Introduction

The purpose of this blog is to create a comprehensive study guide exploring the depth and craft of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. The book begins with an excerpt from Virginia's Woolf's To the Lighthouse, asking:
     Was there no safety? No learning by heart of
      the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter,
          but all was miracle and leaping from the
                        pinnacle of a tower into the air?
Not only does Atwood draw attention to the lack of safety in Snowman's life, but the lack of safety in the Peeblands and Compounds of Jimmy's. In fact, there is no natural way of learning about the world in Jimmy's hyper-electronic existence; knowledge is abstracted from personal experience therefore rendering that knowledge shallow and dangerous. There are so many miracles of science in Jimmy's world and like "leaping from the/ pinnacle of a tower," it's exhilarating, but we must eventually hit the ground. We don't know when, or how hard, but we will inevitably feel the abrupt and painful effects of our man-made miracles divorced from any consideration of personal liability.