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.