crakers are products of science. Does natural evolution triumph over synthetic evolution? Or is it the other way around?

The Crakers Analysis

The Crakers

The green-eyed children of Crake are human beings that have been genetically altered to have more adaptable traits and not have many of the negative traits of humanity. They have been spliced with various animal traits to make them more durable, and Crake has added his own little additions to help to keep them away from the mistakes of man. Once they hit a certain age, they die. No population problem and no suspense. However, there are some things that are intrinsically human that no matter what Crake did, he could not splice out. Singing and dreaming were human traits that Crake could not get rid of without removing the humanity of the Crakers. He though he removed the parts of the brain that he saw as useless or dangerous. However, the Crakers still exhibit behaviors that were not originally intended. Abraham Lincoln displays leadership qualities, and appears to be more outgoing than the others. They create a model of Snowman, something they should not have had the capacity to do, and burn it in an attempt to communicate with him, an idea that was totally their own creation. They also revere Orxy and Crake as gods, despite the fact that they have no real conception of what a god is. The Crakers are symbolic of the inability for man to control everything, and nature’s ability to change. They are also a testament to human nature, and what parts of us are so ingrained into being human that they cannot be done away with.

Jimmy/Snowman Analysis

Jimmy/Snowman

Jimmy, or Snowman as he is known by the Crakers, is the protagonist of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. He is best friends with Crake growing up and falls in love with Oryx after meeting her. He is the caretaker of the Crakers after the demise of their creator and their mentor. He is estranged from his father and step mother, whom he feels no connection to, and is abandoned by his mother, an event that would define and haunt him. Jimmy is the most human of the characters in the book. He often wears his heart on his sleeve and is very much at the mercy of his feelings. As a child, he would often drive his mother to tears in an effort to get some kind of response from her. His extreme need for emotional attention was unable to be met in a society where people’s emotions were often stifled and not shown. In fact, besides his mother’s tears, the only other really emotional display made by his parents is when they are fighting. His mother leaves, leaving Jimmy with no one to connect to emotionally since his dad has the empathy abilities of a wooden spoon. It’s at this time he makes a connection with the most unlikely person: Crake.

Crake is the complete opposite of Jimmy in just about every way. Jimmy and Crake spend a lot of time getting high and watching torture videos and pornography and playing very interesting games like Blood and Roses or Extinctathon. They grow up together; Jimmy constantly frustrated by Crake’s abilities and recognition, even from his own father and step-mother, and eventually part ways for different colleges. Jimmy, a words person, is barely accepted into a less famous school, while Crake, a numbers person, is accepted into the most famous school. Jimmy’s inability to think like a numbers person makes him feel like he is disappointing his dad, but at this point he is so estranged from his father that it doesn’t even matter, and that he does not fit in with the rest of the genius compound kids. Ironically, however, being a words person is what allows Jimmy to survive the apocalypse and his emotions are what makes him the ideal caretaker for the Crakers.

After his early adult life, he is reunited with Crake. They go to his private facility, Paradice, and it is there that he finally meets Oryx. He had seen her only in fleeting images on television screens before, but he was in love at first sight. However, Crake was also in love with Oryx (supposedly) and again bested Jimmy. However, Oryx sees both of them and Crake uses Jimmy’s feelings for Oryx to carry out the final leg of his master plan. One has to wonder if Crake has planned out every single detail, from Oryx’s love for the Crakers and her asking Jimmy to promise to take care of them, to Jimmy’s love for Oryx and inability to break his promise to her. After Crake unleashes his plague and kills Oryx, Jimmy kills Crake, despite saying earlier that he didn’t think he could actually kill someone.

As Snowman, he keeps true to his promise to Oryx and watches over the Crakers. He tells them what things they should avoid and weaves stories for them. The ability to empathize with the Crakers and even the simple ability to tell stories would have been lost to another member of the compound society. Jimmy wasn’t just the best man for the job; he was the only man for the job. The Crakers revere him and heed his words, and he, despite finding them annoying, helps them in the new world they have been brought into.

Jimmy is a very complicated character. Of the three main characters, he is the most human. Another way to take that is, that even before the end of the world, he was one of the only humans left. He sought out the rejected and the broken in his love life because they were human too. Long before he was actually alone, he felt alone, and before he was seeking out other human life in the ruins of civilization, he was seeking out real human beings that had been damaged or rejected by the drones that ran society. Painters, writers, and others who were in touch with the Romantic “soul” were not valued or considered useful in a world where numbers and science ran everything. As the last real human, it’s only natural that the story is told from Jimmy’s point of view. We would not be able to relate to someone else. 

Themes and Motifs

Alex's part

Names

The theme of names or naming is very prominent in the novel, as it is portrayed by the motifs of the names of the characters, such as Crake, Oryx, and Snowman. The theme of names has several different important roles in the story. Oryx’s name is quite representative of her character, as readers are never actually aware of her real name. This is fitting for her character, as readers are left completely in the dark to the true emotions and intentions of Oryx. Often times when asked questions by Jimmy, she remains very vague and mysterious in her answers. In addition, her upbringing as a forced sex slave did not allow for her to become the person she was born, but rather to be what she was raised to be. Thus her actual name is of no importance, for she never really was the person she would’ve been had she lived a normal life. The second important meaning in the use of names is the way in which the three main characters are given the nick names Crake, Oryx, and Thickney. These names turn out to be very prophetic, for the names are all those of extinct animals. Ironically, both Oryx and Crake end up dead at the end of the novel, fulfilling their names’ foreshadowing. However, Jimmy/Snowman was given the name Thickney. Despite the other two characters’ names sticking with them, Jimmy does not keep the name of this extinct animal. This coincides with the fact that as far as readers are aware, he survives at the end of the novel. His extinction is void as well as the name of Thickney. The name Snowman is also symbolic of the transformation of Jimmy. Jimmy goes from a normal, well preserved human to one who is barely surviving, and is legend as far as humans go. For, the original version of the name that Jimmy gave to himself was Abominable Snowman, which is a legendary creature, and the only of its kind. From Snowman’s perspective, he is the only surviving human, which has given him legendary status for surviving against all odds. Also, the fact that Snowman named himself alludes to the true influence and power that he truly has throughout the novel. This can be seen as he is left in charge of the crakes, and whatever he says is what they believe and is law. He can manipulate them in whatever way he sees fit. Also, the fact that Jimmy does not keep the name Thickney, which Crake assigned to him, shows his true resistance to the deeds and influence of Crake. He ends up killing crake, and survives the virus that Crake intended to kill everyone. Despite the fact that Crake granted him this immunity through constant injections, the final power and authority were put into the hands of Snowman, as Crake realized that only Snowman had the true emotional capability to handle the arduous task of protecting the crakes. Also, the names of the compounds are symbolic on a much simpler level, for they portray the purpose of their operations. For example, OrganInc farms is fitting, for organs are grown in animals that can be utilized for human needs. The name is quite ironic however, as the word “OrganInc”, sounds very similar to the word “organic”. The irony is that for the operation with the compound to be organic in nature, it would need to be all natural and not invasive upon nature. This is obviously not the case. As for Jimmy’s parents, it is fitting that his mother’s name, Sharon, is known, and his father’s name is not. For Jimmy’s relationship with his mother is very important and dictates many of the events that unfold and the emotions that are felt through the novel. Jimmy’s relationship with his father is lacking in worth, which makes his namelessness appropriate. Thus the theme of naming and names is very important to the nature of the novel.

The Parent-Child Bond

The theme of the parent-child bond in the in the novel is extremely important. The relationships that the three main characters share with their parents dictates the way they live their lives and how they are able to connect to others emotionally. The way Jimmy’s mother and father neglected and did not properly nurture him greatly affected the manner in which he lived his life. The way his mother just left him so abruptly, and how his father had a very lustful and seemingly meaningless relationship with Ramona caused all of Jimmy’s relationships with females to be void of meaning and longevity. Any sort of love that he gained from these half-baked relationships was only a temporary fix for the pain that he felt from his failed relationships with his parents. Crake also lacked a decent relationship with his parents. The only real connection he felt with his father was through the game of chess, and even this is miniscule in emotional meaning. It seems as if the only person that Crake is capable of bonding with is Jimmy, and even the true nature of their relationship is uncertain. Oryx was also neglected by her parents, as she was sold to a traveling salesman by her mother. Despite this life-changing action, Oryx still has great love for her mother and hope for the future. Against all odds, Oryx turns out to be a very nurturing person who is able to form connections easily with others. This is why it is fitting that she is chosen to nurture the crakes when they are first created. The parent-child bond effect on Oryx directly affects Crake and Jimmy. Neither of them have ever experienced any kind of true love. It would seem that both of them experience this for the first time with Oryx. This is most likely due to the extreme nurture that she is able to exude upon them. Also, Jimmy’s lack of nurture from his parents makes it difficult for him to carry out the role of the guardian of the crakes, despite his relative success. Thus the importance of the bonds the characters share with their parents is can be seen.

Motifs:
All of the names of the main characters and the outcome of their characters fates are representative of the theme of names. For the parent child bond, Jimmy as the struggling caretaker, Oryx as the original nurturer, and Crake as the emtionally void creator are good motifs for the theme.
Melissa's Part

Language

Beginning

pg. 68, Snowman: “Hang on to the words,” he tells himself. The odd words, the old words, the rare ones. Valance. Norn. Serendipity. Pibroch. Lubricious. When they’re gone, out of his head, these words, they’ll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.”

This quote summarizes Snowman’s role in trying to help the knowledge of his species survive. He has to memorize these words because, at this point in the novel, he believes he is the only surviving human, and he has to be the one to retain as much knowledge of his kind as he can.

Pg. 98, Snowman: Toast was a pointless invention from the Dark Ages. Toast was an implement of torture that caused all those subjected to it to regurgitate in verbal form the sins and crimes of their past lives. Toast was a ritual item devoured by fetishists in the belief that it would enhance their kinetic and sexual powers. Toast cannot be explained by any rational means.

Toast is me.

I am toast."

The reason novel contains two whole paragraphs devoted to toast is to show the futility of Snowman hanging on to as much human knowledge as he can. He’s getting old, and once he dies, all the knowledge will die with him. He cannot try to explain it to the Crakers, as its too complicated for them to understand. In fact, the two paragraphs are all about him imagining explaining toast to the Crakers.

            I chose the second paragraph to quote because, since he cannot pass any knowledge on to the Crakers, it will be years before anyone finds out any information about human life, and even trying to find information on something as simple as toast could be very difficult. Or, its possible they may never find out anything about toast, so, as it explains in the above paragraph, toast can be whatever people decide to define it to be.  

Middle

pg. 195, Snowman: “He’d developed a strangely tender feeling towards such words, as if they were children abandoned in the woods and it was his duty to rescue them.”

This quote comes from when Jimmy is in college, and he discovers old words in library books. He is immediately taken with them, most likely because he has always been a word person. Also, his love of words becomes very important after the apocalypse occurs. He believes he’s the only human left, thus he is the sole bearer of human knowledge.

End

pg. 374, Snowman: “Or, Get the hell off my turf before I blow you off, as in some old-style Western film. Hands up. Back away. Leave that spraygun.”

In this quote, the purpose of language changes. Snowman has just gone to see the other remaining people like him, and he’s debating whether or not to approach them. The quote comes from him thinking about the possible ways this interaction could go if he decides to reveal himself. Of course, in imagining this scenario, Snowman uses lines from old films. This makes sense because he has a fondness for them, and he has often relied on old words to calm him in times of distress. This is one of those times, as this could go one of several ways. Either the people are kind and are willing to listen to Snowman’s story as well as take care of the Crakers after Snowman dies, or they attack him. They could also kill the Crakers, should they ever find them, or take advantage of them. Thus Snowman’s decision carries a lot of weight, and looking to lines from old films helps him somewhat gauge the situation.

Motif: The motif that best fits language is the library that Jimmy visits at Martha Graham. It is where he first realizes his love of words, and it comes to represent the knowledge he attains that no one else cares about. However, his knowledge comes to have great importance when he is one of the last humans alive.

Synthetic Evolution vs. Natural Evolution

Motif: Pigoons as a motif for synthetic versus natural evolution works because they are so suited to their purpose of benefitting humans they are not good to have in the wild. They one of the main experiments from the Compound to go awry, and they show how nature triumphs over science.

Beginning

pg.38, Snowman: “Pigoons were supposed to be tusk-free, but maybe they were reverting to type now they’d gone feral, a fast-forward process considering their rapid-maturity genes.”

This quote is an example of how all the genetic engineering the scientists in the Compound did backfired. They did as much as they could to control nature, but ultimately, nature won, and with disastrous results. Because the pigoons were man-made and thus have no natural predators, their population is extremely large. Also, they have human DNA in them, so they are becoming smart, making Snowman take precautions so he can avoid them.

Pg. 164, Crake: “Think of an adaptation, any adaptation, and some animal somewhere will have thought of it first.”

Crake’s observation here comes from him explaining how the Crakers reproduce, and how he used DNA from different animals so it would be physically obvious when the females were ready to mate. His reasoning behind this was to take the emotions out of sex, and how it was so much better the way animals did it. There was no rape or unrequited love or heartbreak. Sex was merely a way to keep the population going. However, for all his logic, Crake does not consider that the reason animals have certain adaptations, for reproducing and otherwise, is because different adaptations are well suited for different animals. The adaptations that animals have are not in humans because those adaptations do not suit humans. He thinks he knows what they best traits are for the perfect humans, so he creates the Crakers. He takes away as many human traits in them as possible, but eventually nature takes over. The Crakers start becoming more curious as the novel progresses, showing once again, nature always wins over science.

Middle

Pg.202, narrator: “What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.”

The ChickieNob shows genetic engineering at its most terrifying and disgusting. The reason its so disturbing is not only because of its looks, but also because it’s not even an animal; it’s just a giant growing piece of meat. When Jimmy sees it, he is immediately horrified by it for those very reasons.

On the other hand, the ChickieNob is solely for human consumption, which means its only useful in the short-term. The people in the Compound are so focused on the present they do not think about the future, aside from how they can make it better with all of their science.

End

Pg. 366, Snowman: Maybe all will be well, maybe this trio of strangers is good-hearted, sane, well-intentioned; maybe he’ll succeed in presenting the Crakers to them in the proper light. On the other hand, these new arrivals could easily see the Children of Crake as freakish, or savage, or non-human and a threat.”

At the end of the novel is when synthetic and natural evolution come directly head to head. Snowman has to decide whether or not to approach the first humans he’s seen and tell them about the Crakers or just kill them. If he does kill them, that means after he dies, the Crakers will be the only ones who will survive. If that is the case, it stands to reason they will become more human as they learn more about the world around them. This would make sense because throughout the novel, Margaret Atwood has demonstrated through other situations that nature always triumphs over science.

Verbal vs. Numerical

Motif: Martha Graham college is a motif for verbal versus numerical because it represents everything the Compound does not care about. Thus, its in a state of complete disrepair. However, the knowledge there becomes relevant once Jimmy is one of the last humans alive, as he is able to keep the knowledge around for longer than the other people in the Compound who died from the apocalypse.

Beginning

Pg. 50, narrator: By OrganInc’s math-and-chem-and-applied-bio yardstick he must have seemed dull normal: maybe that was why his father stopped telling him he could do much better if he’d only try, and switched to doling out secretly disappointed praise, as if Jimmy had a brain injury.”

Because Jimmy’s world is so math and science based, anyone who does not think in those terms is considered less intelligent than everyone else. Thus, Jimmy is thought of this way. However, Margaret Atwood shows in this novel that focusing on science so much ultimately leads to the demise of Jimmy’s world. It would make sense that Jimmy would survive, as he did not create any of the science that destroyed his world.

Middle

Pg.188, narrator: “Or Problematics. Problematics was for word people, so that was what Jimmy took. Spin and Grin was its nickname among the students. Like everything at Martha Graham it had utilitarian aims. Our Students Graduate With Employable Skills, ran the motto underneath the original Latin motto, which was Ars Longa Vita Brevis.”

The poor state of the Martha Graham School shows how little the Compound cares about art or verbal skills since the people in it are so focused on science and numerical knowledge. The ironic part is that is what leads to the demise of their world with Crake’s plan.

End

Pg. 347, Narrator: “Here the handwriting stops. Whatever Jimmy’s speculations might have been on the subject of Crake’s motives, they had not been recorded.”

            This quote is from the letter Jimmy writes right after he shoots Crake. It suggests that the only knowledge of what happened to the Compound will come from his letter, but the information is incomplete. No one besides the people who were there will really know what happened. Also, as it says in the quote, no one will know why Crake did what he did, because Jimmy does not know, so he cannot relay that information. Despite what the Compound thought at the time, it is verbal knowledge that becomes the most important because it tells people about their world, and Snowman is one of the few people left who knows about it.

Jordyn's Part

Immortality:

Humanity’s quest for immortality, or running away from death, is what drives many of the Compounds and their business with the world, creating the pigoons and Nooskins to sell to people who want to be young forever. The end of humanity was the BlyssPluss pill, which claimed to prolong youth and sexual prowess. So in the end, human’s fight for immortality ended in their demise. Additionally, Crake created the Crakers to carry on humanity’s legacy without the “bad parts” that caused humans to nearly destroy the Earth. However, he manages to remove their knowledge of death, effectively ending the concept of immortality, except through any remaining humans that survived the plague.

Examples in Text:

-When Jimmy asks who pays for the technology at the RejoovenEsense Compound the response is “’Grief in the face of inevitable death,’ said Crake. ’The wish to stop time. The human condition.’” (Atwood 292)

-“’Immortality,’ said Crake, ‘is a concept. If you take ‘mortality’ as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then ‘immortality’ is the absence of such fear.’” (Atwood 303)

-“Men can imagine their own deaths, they can see them coming, and the mere thought of impending death acts like an aphrodisiac. A dog or a rabbit doesn’t behave like that….But human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else, some new version of themselves, and live on forever.” (Atwood 120)

Motif: BlyssPluss Pill

Disease:

The concept of disease plays at least two roles in Oryx and Crake. One of these roles is a weapon of destruction, used by the Compounds in order to obtain more money. Crake accuses the groups of manufacturing bioforms and infecting a portion of the population with it in order to get money from them for a cure. Bioforms are also used as attempts to take down the Compounds, with the fear being that someone will sneak in and release a bioform inside the buildings and take down the businesses for various reasons.

However, the main way disease is used is through Crake’s massive plague on humanity. Crake correlates humanity with being a plague on Earth and itself, and the only way to remove the illness is to remove it completely through the disease carried through the BlyssPluss Pill and cure the planet, replacing the species with a more Earth-friendly one.

Examples in the Text:

-          “’The best diseases, from a business point of view,’ said Crake, ‘would be those that cause lingering illnesses. Ideally-that is, for maximum profit-the patient should either get well or die just before all of his or her money runs out. It’s a fine calculation.’” (Atwood 211)

-          In reference to the Crakers. “What had been altered was nothing less than the ancient primate brain. Gone were its destructive features, the features responsible for the world’s current illnesses.” (Atwood 305)

Motif: Bioforms, BlyssPluss Pill

Spectacle:

The spectacle of humanity in Oryx and Crake is constantly portrayed and leaves very little to the imagination of those watching. Entertainment is a constant cycle of pornography, live suicides, televised executions, and many others. Additionally, since nearly everything is broadcasted, people feel the pressure to keep up their appearances in order to look good all the time, which leads to buying products that may have a person look younger, but have unintended consequences. Snowman represents this spectacle with his various plays and stories he comes up with to entertain others and to become popular and feel clever and understood

Examples in Text:

-          “Site after site, channel after channel went dead. A couple of the anchors, news jocks to the end, set the cameras to film their own deaths – the screams, the dissolving skins, the ruptured eyeballs and all. How theatrical, though Jimmy. Nothing some people won’t do to get on TV.” (Atwood 344)

-          In reference to the Crakers watching Snowman eat a fish. “The spectacle of depravity is of interest even to them, purified by chlorophyll though they are.” (Atwood 101)

-          “He is Crake’s prophet now, whether he likes it or not; and the prophet of Oryx as well. That, or nothing. And he couldn’t stand to be nothing, to know himself to be nothing. He needs to be listened to, he needs to be heard. He needs at least the illusion of being understood.” (Atwood 104)

-          “Anna K. was a self-styled installation artist with big boobs who’d wired up her apartment so that every moment of her life was sent out live to millions of voyeurs.” (Atwood 84)

Motif: Television and Snowman

Discussion question: What effect, if any, do you think the television programs had on Jimmy or the rest of the population?

Character Analysis

Oryx

            Oryx is a girl who was born in a very small poor village and at an early age was sold so her mother could provide for her remaining siblings. Oryx made her way from one owner to the next, initially working as a flower sales girl, then a sexually exploited youth, until she was finally tracked down by Crake and worked for him as a teacher for the Crakers. Oryx grew up learning how to control others. Oryx regularly plays as the innocent girl and makes others around her feel as if they have the power in the relationship, when really it is Oryx who holds the power. Oryx is able to get what she wants out of others by manipulating them. Throughout the novel Oryx is emotionally distant and each time that Jimmy asks questions to get some emotional response from her Oryx tends to dance around the question, giving an answer that has no insight into what Oryx feels. She tends to neither dwell on the past nor look much into the future; she instead lives in the day. The only time where she expresses a longing in time is the anticipation of the Crakers being made public. Despite her being unemotional, Oryx establishes a relationship with Jimmy and although she does not say it, Jimmy knows that the relationship is the most “real” thing that either of them have ever been involved in.

            There is also the possibility that Oryx is not at all who she says she is. It is entirely possible that nothing that Oryx said in the novel is true and therefore this character analysis is useless. The possibility that Oryx is merely an actor is ever present. Crake could have just found a girl who closely resembles the girl from the video Crake and Jimmy watched as a kid and used her as a substitute because he knew it would affect Jimmy. In all of the conversations that are shown in the novel between Oryx and Jimmy, Jimmy directs all the conversations to extract the responses he wants. Oryx could just be catering to Jimmy’s desires and telling him what he wants to hear when really none of those things ever happened, to her at least. There by making none of it real. But what is real?

Jimmy’s Mom/Crake’s Father

            Although both of these characters are said to be paranoid and out of touch with modern society these are two of the most humane characters in the novel. These two openly rebel against what has become the social norm of society and the compounds in the novel. It is this rebellion against the social norms that gets both of these characters executed within novel. It is also the loss of these two characters that emotionally shape the two protagonists of this story early on in the novel, Jimmy and Crake. These characters function as a base for how the protagonists create their moral standards. Where Jimmy does things, many times hurtful, his desire is not to inflict harm on others but to illicit some form of response. As Jimmy grows through the novel he develops this more to illicit specific responses he wants at the time. For Crake the execution of his father early on ingrains in his mind how cruel this world is and is then, due to the emotional bond with his father and the sense of betrayal from his mother, grows up in hunger for vengeance of what the world took from him.

How has this book changed your views on the threat level of biological weapons?

Discussion Questions (3)

Three discussion questions in regards to Margaret Atwood's novel, Oryx and Crake, are:

1. In what ways can Crake be attributed to essence or figure of God? Why did Crake want to get rid of the "G spot" in the human brain and how is this ironic?

2. How might the end have been different if Jimmy had approached the three other humans that the Crakers encountered before him? Why is the end that the author implemented effective?

3. In what ways did the modified organisms created in this novel help the human race? Did they contribute to the greater good of humanity at all, and if so how? How is this different from today's society?

Jimmy’s father/ Uncle Pete/ Crake’s mother

These three characters all work within the system of the world they live in.  They are prime examples of the ideals of the time: none question the path society has taken.  They all are involved in the scientific community.  Jimmy’s father and Uncle Pete work in genetic splicing, and Crake’s mother is first married to Crake’s father, who worked with Uncle Pete, then to Uncle Pete himself.  They are all very two dimensional characters:  Jimmy’s father is the typical unhappily married man who falls for his young assistant shortly after his wife leaves; Uncle Pete is the unlikable stepdad who may have had a hand in Crake’s father’s demise; and Crake’s mother merely a shadow in the background, subordinate to her males.  They are notable in that they are not notable: they represent the typical of the society, and Atwood makes them hollow to stress the importance of those who oppose the culture they live in.  

Crake Character Analysis

Crake (formerly Glenn) is one of the three central characters in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel Oryx and Crake.  He is first seen in the book in chapter four, in the section named after him.  The protagonist, Jimmy, befriends him during their high school years.  Even if he wasn’t a title character, and his metaphoric ghosts hadn’t flitted in the peripherals of the previous sections, by the second paragraph, Atwood makes his importance clear.  “Crake was different”, Atwood asserts, “More adult than a lot of adults.”  Jimmy’s mother calls him “intellectually honorable.”  This phrase expresses Crake’s ability to separate his capacity for logic from the situation; his thinking is always above human bias and weakness.  Crake’s detachment continues to be prevalent in the book.  He can watch horrible tortures and executions on the internet without flinching.  He constantly argues that everything is real.  Crake is highly intellectual and nearly void of human empathy.  What motivates him is a mystery.

To begin to understand Crake, one must first look at his given name: Glenn.  The spelling with two n’s is unusual, and Jimmy asks Crake to explain this spelling.  Crake says that “My dad… named me after a dead pianist, some boy genius with two n’s.”  A reader with little knowledge of music might suppose that this pianist is an invention of Atwood’s used merely to foreshadow Crake’s genius.  But in interviews, Atwood points to a real-life man as her inspiration: Glenn Gould.  Gould was a notably eccentric Romanian musician, most famous for his interpretations of music by Bach.  Atwood said in an interview, “I bet, I'll just bet, that Gould had Asperger's even if they didn't diagnose it back then. Want to know a factoid I learned after I wrote the book? When he was 10, Gould wrote an opera where all the people died at the end, and only the animals survived. That gave me a chill."  Clearly Crake has a strong connection to Gould, and Atwood connects Gould to Asperger’s syndrome.  So the question stands, did Atwood intend for Crake to have Asperger’s?

Many clues in the text indicate “yes”.  After high school, Crake attends Watson-Crick Institute, which the students fondly nickname “Asperger’s U. because of the high percentage of brilliant weirdos… [with] demi-autistic, single track tunnel-vision minds,”.  Though Atwood does not state in the novel that Crake suffers from Asperger’s, this clue and her interview response about Glenn Gould hints that she might have written Crake with this disorder in mind.  His personal characteristics and actions also support this idea.

Asperger’s syndrome is a form of autism.  One symptom is a difficulty with traditional social interactions.  Crake does not date and his only true friend seems to be Jimmy.  He has a warped relationship with his mother, seeming to feel no love for her.  The text even points to the possibility that he may have had a hand in her death.  When Oryx comes into the picture and forms a bond with Crake, Jimmy is shocked.  The reader is left in the dark to much of their relationship, but we are told by Oryx that Crake mostly uses her for physical needs.  This could be an understatement; Jimmy notices Crake touching Oryx in front of him, seeming to signify his possession.  This could point to a deeper relationship with Oryx, but since we only see the event through Jimmy’s eyes, there is another possibility.  Crake has known of Jimmy’s obsession with Oryx since they were little, and sought Oryx out to work for him and be his companion specifically.  Crake could feel no deep affection for Oryx, and try to possess her just because Jimmy wants her.  A piece of evidence that supports this is that in the section titled “Extinctation” in chapter eight, Crake reveals that part of his pathway into a locked computer site is through a picture of Oryx that Jimmy saved when they were children.  Crake should not still have this image; it has been years since Jimmy caught sight of it.  Jimmy feels “ambushed.”  He says it was “his own private thing, his private guilt.  Why had Crake kept it? Stolen it?”  This feelings are repeated when Crake “steals” the real-life Oryx, tying the two events together and hinting that Crake may be purposefully trying to make Jimmy jealous.

Another symptom of Asperger’s is a limited capacity for empathy.  Crake clearly demonstrates this with his destruction of the human race.  He uses logical thinking to come to the conclusion that the earth is dying, and will no longer be able to support humanity.  He therefore decides to destroy humans quickly, all at once, in order to save as much of the planet as he can.  He leaves behind the Crakers, a genetically modified breed of humans, which he believes to be far superior to the race he destroys.  This mass genocide would not be possible from someone with a normal amount of empathy for his fellow man.  Another aspect of this lack of empathy is a heightened ego.  Crake believes he is superior.  The ultimate example of this is that Crake takes the fate of the planet in his hands because he believes that out of all the billions of people on the earth, it is his sole responsibility and his sole right to destroy the entire human race and save the planet.

People with Asperger’s demonstrate a limited and highly intense range of interests.  Crake reflects this in his obsession with logic games.  He starts with chess and moves to Blood and Roses and Extinctathon.  His love for Extinctathon especially remains important throughout Crake’s life; when Crake moves on to his “master plan”, he gathers all the Grandmasters of the game together to work for him.  Even his game username Crake becomes his name.  This obsession and focus with these games definitely supports the possibility of Crake having Asperger’s.

Even if one discards the theory of Atwood writing Crake with Asperger’s, the observations about his character stand.  He is egotistical, detached, incredibly intelligent, and socially stunted.  Because Crake has been this way since Jimmy’s first encounter with him, the reader cannot know if any childhood events shaped him this way.  The novel shows no changes within Crake, only an increase in his means to express the characteristics he was seemingly born with.  This could also support the idea that Crake has Asperger’s, but the strongest piece of evidence remains Atwood’s personal admission that she tied her character with the disorder through his namesake.

What is Art? Teacher don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.

                This painting, done by Charles Paul Landon in 1779, depicts the flight of Daedalus and Icarus. The story goes that Daedalus was a very skilled inventor, but in a moment of jealousy, he killed his apprentice and was imprisoned. While imprisoned, he had a son named Icarus with one of Kind Minos’s slave girls. Minos employed Daedalus to build the Labyrinth to house the Minotaur, a ferocious half-man, half-bull creature. Daedalus, however, revealed the secrets of the Labyrinth to Ariadne, who in turn relayed them to Theseus, allowing him to slay the Minotaur and escape the Labyrinth. Enraged by this, Minos banished Daedalus into the Labyrinth. However, Daedalus was not going to spend the rest of his life there. He crafted wings out of feathers and wax for himself and for Icarus. He warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus, however, smitten with his new gift of flight, flew too close to the sun and the wax holding his wings together melted, and he fell into the sea to his death.

                The flight of Icarus and Daedalus, depicted in the painting, is representative of this battle between Natural and Synthetic Evolution seen in Oryx and Crake. Man, smitten with his new powers, the powers of science, knowledge and reason, tries to fly closer and closer to the sun, God. The closer they get however, the more dangerous the situation becomes and is eventually their undoing. Also, in a more literal sense, Daedalus crafting this wings and synthetically evolved himself and Icarus. However, because this was not a natural evolution, there were problems with it. Foreseen or unforeseen, synthetic evolution can cause problem that could be far more severe than problems seen in natural evolution. These flaws, such as pigoons becoming aggressive and self-aware, or wolvogs wiping out the dog population, and going feral and killing people, and eventually something far worse, could cause man to fall from grace and lose everything.

Artwork question

How do i get my pictures to show up in my post?

Artwork

For my art work I initially chose the photo on the right of the three people walking the debris of the city. However I could not find the name of the photographer of this photo, so I also added the photo on the left, with the two people standing in what remains of a town square, taken by George Rodger. Both of these photos were taken during the aftermath of World War 2. George Rodger’s photo was taken in the city of Caen and the other was taken in a city in Poland. I feel that both of these photos are good visuals to capture the effect of the destruction that occurred to society in Oryx and Crake. Specifically these photos, to me, connect with the moment in the novel when Snowman is leading the Crakers out of Paradice and into the forest near the ocean. These photos are a way to imagine what the group had to walk through and witness on their trek through the remains of civilization.

First off I would like to apologize for the use of nudity. However, I felt that it was appropriate for my subject and the themes in the novel. This photograph was taken by the highly controversial photographer, Sally Mann. The way the young girl is positioned in front of the extremely large man along with the discomforting expression on her face artistically expresses the disgusting nature of child pornography.  I’m not sure if the photographer intends to promote or condemn it with this photograph.  Regardless, this artistic photograph relates to my theme of the corruption of society, specifically by the internet.  The fact that pictures or videos such as this can even be taken and shared on the internet is disgusting.  While it is illegal, the internet cannot be completely bound, and these types of images and videos can be found if one looks hard enough.  Atwood’s novel portrays a world in which these kinds of things are readily available on the internet.  I believe that the corruption of the internet in the novel is one of Atwood’s many ways of portraying the moral decay that the future holds.  This photograph is a vulgar yet appropriate representation of this. 

"The Farm" by Alexis Rockman

website for painting: http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/genewatch/GeneWatchPage.aspx?pageId=335

This is a painting by Alexis Rockman entitled “The Farm”, and above is a link to the website where I found it. The website, councilforresponsiblegenetics.org, includes not only an image of this painting, but an article written by Dr. Rob LeSalle, who is the curator for in the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology. In his article, he talks about interviewing Rockman about his painting, and he talks about which of the animals in Rockman’s painting are real.

What makes this painting artistic is it uses images to convey a message about genetic engineering in animals. In the foreground of this painting there are four main animals that have been genetically modified. The most obvious one is the pig, who is quite obese and has human organs growing inside of him, and its been proven this is possible, according to DeSalle’s article. This is because pigs’ organs, specifically their hearts, are constructed very similarly to human hearts. Next is the cow, which has unusually large muscles. DeSalle points out that large-muscled cows like this one do exist, but they were created through selective breeding, not genetic engineering. However, the image of this cow in the painting does show how human interference in animal breeding makes them look as though they are genetically engineered, and the unintended consequences this could have. The third main animal is the chicken, who appears on the fence post three times in succession. The first chicken looks normal, and the next two do not. The second chicken looks as though it’s going through some kind of genetic modification, as part of its body is white and has red organ-like objects inside it. The last chicken looks normal except it has three wings now, most likely as result of the genetic modification of the second chicken. However, it has none of the bright colors of the first chicken; its body is completely golden brown. This change in the chicken through genetic engineering shows how when humans manipulate animals, they become merely a product and a far cry from the wild, colorful animals they used to be. The last main animal is the mouse, which is in the foreground of the painting between the basket of tomatoes and the pig. What is unusual about this mouse is it has a human ear growing on it’s back. This, according to DeSalles’ article, is taken from a real experiment in 1997 done on a mouse by Dr. Joseph Vacanti, who took a polyester fabric, soaked it in cow cartilage, and shaped it into an ear and attached it to the mouse. Rockman’s inclusion of the mouse in his painting, although this time with a human ear rather than ear made of cow cartilage, makes the viewer question the lines crossed when a scientist does an experiment like that. Similar to growing human organs in pigs, though slightly less invasive, it’s taking DNA of one animal and putting it in another. There are many untended consequences could occur, making the viewer wonder if an experiment like that is worth it, even if it’s supposed to benefit humans.

I chose this painting as artwork to connect to genetic engineering in animals as this painting contains direct correlations, as I explained above. Also, genetic engineering in animals is very important in the world of Oryx and Crake, as there are many of them, such as the rakunks and the pigoons. The specific part in the novel I connect this painting to is the description of OrganInc Farms and Jimmy’s visit there. Despite its name, OrganInc Farms is the farthest away from any person’s image of a farm. Sure, they raise animals, specifically pigoons, but there are no fields of crops or large outside enclosures for them. Instead, the pigoons are kept in extremely secure buildings so no once can steal them. When Jimmy goes to visit it, “he had to put on a biosuit that was too big for him, and wear a face mask, and wash his hands first with disinfectant soap”(26). This does not sound like a farm; it sounds like Jimmy is entering a top-secret science lab. However, if OrganInc Farms actually had farms, I think they would look something like the one depicted in the painting, with pigoons and other genetically modified animals living on it.

"Nero" by Vladimir Kush

Vladimir Kush has been one of my favorite artists for a few years now, and this painting always stood out in my mind.  Nero was a Roman emporer who is said to have played violin while he watched his city burn.  This moment is a parallel to Crake, who destroyed his world and everyone in it in order to bring out a new one full of his creations.  This painting shows Nero emerging from the trunk of a tree, peeling apart the bark like a curtain.  This reminds me of how Crake, who is of nature, being a natural born human, seeks to emerge from nature and leave it behind.  The figure wears a toga, indicating his identity, and a full-face white mask.  This reminds me of Crake's seeming lack of human emotion.

Art Post

TV Family is a sculpture created by Chinese artist Shen Xiaonan. This family, depicted in bronze, shows a family, all with televisions as heads. The simple, clear-cut design portrays the message of people being absorbed by the media and entertainment and it taking over their lives in a way that is not confused with frills and adornments. The fact that it shows a sterotypical family instead of just an individual definitely drives the point home that this phenomenon affects all ages, no matter what people watch.

This piece connects to Oryx and Crake with the depiction of desensitization of individuals to violence and sex from a young age, especially Jimmy's lack of guilt over watching child porn until he sees Oryx for the first time. With the family in the piece shown as watching show much television that it becomes them, this process occurs with Jimmy as he becomes so desensitized to sex that he needs to have many lovers himself in order to feel like he is getting something out of it. Also, the way the art is set up, it does not have the frills that products and entertainment must have in the novel to be exciting, as in Jimmy's world nothing is as clear-cut as this piece of art.

Genetically Modified Organisms in Art

This particular piece of art is entitled De Natura rerum by French artist Goulet Olivier. Using colored pencil, pencil, and watercolor on paper, he depicts what he calls "un arbre à cerveaux", or a brain tree. The composition of this piece shows a tree that seems to be growing a variety of different brains as fruit. It appears that the "ripest" brains are located along the midsection of the tree's branches, wheres "wilting" brains are beneath them, and "flowering" or "blooming" brains can be seen at the top. Such a concept could possibly be contributed to Olivier's purpose of his artwork; here he expresses the convergence of technology within society and how human influence on natural organisms and systems, so to speak, has taken over the natural world. Humans have modified so much in the natural environment, that now it seems to be taking over. In this way, this piece reflects Olivier's artistic expression in what he believes to be the effects of genetically modified organisms. De Natura rerum can be connected to Oryx and Crake from two explicit scenes in the novel. Firstly, the scene where Jimmy's father came home to inform his wife and son of the success of implementing human brains in sheep can be represented by this artwork quite literally; the human brain is being used, or essentially grown, in places in nature where it should not be, proving that this is an issue of ethics. The scene where Snowman attempts to run away from the now environmentally-native pigoons that are stalking him in the abandoned compound also symbolizes the influence of the human intellect on otherwise unintelligent organisms; the pigoons were mentioned to be even smarter as if they had the capability of human thought and reason.