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.