Oryx and Crake is a novel set sometime in the near future. It is important to note that Margaret Atwood doesn’t like to call this novel science fiction as the technology being used in the story exists today, and everything that transpires could realistically happen in the real world. The novel follows the character Jimmy through his present and past. His present self exists in a world where it would seem he is the last human alive, because the rest of the race has been wiped out by a horrifying plague. In this reality Jimmy is known as Snowman. Then, through a series of flashbacks, the story take place in his past. There, he befriends a scientific genius named Crake as well as a mysterious woman named Oryx (Oryx and Crake). In this reality Jimmy and his friends live in a world governed by science and capitalism. Here, a select group get to live in various compounds, while most of humanity is relegated to the crime and disease-infested pleeblands. The journey Margaret Atwood takes the reader on starts there as they wonder how one leads to the other. On this journey a few themes stick out like hidden messages.
The first hidden message can be discovered in looking at the relationship between humans and other life (animals, plants, etc.), as represented in the text. The advanced science achieved in the world of the novel challenges the distinction between human and animals and the roles they play. For example, the pigoon project. “The goal of the pigoon project was to grow an assortment of foolproof human-tissue organs in a transgenic knockout pig host – organs that would “transplant smoothly and avoid rejection, but would also be able to fend off attacks by opportunistic microbes and viruses, of which there were more strains every year. A rapid-maturity gene was spliced in so the pigoon kidneys and livers and hearts would be ready sooner, and now they were perfecting a pigoon that could grow five or six kidneys at a time. Such a host animal could be reaped of its extra kidneys; then, rather than being destroyed, it could keep on living and grow more organs” (Atwood 41). At face value this seems quite harmless and rather helpful and revolutionary. Think of all of the people that could be saved. But on the other hand, think of the pigs that have to constantly go through that horrible experience. Some people might not even think of that or say it doesn’t matter. That is what makes this novel so realistic. Animals today go through the exact same thing and doctors today are growing human organs in animals. A study done showed that “Almost six-in-ten Americans (57%) consider it an appropriate use of technology to genetically engineer animals to grow organs or tissues that could be used for humans needing a transplant” (Strauss). It makes you wonder. Do humans have that right of dominance over the other species of the world? To change their genetic makeup to grow human organs just so we can take them out. People won’t eat the pigoons, because it seems vaguely cannibalistic. But they have no problem stripping, selling and consuming their organs. They are the book’s first, but certainly not only, example of blurring the divide between human and animal. The most distinctive blend of human and animal are Crake’s genetically engineered creation, The Crakers. They have color-changing sex organs like a baboon, a digestive system like a rabbit, and the smell of a citrus plant. The Crakers are a particularly interesting example because they are humanoid, with certain human traits, and the book constantly asks the reader if they are human, and if they are, what makes them so. Crake made them free from sexual jealousy, greed, clothing, as well as, love, art, and knowledge of mortality. He believed these factors not only caused the misery of the human race but lead to the destruction of the planet. Despite being a science dominated culture, not everyone feels this way. It is important to note that Jimmy is unsettled by the treatment of animals in his society, and he has the opposite views about abstract thoughts. He believes “When any civilization is dust and ashes,’ he said, ‘art is all that’s left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning – human meaning, that is – is defined by them” (Atwood 253). Jimmy and Crake are two extremes, two sides of the same coin. To Crake and the rest of the science world, animals are simply tools found in the world that can be used and manipulated to further oneself. They are beneath humans in every way. When comparing to today think of the mass hunting for fun, poaching, cruelty, experiment object, and animals being raised for meat. Is Atwood’s story a slight exaggeration or a glimpse into the future.
Continuing, Atwood’s next hidden message can be found in the issues of environmental disaster and crisis reflected in this text. Atwood’s overall argument about the role that environmental issues has on our lives seems to be that humans are destroying the world we live in, until it no longer resembles what we know now. It all stems from human manipulation of nature. I remember hearing this quote, but I don’t know from where and I couldn’t find it. But, “The difference between us is that animals adapt to their environment. Humans adapt their environment to them, and we changed the world so much that is take us 16 years of schooling just to figure out how to live in it.” Humans changed the course of nature without the foresight to weigh the consequences. Much like people today are dealing with the effects of climate change. Jimmy’s mother was overheard by Jimmy one time talking about, “how everything was being ruined and would never be the same again, like the beach house her family had owned when she was little, the one that got washed away with the rest of the beaches and quite a few of the eastern coastal cities when the sea-level rose so quickly, and then there was that huge tidal wave” (Atwood 101). This shows the reader that even before the dystopia Snowman lives in, things we know are gone or disappearing. The scariest thing about this novel it would seem is that it realy is the near future. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we can expect the oceans to rise between 11 and 38 inches (28 to 98 centimeters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, place sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London” (Sea Rise). Atwood’s proposal is that humans neglected to act when climate change was imminent. They ignored the signs. The world’s climate changed, and there is now a wet season, tornados, and a scorching sun. Humans let their environment reach a point of no return. In Atwood’s book and in our world, events correspond to changes in the seasons. In many cultures, the school year ends in summer and starts in the fall. In Oryx and Crake even, things like graduation ceremonies are tainted. Jimmy’s “ceremony used to take place in June; the weather then used to be sunny and moderate. But June was now the wet season all the way up the east coast, and you couldn’t have held an outdoor event then, what with the thunderstorms”
(Atwood 259). That is mentioned to show how literary everything is changing even something like a graduation ceremony. Margaret Atwood called climate change the “everything change,” quite fittingly because literally everything will change. From changed climates and landscapes, to animals like pigoons, rakunks and wolvogs, to even new humanoid species. It sucks to see that there are still people who won’t acknowledge climate change, either out of fear or ignorance. But even in this predictive fiction where everyone lives either in or next to chaos. No real solutions are being discussed or carried out
In conclusion, Oryx and Crake is a predictive fiction that dives into the very real possibility that climate change and the consequences of human action will destroy the planet or at least in the way we know it to exist. The story mainly follows Jimmy and Crake the form of Jimmy’s flashbacks where corporations run society. A light of transparency shows what humans will do when they are not morally checked to either out of greed or necessity. They will ruthlessly and barbarically take advantage of the environment, nature, animals and even each other. This obvious lack of regard for nature is what lead to the apocalypse right before human’s extinction. The story is very anthropocentric as is the culture it imitates. Everything about the book puts human’s above nature even Atwood’s hidden messages hinting at what we can do differently to change this. Because it is “we”, the humans, who need to dominate nature in the opposite way to fix the problem. The main question at the heart of the book is what can one person do to change society? Which is why I personally don’t fault Crake at all. He saw a problem and found a solution. The apocalypse is before the human extinction, after that is the new beginning. Everyone else in the story, and in today, goes about their day to remain unbothered, because they either don’t care or don’t believe they can do anything by them self. But Crake showed the power that one man can have. I think in Atwood’s eyes we are all Jimmy. Nonchalantly strolling our way towards extinction.