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.