Oryx and Crake: A Manual on How to End the World and Not Save It
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (2003)
400 pages | $15.45 (paperback)
According to Greek mythology, the Oracle of Delphi sat at the center of the world, providing answers through direct communication with the Greek gods. Of course, they disappeared, but we were clearly not left bereft of Apollo’s graces, and Margaret Atwood is the proof of that.
Margaret Atwood is most well known for The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel published in 1985. Atwood writes the dystopian genre in its most literal definition, which is to critique a current problem in society and envision a future where said problem has gone too far. Oryx and Crake is one of her lesser-known works, but no less foretelling.
Oryx and Crake, written in 2003, opens in a present time post-apocalyptic setting, of which Snowman, the narrator of the story, may be the sole survivor. The novel fluctuates between the present time and Snowman’s memories from before—when he was known as Jimmy—and after the apocalyptic event. The two timelines weave together to slowly tell us the story of how Crake, Snowman’s best friend and bioengineering genius, and Oryx, a child sex-trafficking victim and Snowman’s lover, come to become major actors in ending the world.
The novel opens up with Snowman in the world after, a desolate wasteland that is stripped of humanity except for the company of the Children of Crake, genetically engineered people created by Crake. Oryx and Crake eventually reveals how the end came to be with memories from the time before, a world of no moral ethics interspersed with Compounds, where employees and families of giant corporations live in security, and where Snowman first meets Crake.
To continue with the Oracle of Delphi analogy, while the Oracles gave vague answers (like “If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed”), Atwood gives us eerily precise predictions. She created a world where genetic modification has no ethical boundaries—and yes, it’s terrifying in that it’s led to a world where chicken nuggets are made from chickens with no heads and 10 breasts, but that’s not the only unsettling thing. The facet of this dystopian world that fascinated me wasn’t just the genetically modified chickens, but the generally desensitized demeanor of the whole society.
When the first silent film was released, people were blown away. When Charlie Chaplin evaded the train narrowly or when sound was added, people marveled at the modern technology. When the Star Wars trilogy was first released, it was a revelation. Never before had any movie been as exciting, as detailed, or as unique. It was such a brilliant creation that it’s still a classic after decades. But for how many of today’s films can we say the same? I bring this up because this social numbing is precisely what Atwood covers in her book. Unwittingly, every day, our world becomes a little more evolved, a little more complicated, and a little more numb.
In Oryx and Crake, Snowman’s memories from before reveal that he and Crake whittled their time away on the Internet, looking at various porn sites (including a child pornography site where they first see Oryx), snuff films, executions, live streams catering to voyeuristic fantasies, and newsfeeds where the anchors are naked. They flick through these choices without any revulsion, arousal, or shame. They are completely numb to the unethical, horrific nature of these displays—but the thing is, they’re not isolated cases. The whole human population has become desensitized to “normal” media that had previously fascinated our predecessors. After the initial breakthroughs, the once-revolutionary films, books, and other media aren’t enough, and people go searching for something that will provide them with a similar experience.
This isn’t something that Atwood concocted on her own. We see this in everyday life, right now. An extreme example are psychopathic serial killers. Famously, Ted Bundy blamed hardcore pornography for his homicidal urges: “...like an addiction, you keep craving something harder, which gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach a point where the pornography only goes so far.” First, the fantasy is enough, but then the killers need more and more stimulation until they need to do it themselves. And even then, after the first time, they feel less and less of the initial high, so they keep chasing it. A more common example of desensitization would be drug abusers or adrenaline junkies. The first drug or adrenaline high is so intense that they repeat the act to achieve the same level of high, but they are never able to achieve the same level of rush ever again, making them seek more and more extreme drugs and activities. We live in a world where nothing is truly revolutionary, horrifying, or strange. It takes more and more to surprise and captivate us.
Oryx and Crake’s allusion to the problem of genetic modification is no less insignificant. In addition to the desensitization to online content, the people living in this world have also become numb to ethical and moral outrages. Not only do we see schools catering prostitutes to students or rampant human trafficking, we also see the repeal of all laws restricting genetic modification. Now, anything can be bioengineered, from pigoons, pigs grown with human organs for transplant, to wolvogs, dogs modified to retain their friendly appearances but with vicious wolf characteristics.
When Jimmy first visits Crake at his university, Watson-Crick Institute, one of the first significant genetic splices of a spider and goat (called spoat/gider affectionately by the students there) makes a cameo as the university mascot. This mascot is a real creation of our world, and links our two worlds together. The spoat is considered to be one of the first successful splices and a ‘simple’ creation when compared to the unimaginable bioengineered products that the Watson-Crick students have created, revealing terrifying possibilities. If the spoat, once controversial and bordering on unethical, is now merely a cute mascot, then our world has just started its moral and ethical descent. This link from our world to theirs eliminates the reader’s sense of detachment, and links our world to Jimmy’s. Well, now Snowman’s world.
The Unabomber’s infamous manifesto dictated that “the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.” Though it is impossible to agree with his methods, his critiques of industrialism aren’t entirely unwarranted. The sudden boom of inventions and the speed at which the world moves has made everything seem trivial and boring. The truly terrifying aspect is that there seems to be no solution to this issue. It doesn’t even seem like a legitimate problem. Does it even make sense that the world is moving too fast and that people aren’t really wowed anymore? Can we even fix that? Margaret Atwood, our very own Oracle of Delphi, has presented the problem in the clearest and most detailed way possible. She’s even shown us the future, but it seems that even she can’t give us an answer that can save the world. So, with no way to save ourselves, it seems that we are hurtling to the end of all times.