Category: Oryx and Crake

Throughout the novel Oryx and Crake, Atwood accentuates how individuals’ humanistic thinking will mitigate by scientific progress that is caused by perverse uses of scientific power and knowledge. Many scientists today rely on advanced biological science and genetic experiments, which allow them to exercise their abuse of nature. They try to find new technological innovations and biological solutions that can either award them with materialistic gains or fame. However, they are not able to understand the immoral conduct of their actions and experiments that can put lives in danger. Therefore, Atwood suggests her novel is speculative fiction that demonstrates how the future will be if scientists don’t understand the costs of biological science’s effect on the world. Margaret Atwood’s 2003 novel Oryx and Crake convey the cultural ascension of science that disputes the moral and ethical responsibilities of evolution manipulating nature through experiments. Additionally, Lake examines Atwood’s novel and suggests that cultural change caused by science will change society by allowing an individual to create solutions to many problems.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood describe a future Earth where a deadly plague has killed the human population except for Snowman/Jimmy. Jimmy is the only human throughout most of the book that survives and adopts the persona of Snowman who lives with the green-eyed Children of Crake. Jimmy also experiences many flashbacks throughout the novel that describes his life before the plague with his friend Crake and lover Oryx. Jimmy’s childhood was spent inside the Compound that houses scientists’ families. His parents were reputable scientists who worked at different corporations to experiment on animals and different cures. Crake was Jimmy’s childhood friend with who he spent much time at his house. They performed many activities together such as playing board games and watching videos until they went to separate colleges. Oryx is a female that both Jimmy and Crake love throughout the novel since her childhood who unintentionally performed illicit activities. Oryx and Crake both die before the plague kills the human population, while Jimmy survives by taking an injection. Snowman then survives with Crakers, genetically modified individuals, that were developed by Craker before the plague. Through flashbacks, Jimmy informs the readers that Crake killed Oryx before the plague by slitting her throat and Jimmy shoots Crake in a fit of rage. At the conclusion of the novel, Jimmy is informed by the Crakers that there are other humans who lived through the plague, which allows him to question if he should acknowledge their presence or not.

Interestingly enough, Atwood relies on several animals to demonstrate how individuals will challenge the differences between humans and animals. Scientific progress in Oryx and Crake accentuates how humans are treated differently by animals since they are uncomfortable with the idea of killing and using wolvogs and pigoons for their benefit. For example, scientists and individuals in the novel refuse to kill pigoons for food because of human organs inside them. However, Jimmy compares himself to an animal on numerous occasions to describe how he feels sympathy for them since they are victims of evolution: “He thought of pigoons as creatures much like himself. Neither he nor they had a lot of say in what was going on (Atwood, 24).” In the previous sentence from Chapter 2, Jimmy is eating in the OrganInc Corporation’s cafeteria that serves food mostly made out of pork, ham, and bacon, which refers to pigoons. Jimmy understands that animals and humans are distinct because he despises eating food created from pigoons that contain human organs that represents cannibalism. Though Jimmy believes that there is a distinction between animals and humans, the novel accentuates that humans are similar to nature because they all use their intelligence to find unpleasant solutions to many life problems such as Crake. Crake creates a deadly plague that will help solve individuals’ problems by killing them that rids them of their purpose in life. Furthermore, Christina Lake’s analysis claims that “when the line between virtual and real is erased, no one need take ethical responsibility for actions performed against people (Lake, 121).” Crake creates the plague and conducts his experiments that will be detrimental for humans when he has no sense for immoral conduct because of his need to find solutions.

Additionally, Atwood refers to the differences between insides and outsides and the attempts to keep both separated. The Compound in the novel demonstrates how sanitation and safety are important for the scientists who work for corporations by keeping viruses out of cells and by keeping diseases out of the compound. On the other hand, the Pleeblands are outside of compounds that represent fear, poverty, and desolation. The main difference between the two is an order that signifies social and economic hierarchies. The Compound remains closed off and turns a blind eye towards the world by ignoring the effect of their viruses and experiments on the outside world. The differences between insides and outsides exemplify the effect of corporations and their power that creates commodification for its interests. The world becomes a representation of the outside when the plague kills the human population and eliminates the Compound. Jimmy and the Crakers have to survive in the outside world where they are treated equally by nature unlike his life in the Compound. They all remain in fear and desolate as they search for their meaning in life. By rejecting the traditional ideals of faith, justice, and morality, Jimmy and Crakers have to survive through their spiritual dissolution and aimlessness. Additionally, Lake even accentuates that “the narcissist sees others as a mirror to the self and thus finds it difficult to connect to the outside world (Lake, 126)” through three different causes: family breakdowns, modern bureaucracy, and proliferation of societal images. These three causes affect both Jimmy and Crake in their life that allows them to connect with the outside world through a different perspective. Jimmy even barely survives outside after the plague and compares his life to his childhood spent inside the Compound.

Thus, Margaret Atwood’s 2003 novel Oryx and Crake conveys the cultural ascension of science that disputes the moral and ethical responsibilities of evolution manipulating nature through experiments. The relationship between Jimmy and Crake demonstrates how individuals try to pursue their goals by the knowledge that can become detrimental if it cannot be controlled. For example, Crake is a brilliant scientist who possesses the knowledge and lives a prosperous life with immoral behaviors, while Jimmy has a better personality and is more responsible though he lacks knowledge. This novel foreshadows how technology and science, such as the content on the internet, will commodify individuals by changing their certain way of thinking.

Works Cited:

1. Atwood, Margaret. “Oryx And Crake.” Anchor Books, May 2003. Print.
2. Lake, Christina B. “What Makes a Crake? The Reign of Technique and the Degradation of Language in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake,” Prophets of the Posthuman: American Fiction, Biotechnology, and the Ethics of Personhood. University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. 109-130.

Oryx and Crake, written by Margaret Atwood, is a speculative dystopian novel that projects its readers into the near future. In the middle of chapter 12, the passage, from the end of page 293 to the end of page and 294, has Jimmy starting his new job at RejoovenEsense, a pharmaceutical company where Crake is now the CEO. On Jimmy’s first day, Crake gives Jimmy a tour of his workplace and also introduces the BlyssPluss Pill to Jimmy for the first time. According to Crake, this pill would have protected users against STDs, provide enhanced physical abilities for sexual activity, and would prolong one’s youth.

The message Atwood is trying to portray in the following passage is how corporations have an interest in gaining profit through the commodification of anything and everything. With corporations lacking moral or ethical considerations, the corporations freely exploit people’s insecurities and weaknesses to sell sex, beauty, health, and the promise of happiness. Her speculations as to the extent to which corporations have power over people suggest that eventually, corporatocracy will destroy the world in which we live.

Throughout the novel, capitalistic society is common throughout the book, describing the implications of corporate governance on the lives of the pleeblanders and compounders. In a previous chapter, Roses, Oryx describes how her life has been commodified in regards to her brother having to find more profitable ways to earn money. The insecurity of sexual desires by the men that fall for Oryx is commodified by Uncle En. This is not the first time that the insecurities of their society have been exploited by corporate powers. Commodification has been exemplified through private companies such as organic and NooSkins, who exploited the societal desire for immortality, and AnooYoo, which capitalized on the desire to look beautiful.

The theme statement in regards to our passage is how corporations are profiting upon the insecurities of their society and justify such exploitations with science without any ethical consideration and the arguments to support such statements are that firstly, the ethical considerations are diminishing in the corporate world through commodification. This has been exemplified through the use of Situational Irony and contrasting effects of Euphemism and Denotation. The second argument to support our statement is that The cruel dynamic between corporations and consumers emphasizes the corporation’s manipulative intent which has been exemplified through the use of Tone and the utilization of complex Scientific Jargon.

In our passage, the implementation of situational irony was evident through the BlyssPluss pill, which was marketed as a medication that would protect against any and all sexually transmitted diseases, boost sexual energy, prolong youth, and act as a one-time birth control pill. Its logic was to “eliminate the external causes of death” which Crake explained to be factors such as war, contagious diseases, and overpopulation, as they all lead to “environmental degradation and poor nutrition”. By marketing BlyssPluss to have desirable attributes of immortality and enhanced sexual abilities, Crake was able to manipulate the population to consume the pill and indeed it did as it was sold by the millions.

At first, the implications of the pills instantly lowered the population by preventing further reproduction by sexual intercourse. By doing this, Crake was portrayed to be “altruistic” in his behavior by allowing for fewer people to reap the most possible benefits of an environment that were already dwindling in natural resources. Yet, what Jimmy and the public were unaware of was Crake’s unethical choice of implementing a virus within the pill, which was set to destroy the entire population. Therefore ironically, Crake’s marketed immortality.

It was evident that Atwood’s utilization of situational irony within the passage was important to help the audience understand what had been started, and compare it to the difference of what actually transpires. This is evident through Crake’s marketing of the pill, stating that the pill would give users characteristics of immortality, in order to appeal to their desires but ultimately ended up killing everyone.

Furthermore, the utilization of irony emphasizes the tragedy that persists within the society of Oryx and Crake. The extent to which society is dependent upon achieving immortality puts them in a vulnerable position and susceptible to the ill intentions of corporations. Such intentions are due to the ignorance of scientists when disregarding the dangerous outcomes of their creation and the effects it has on humans.

The recurrence of private corporations manipulating consumers is meant to show the lack of ethical considerations in this dystopian society. HelthWyzer for example depicts how corporations use persuasive language in order to preserve their high profits. However, Atwood cleverly uses the literary devices of euphemism and denotation to expose how corporations, in this passage, unethically conceal negative impacts to convince people to buy their products.

There is evidence of this motif in the passage when Crake concludes the tour for Jimmy by saying that the BlyssPluss Pill is a “sure-fire, one-time-does-it-all birth control pill”. The constant reassurance that is given with “sure-fire” and “one-time-does-it-all”, illustrates that the product provides extensive benefits. This depicts Crake’s beliefs towards the technology that he has developed and how he conforms to his powerful corporate role to convince consumers to purchase the product. This contradicts Crake’s usual use of straightforward and scientific language as he normally relies on facts or simple language that is not very imaginative to prove his point.

Imagine waking up, alone, in a world that completely changed overnight. This is exactly the position that Snowman, the main character in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, is in. In Atwood’s novel, the topic of biotechnology and the costly effects of it are explored in great detail. Biotechnology is “the exploitation of biological processes for industrial and other purposes, especially the genetic manipulation of microorganisms for the production of antibiotics, hormones, etc.” In Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, biotechnology is developed in many ways, and the potential dangers of these actions are made clear to the readers.

The first and most obvious example of Oryx and Crake developing biotechnology is manipulating genes to make new animals. The “rakunk” is a genetically engineered animal which is made up of a racoon and a skunk, thus the name given to it. Snowman, or Jimmy says “there’d been a lot of fooling around in those days: create-an-animal was so much fun, said the guys doing it. It made you feel like God”(Atwood 51). This quote stresses playing the role of God which is a classic science fiction topic. Jimmy is now living in a post-apocalyptic world, and it could be punishment for playing God’s role. Jimmy was given a rakunk as a gift for his birthday, and it became his pet much like many other families before the end of the world. Another animal that was created by modifying the genes of two animals is the “wolvog” which is made up of a dog and a wolf. In chapter 5, Jimmy was sitting up in a tree when he called down to a pack of wolvogs. “In answer there’s a supplicating whine. That’s the worst thing about wolvogs: they still look like dogs, still behave like dogs, pricking up their ears, making playful puppy leaps and bounces, wagging their tails. They’ll sucker you in and then go for you”(Atwood 108). These genetically modified creatures killed many things in their way, including all the pure-bread dogs. These are two great examples of our arrogant use of technology in our everyday lives. With this novel, Atwood is trying to teach us that our technological decisions have consequences, because we believe otherwise.

Along with genetically modifying animals, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake explore many other areas of biotechnology. Pigoons are a great example of the experimenting with biotechnology in the text. Jimmy “thought of pigoons as creatures much like himself. Neither he nor they had a lot of say in what was going on”(Atwood 24). The pigeons are genetically engineered creatures that combined the DNA of a human being and a pig. A corporation called OrganInc bred and sold these pigoons so that when people got sick, the organs of the pigoons could be transplanted in order to save them. This is very similar to how we use organ transplants in our everyday lives, however it is taking the idea to a whole new, and immoral level. In chapter 4, Jimmy’s parents are arguing over a new product that his father is working on. The argument was as follows:

“We give people Hope. Hope isn’t ripping off!”

“At Nooskins’ price it is. You hype your wares and take all their money, and then it’s no more treatments for them…Don’t you remember the way you used to talk?…you had ideals, then.”

“There’s nothing sacred about cells and tissue.” (Atwood 56)

This disagreement is about the Nooskin Corporation where Jimmy’s father works. It charges people huge sums of money in return for a ‘new skin’ that won’t get old or show signs of aging over time. The company also mixes human DNA with animal DNA in unusual ways. Jimmy’s mother, Sharon finds it immoral that a company would cheat people into buying new skins for such large sums. She also believes that is unholy to mix human and animal DNA. From this argument, we learn an important lesson. This lesson is that whatever we may be working on, we must not lose sight of morality, basic humanity, and the wonders of life. Life to Jimmy’s father is now just a product that can be sold for money.

This essay would not be complete without mentioning the Crakers. The Crakers are the prime example of biotechnology in Oryx and Crake. The Crakers were a result of one of Crake’s projects. They were supposed to be genetically perfect children that families could purchase to be their own. “Snowman must serve as a reminder to these people, and not a pleasant one: he’s what they may have been once”(Atwood 106). The Crakers share certain traits with humans, but they are more advanced in some ways and primitive in others. Snowman is like a father-figure to the Crakers and his job is to take care of them, to make sure that they don’t destroy themselves. In the post-apocalyptic world “Sex is no longer a mysterious rite, viewed with ambivalence or downright loathing, conducted in the dark and inspiring suicides or murders. Now it’s more like an athletic demonstration, a free-spirited romp”(Atwood 165). The Crakers are like humans in some ways, but they lack humans’ capacity for jealousy, sexual rivalry, and love: thus, they have sex, but only as a means of reproduction.

The book Oryx and Crake by Margarette Atwood provides many perfect examples of prominent social psychological principles. The first principle comes from Murder, Sex and the Meaning of Life written by Douglas T Kenrick. Subselves are prevalent in both texts, especially with the transformation of Jimmy into Snowman. The second psychological principle is the power of scarcity, a term from Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. Crake uses the power of scarcity to manipulate Jimmy to be the caregiver of the Crakes. The third principle, self-justification, is present in multiple characters within the book Oryx and Crake. Self-justification is a topic that Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson covered in Mistakes Were Made (but not by me). These three principals have multiple examples which are further discussed below.

The first prominent social psychological principle in Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood relates to Douglas T. Kenrick’s book Sex, Murder and the Meaning of Life. The theme that connects the two texts is subselves. In the chapter titled ‘Subselves’, Kenrick describes the 6 following subselves: the team player, the go-getter, the night watchman, the compulsive, the swinging single, the good spouse, and the parent. The two subselves that were more prevalent than the rest were the night watchman and the team player. Throughout Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood perfectly illustrated the internal dissonance Snowman is experiencing between himself and Jimmy. Although Jimmy is just a younger version of himself, Snowman sees him as a different person from himself. Young Jimmy represents the team player subself. Jimmy tries to keep the peace when it comes to his parents. They don’t always see eye to eye, and this is something Jimmy can sense even at a young age. He fails to do so which he may blame himself for. Afterward, all his relationships with women are not successful. Crake even believes Jimmy to be a sex addict because he is going from woman to woman. The nightwatchman subself comes into play when Jimmy switches over to Snowman. Although he is officially referred to as Snowman at work starting in ‘MaddAddam’, he doesn’t fully become him until after the death of Oryx and Crake. Post-apocalyptic Snowman has a priority of surviving. He sleeps in a tree to avoid enemies on the ground. He goes out of his way to obtain a spray gun in order to keep himself safe from the creatures of the post-apocalypse. He is also forced to leave his home in order to find more food, along with alcohol, which is less of a necessity than solid food.

The second prominent social psychological principle in Oryx and Crake is the power of scarcity. This principle is coined by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Scarcity is the phenomenon of an opportunity becoming more valuable due to a decrease in availability. Crake was able to use the power of scarcity over Jimmy. The scarcity in Jimmy’s life comes in the form of loneliness. From a young age, he didn’t have a functional family. He had to say extravagant things in order to get attention from his parents. He even went as far as burning his hair at one point. In the chapter ‘Hammer’ Jimmy’s mom ends up leaving and taking his only friend which is a rakunk named Killer. Afterward, his father does not seem that interested in him. He finds a new woman and once Jimmy moves out, he never really communicates with his father. Besides Killer, Jimmy had no friends until he met Crake. Once they became friends, Jimmy never attempted to make other friends. They started spending all their time together. Crake becomes Jimmy’s misfit form of the family since he doesn’t fully have one at home. It remains this way until Jimmy and Crake go their separate ways for college. Jimmy finds himself alone outside of the company of women. Jimmy was unsure of his mother’s whereabouts before he was forced to watch her execution. Up until then, he would sometimes get postcards from an ‘Aunt’ and once even saw her in a video. He seemed to have a secret hope that she was out there and trying to find her way back to him. In the chapter ‘Gripless’, Jimmy watches his mother’s execution video. This causes his life to go down a dark path. He recalls all of his bad childhood memories and feels more alone than ever. He even started drinking alone to fill the void. This is the moment Crake appears again in Jimmy’s life. Before the reappearance of Crake at Jimmy’s door, the two hadn’t really talked outside of chess and occasional emails. Crake is there to unhealthy comfort Jimmy with alcohol. He then uses Jimmy’s drunken stupor to proposition him with a career change. Jimmy blindly agrees, who wouldn’t when in that mindset? He then moves closer to Crake where they are able to build up their friendship again. For Jimmy, relationships with others were very limited in his life. Crake’s relationship is very valuable to him because he doesn’t have anyone else. Crake ups the ante by adding Oryx to the equation. Crake uses the power of scarcity to transform Jimmy into Snowman. The power of scarcity leads Snowman to be the sole caretaker of the Crakers, which was Crake’s plan all along.

The third prominent social psychological principle in Oryx and Crake is self-justification. Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson cover this topic in their book Mistakes Were Made (but not by me). Throughout Oryx and Crake, different characters display self-justification. The earliest occurrence of it in the book is with Jimmy’s parents. They argue a lot, which sometimes results in Jimmy getting away with something bad he did. In the chapter ‘Bonfire’, Jimmy decides to cut off some of his hair and burn it. He ends up getting away with it because his parents end up arguing. His Dad justifies Jimmy’s action by telling Jimmy’s mother if she didn’t smoke there wouldn’t be a lighter for him to burn things with. His mother justifies Jimmy’s action differently by saying that children are ‘arsonists at heart’ (Oryx and Crake, 2003, ‘Bonfire’). Later on, in chapter ‘Rakunk’ Jimmy’s parents have an argument over his father’s job at NooSkins. His mother believes the job to be immoral because brains are being grown in pigoons and implanted the cells of humans. His father just this with how the treatment could help stroke victims and similar patients with brain issues, and although the job may seem immoral it pays for their housing and food. He also tells her that if she really believes in morality, she wouldn’t smoke so much which supports the tobacco industry. His mother justifies smoking with the fact that she is depressed and nothing, including Jimmy and father, seems to make it any better. This self-justification causes an unhealthy relationship between the parents. This leads to Tavris and Aronson’s marriage theory. They believe that for every negative interaction in a marriage, couples need 5 healthy ones in order to have a successful relationship. Jimmy’s parents use self-justification to pass the blame onto one another. This makes them feel upset with the other person rather than feeling guilty for their own actions. Jimmy displays self-justification when coming to terms with shooting people. In chapter ‘Scribble’, Snowman recalls his last few days as ‘Jimmy’. He contemplates why Crake started the apocalypse and for how long he was planning it. Along with that, he wonders if crake ‘intended to have Jimmy shoot him’ (Oryx and Crake, 2003, ‘Scribble’). In the chapter ‘Remnant’, Snowman is forced to take the Crakers to a location with more food. On the journey to this place, Snowman shoots anyone that approaches him or the Crackers. He experiences cognitive dissonance due to the fact that killing is morally wrong. He ends up justifying his actions by telling himself he was doing them a favor. Both Jimmy and Snowman use self-justification to feel less guilt about committing murder. Oryx is a master of self-justification. Although she has never confirmed or denies anything about her past, she tells stories about questions Jimmy asks her. The biggest example comes from the chapter titled ‘Oryx’. Jimmy and Oryx talk about her childhood and how she ended up being sold away to the ‘gold-wristwatch man’. When Jimmy becomes angered by this, Oryx justifies it to the fact that it is a part of the custom. In the chapter ‘Crake in Love,’ Jimmy asks Oryx about Oryx living in a garage under bad conditions. Oryx makes every excuse as to why this was okay. She says everything from the garage was styled as an apartment to the reason for her being the garage is the there being no room in the house for her. Oryx seems to use self-justification to keep going despite her past.

Throughout this paper, three prominent psychological principles were discussed. The first, subselves, is evident when Jimmy officially started identifying as Snowman. Once he switched over, he couldn’t recognize Jimmy as himself. The second principle discussed is the power of scarcity. Crake successfully uses it on Jimmy which leads to him having to take care of the Crakers. The third principle is self-justification, one seen on multiple characters in the book. Self-justification was used in a harmful way in all four people discussed above. Oryx and Crake is an intricate book that at first may seem like a simple post-apocalyptic story. It not only relates to psychological principles but the raw emotion of loneliness and survival.

Oryx and Crake is a dystopian novel written by award-winning Canadian author Margaret Atwood, depicting the interaction of three characters in two altering storylines, set in two different time frames. Which was used to emulate the relationship between these characters to real-life by not only personifying their actions but also including parallels between their progressive struggles to ones readers would face in their everyday lives. Furthermore, this novel also reveals insight into how different people view the world through their varying understandings, experiences, and perspectives, and how these views create one’s personality, ultimately affecting their decision-making in the end. Despite the fact that they may share a similar situation and circumstance to another. All in all, making Oryx and Crake an interesting read, on the fact that it has key plot values and key life similarities which make it unique compared to other dystopian fiction novels.

To begin, it is understood that stories are an important part of society, for they are an element that provides humanity with a way to connect, separate, cry, laugh, be happy or be sad. In fact, life is nothing but a story. Human history is a story. As the stories that create human history are not only influenced by these events, but also by myths. Being that myths are sacred stories that are not to be taken literally but rather influence the decisions that people make in their everyday lives. As it is understood that Plato considers the relationship between people and these myths that they are taught as important because, in The Republic, it is written ‘‘About gods, then,’ I said ‘such, it seems, are the things that should and should not do”. Overall, emulating how these myths are used as an attempt to influence both people’s emotions and how they should go about certain situations in their daily lives, which was described by Plato who realized the importance of these stories represented within the novel.

Moving forward, it is found that an event that does not seem significant to one person can be the inspiration for others, which ultimately depends on the perspective that the said individual shares. Showing how different people could be placed within the same situation however go about resolving it through different means. Similarly, many aspects of life and literature can also be interpreted in completely different ways. Where the worlds constructed in Oryx and Crake demonstrate this as the worlds according to Jimmy and the Crakers are completely different. For example, to Jimmy, the world has become vastly different from the one he has known. Where in the previous world, there was structure via social institutions, despite the fact that these structures were full of corruption. Where corporations such as the Corpsecorps and Happicuppa ran everything, leading to readers viewing Atwood’s created world as dystopian. On the other hand, the Crackers had only viewed the wasteland as a normal world with Oryx and Crake as a godly figure of some sort and had some strange customs which were bioengineered into them to make them the ‘ideal human’ which could allow them to create a sustainable future in the end. All in all, emulating the differing perspectives between the Crackers and someone before the flood, despite the fact that they were all placed within in a similar circumstance.

In conclusion, it is found that the perspective one holds plays an unparalleled role in the choices that one makes. As it could be used as both a way to control one and limit their agency like the Crackers, or instead allow them to achieve a true understanding of the environment that they are in like Jimmy. Overall, revealing that the relationship between the characters and the plot in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is a life-changing book that changes the way that people perceive the world and behave, for it opens readers to its revolutionizing ideas in a new and refreshing way that is rare in dystopian novels, possibly leading them to understand the ways in which their views have been corrupted by the society that they live in. Ultimately, making Oryx and Crake a great read, due to its phenomenal plot structure, values, lessons, and key characters.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is a complex novel that rips open many core human issues and offers them to the audience for scrutiny. Corporations, art, animals vs humans, the structure and usage of language, and, as we will be discussing, the battle between scientific advancement and intimate relationships. There are many more that could be named as the novel is packed full of hypothetical scenarios, what-if’s, and apocalyptic situations that ask the reader what they would do if our world turned down the same path. However, one of the most prominent questions as one reads through is this: When scientific advancement would do away with human intimacy and the need for connection, which would you choose? Every prominent character in the novel made their decision, from Sharon to Crake. Each struggled with their decision and the themes of human intimacy and the pursuit of scientific progress are in constant battle throughout the novel, each clawing for the top spot. However, by the last pages, as we will see, it will appear that those decisions may not mean as much for the characters as they do for the readers.

The first glimpse into this momentous issue is offered to the audience as Snowman, or Jimmy, reflects on his childhood and his parents relationship. Jimmy’s parents, Sharon and an unnamed father, reach a point in their relationship where their morals and needs no longer match up. They are a solid representation of the thought experiment we are exploring. Jimmy’s father is a genetic researcher, emotionally distant and very intelligent. He is often portrayed as being disappointed in his son for not being more of a ‘numbers person’ or, in other words, not being as traditionally intelligent as he had hoped. It is clear from the beginning that Jimmy’s father holds science in a high regard and that he values his job greatly. His wife, on the other hand, increasingly strays away from the same path. At one point in the past Sharon was a microbiologist at OrganInc Farms and, assumedly, held some sort of respect for the scientific progress that was being achieved. However, she eventually leaves her post and becomes a stay at home mom though her increasing levels of depression keep her from performing that role effectively. Initially the reasons behind her leaving OrganInc Farms and the underlying causes for her depression are unclear. We see things from Jimmy’s perspective and, at such a young age, he was not in a position to psychologically analyze his mother’s actions. Eventually, as most things like this do, a climax is reached and Jimmy is made aware of the true struggle his mother is dealing with.

Jimmy had learned how to make small mics in his Neotechnology class that he had hidden one behind a picture in the living room as well as behind a clock in his kitchen (Atwood, 56). With these devices in place, he was able to listen in on conversations from the comfort and relative safety of his bedroom, something he took advantage of one night when his father came home slightly drunk and with seemingly good news to share with his wife. It was during the subsequent conversation that Jimmy eavesdropped on that allowed the audience to fully understand the struggle that Sharon had been going through. The conversation starts out with Jimmy’s father expressing that they had finally managed to get human cortex tissue to grow in a pigoon, a pig engineered to grow organs for human transplants. However, the conversation doesn’t go as Jimmy’s father seemed to hope.

“‘…Don’t you remember the way we used to talk, everything we wanted to do? Making life better for people – not just people with money. You used to be so…you had ideals, then.”

“Sure,” said Jimmy’s father in a tired voice. “I’ve still got them. I just can’t afford them.”

A pause. Jimmy’s mother must’ve been mulling that over. “Be that as it may,” She said – a sign that she wasn’t going to give in. “Be that as it may, there’s research and there’s research. What you’re doing – this pig brain thing. You’re interfering with the building blocks of life. It’s immoral. It’s…sacrilegious.” (Atwood, 57)

We see here that Sharon left her job and became quite depressed because of her moral disconnection with the scientific research that her husband, and once herself, was participating in. While Jimmy’s father holds (and will continue to hold) the research in high esteem and seems to ignore any immoral implications, Sharon does not or cannot do the same.

As the story progresses, Sharon eventually leaves her family behind. It was something she must have been planning on doing for a time before she left as she managed to get through all the checkpoints by claiming she had a dentist appointment (Atwood, 62). In the letter she left to Jimmy, while we do not know all it said since he did not pay attention to everything she wrote, she expressed issues with a dirty conscience and a lifestyle that she found to be meaningless (61). Later on Jimmy will see a glimpse of his mother on tv while watching a protest of the Happicuppa brand (181). She was one of the protesters, a bandanna over her face that slipped out of place and allowed Jimmy to recognize her features. It is then that the readers become privy to what Sharon left her family and her life to do. She became an activist, fighting against genetic engineering and following a life that she found morally uplifting.

Sharon and her husband are a manifestation of the moral conundrum that is deciding between science and human relationships. Jimmy’s father obviously chose scientific pursuit. He ignored his wife’s ethical concerns and seemed unmoved by her depression and obvious distress at what they were doing in those research centers. In a sense, he chose his career and research over his wife and, in some ways, over his son as well, becoming increasingly disconnected as Jimmy grows older. Sharon, on the other hand, chose human intimacy. While she did have to leave her family, sever ties with certain relationships, she then went on to fight against everything her then ex-husband, and society as a whole, was doing. She valued human life, relationships, and the preservation of nature over scientific progress. She chose to be connected to her fellow humans rather than to a cold and sterile lifestyle of genetic engineering. As the readers eventually find out, Sharon is executed by firing squad for what can only be assumed is her involvement in activism. So even though Jimmy’s father and Sharon represented two sides of the same coin, it seems as though one side will always be snuffed out in favor of the other.

The readers catch glimpses of Sharons life throughout the novel as Jimmy encounters her image but it is far from a complete and constant narrative. Given that the novel is strictly from Jimmy’s point of view, it is difficult to get the full truth of any characters, even those that he is intimately connected with. That means, then, that the most complete picture that we do have is of Jimmy himself. While we only catch snapshots of Sharon’s struggles, we consistently get to see the struggles that Jimmy goes through. Namely, his relationship with women. We see that from a young age Jimmy is interested in women and having some sort of relationship with them. During his time at Martha Graham he explains the way he interacts with women and how he sees them. He is attracted to women who were working on themselves, working on healing from various past traumas, and he would come to their aid and listen to their stories (Atwood, 190). However, eventually he would turn that around and become the person who needed fixing in the relationship, he would claim to be a lost cause and to be emotionally stunted, enjoying the way the women would comfort and dote over him. Of course, eventually the women would grow tired of this act and his refusal to take relationships seriously and they would leave, leaving Jimmy to jump to the next woman. The fact that Jimmy could easily describe the sequence of events that happened in every one of his relationships shows the difficulties he had truly feeling connected to his partners. He desired them, naturally, Crake would eventually call him a sex addict, but there is still a certain level of disconnect. Regardless, in those early years, he seemed somewhat content in that.

As the novel continues, Jimmy graduates and eventually obtains a job at AnooYoo. It is then that the readers notice his relationship with women start to shift for the first time. It seems that the further Jimmy falls down the corporate pipeline, the worse his interpersonal relationships become. Not only does he mostly lose contact with Crake, his only real friend, but his sex life dwindles down to nothing and he becomes increasingly dissatisfied. Once he is granted a promotion it seems like his sex life picks up again but he finds himself in a whole new type of dissatisfaction. He ends up with women who already have husbands or boyfriends and becomes the sidepiece, used mostly for sex (Atwood, 251). He shows disdain for being treated as such, feeling disconnected and used and without true intimacy.

“‘Leave your husband,” Jimmy had said, to cut her short. “Let’s run away to the pleeblands and live in a trailer park.”

“Oh I don’t think…You don’t mean that.”

“What if I did?”

“You know I care about you. But I care about him too, and…”

“From the waist down.”

“Pardon?” She was a genteel woman, She said Pardon? instead of What?

“I said, from the waist down. That’s how you really care about me. Want me to spell it out for you?”’ (Atwood, 285)

It’s clear from the exchange with one of his partners that Jimmy craves a certain level of emotional intimacy with the women he is involved with. He isn’t satisfied with just sex, he wants a relationship. Someone to take care of and vice versa. Increasingly as the novel progresses we see that Jimmy represents one side of the coin. He isn’t a traditionally intellectual person. He isn’t good with numbers and doesn’t show interest nor knowledge in science. He is instead a ‘words person’, a romantic with a particular need to have human connection. When alone, he does not seem to do well mentally. During his time at AnooYoo he seems depressed and isolated, uninterested in his job and seeking human connection wherever he can get it. When the decision of scientific progress vs human intimacy is presented, it is clear that Jimmy would gladly choose the latter.

Jimmy’s relationship with women shifts for another time once he reconnects with Crake and begins working underneath him at RejoovenEsense. It is then that he meets Oryx, recognizing her as the little girl he once saw on a child pornography site (Atwood 308). Naturally Jimmy is immediately taken with her, as he had been in the past, but attempts to show little interest in her because he is made aware that she, in some respect, belongs to Crake. Crake is his only friend, as he recognizes, and he questions how he could ever lay a finger on Oryx while that fact remained true (310). Instead, he began going to the pleeblands and paying for girls there. He claims that at first it was fun but soon turned into simply a habit, again dissatisfied with his relationship with women. Lacking in the intimacy he craves. However, eventually Oryx comes to Jimmy and, as he puts it, seduces him (312). While she does have a sexual relationship with Crake, she describes it as mechanical and seems bored with it. Therefore she seeks out Jimmy and they begin a sexual relationship behind Crakes back. It is then that we see Jimmy’s relationship with women shift once again.

Jimmy sees Oryx as snapshots of girls from his past. As the little girl with the ribbon on the child pronigraphy site, as the teenager held captive in a garage, and so on. Throughout the book he seems to desperately want to gain information about her past, about the people who hurt her, and about her own feelings regarding her trauma. It is similar to the way he sought out scarred women in the past, seeking to fix them. However, Oryx doesn’t respond in the way the other women had. She seems disinterested in her past and content in the present. Never angry and never resentful and never willing to give Jimmy what he wants. Whatever Oryx had gone through, of which is unclear, she has dealt with. She is content in her relationships with Crake and Jimmy and her work. This seems to frustrate Jimmy as he feels the need to get back at the people who had wronged Oryx despite the fact that she feels differently.

The readers see the conflict between science and relationships come up again as Jimmy gets increasingly jealous over Oryx and Crake’s continued relationship.

“We could get away from Crake,” said Jimmy. “We wouldn’t have to sneak around like this, we could…”

“But Jimmy.” Wide eyes. “Crake needs us!” (Atwood, 320)

Jimmy craves to have Oryx to himself. He cares very little about the Paradise Project in comparison to Oryx and their relationship, enough that he would be willing to abandon it and Crake. However, Oryx is unwilling to leave. She thinks that Crake is very intelligent and believes in the work that he is doing. The conflict is physical in those moments, with Jimmy choosing human relationships and Oryx choosing scientific pursuits. All his life Jimmy has struggled with women, obviously craving a certain amount of intimacy that is always just out of reach. He is a romantic, valuing human connection while living in a world that clearly values science and research above all else. Jimmy is the most clear representation of this opposition, fitting given that he is the main character and likely not a mistake on Atwood’s part. Jimmy is meant to be a character that doesn’t quite fit in the world around him, he does not think or feel in the same way that everyone else around him does and he desires satisfaction from different parts of life. Atwood used him as a way to express the disconnect between humanity and science, showing that it is difficult for both to exist without one overshadowing the other.

In complete opposition to Jimmy is Crake. He clearly represents the other side of the argument. Unlike Jimmy, Crake is extremely disinterested in sex and romance in general.

Human trafficking is the trade of humans for forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. Canada has been identified as both a transit and a destination point for this crime. Over the years it is found that human trafficking often takes place in urban centers, within Canada’s borders as well as smaller cities and communities. Margaret Atwood’s novel, Oryx and Crake, brings awareness to human trafficking and how it’s quickly dismissed in society. Unfortunately, this crime is something that happens often in Canada and affects so many people, such as indigenous women, migrants and Immigrants, and children. Although trafficking is a crime happening all over the world, we cannot ignore the fact that it happens in Canada just as much as third world countries.

Indigenous women are being trafficked and sexually exploited all over Canada. This is due to the country’s ugly and violent colonial history. Stephen Harper, Canada’s last prime minister, is one of many colonial leaders who repeatedly refused to engage in fixing this crime. He said, “Um, it’s not high on our radar, to be honest’, leaving indigenous women to fend for themselves against traffickers. Canada has ignored and refused to fix the problem of human trafficking for years. “The colonialization, discrimination, racial stereotyping and several other acts made against indigenous people, have left them with little social or political power” said Miriam Mcnab. (“Indigenous Women’s Issues in Canada”) This has led to inequality and poverty in the indigenous community, making the trafficking of indigenous women more probable. In 2015 there were ‘approximately 1,200 documented cases of indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been murdered over three decades.” (“Violence against indigenous women is woven into Canada’s history”) Something that has linked, several times, to the sexual exploitation and trafficking of Indigenous women in Canada, is the disconnection from their families and communities. (“Daphne Bramham: Human trafficking is pervasive and largely ignored in Canada”) Just like Indigenous women, Oryx in Oryx and Crake was disconnected from her family. She was sold to Uncle who trafficked and sexually exploited her. Both Oryx and Indigenous women are seen as, unintelligent, valueless, people and as a result, society took advantage of them. Indigenous women are insanely overrepresented in Human trafficking. ‘Aboriginal people make up just 4 percent of the population, but a study in 2014 found they account for about half the victims of trafficking.’ (Grant, 1) Due to this crime being done so secretively, there are so many cases of trafficked Indigenous women that go unnoticed and unsolved each year in Canada.

Just like Indigenous women, migrant workers and new immigrants are highly risked targets for human trafficking in Canada. Due to language barriers, a lack of accessible support and a lack of accurate information about their rights, migrant workers are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. (“Human Trafficking”) Some enter Canada legally but end up being forced to do labour in agriculture, construction and several other trades. (“human trafficking in Canada”) There was a case of forty-three victims, born in Mexico, that had paid traffickers a lot of money to transport them from their home country to Canada. They were promised education, work visas and eventually permanent residency status. However, once in Canada, they were forced to live in horrible conditions and to work for a cleaning company. Thanks to further investigations, the victims were released in February 2019 by the Ontario police. One of the victims said, “I went to bed a slave, woke up a free man”, contributing to the statement that human trafficking today is described as modern-day slavery. Those being exploited over labour are usually underpaid or not paid at all. “Many of them work on farms or mines in areas where there is not a lot of police presence,” Dandurand explained. (“’Modern day slavery’: Why human trafficking often flies under the radar in Canada “) Migrants and Immigrants are discriminated against and perceived as outsiders, making them more vulnerable to human trafficking. In the novel, Oryx and Crake, the characters living inside the Compounds, receive better education and better living conditions than those on the outside. As a result, their society describes the Outsiders as inhuman people with no value. Just like migrants and new immigrants, the Outsiders in Oryx and Crake are seen as, unworthy, unintelligent, outsiders. Unfortunately, there are so many different forms of forced labour that go unnoticed by the general public such as, debt bondage. Debt bondage is the enslavement of people for unpaid debts and is one of the most common forms of contemporary forced labour. In these cases, Immigration documents are held by the traffickers, and victims are often physically abused. Many are then forced into labour to pay off their migratory debts. (“Human Trafficking”) Due to the manipulation, threats and abuse trafficked victims endure, it is difficult to solve cases in Canada without in-depth investigations.

Just like migrant workers, children are also highly risked targets for human trafficking and commodity in Canada. Exploitation usually begins at the age of 13. However, there are plenty of human trafficking cases that include young children and teenagers that have fallen victims. Sydney Loney said, “This is the kind of problem we’d prefer to pretend doesn’t exist, although that’s getting harder to do. If you ask most Canadians, they’d say they’re horrified that trafficking exists, but relieved that we live here, where things like that don’t happen. But Canada is exactly that kind of place.” (“This Woman Was Trafficked at a Club When She Was 19”) Statistics from the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey say that a quarter of trafficked victims are under the age of 18. (“Daphne Bramham: Human trafficking is pervasive and largely ignored in Canada”) Trafficked children are being used for so many horrible trades all over Canada. When sexually exploited they are forced to perform sexual acts including exotic dancing or the production of pornography. Just like trafficked children, Oryx in Oryx and Crake was exploited and manipulated into child pornography. Children are often sold or sent to areas with the promise of a better life but instead are faced with various horrors. Some are forced to work in small industries and manufacturing operations where they work for excessive periods of time, dangerous working conditions, and for little or no wages. They are also sometimes trafficked into military service as soldiers and experience armed combat at very young ages (“Human Trafficking”). According to former Conservative Member of Parliament, Joy Smith, ‘All 12 to 14-year-olds are vulnerable because they’re kids. They haven’t lived life and they believe people who are friendly to them are trying to be their friends. They’re trying to get the victim to work for them, and separate them from all their support systems” (“’They’re kids’: Expert on human trafficking speaks about victims, prevention in Thunder Bay”). Human trafficking survivor, Alaya McIvor, was twelve years old when she was taken into foster care. She was given two options: to stay in her unsafe community or relocate. She chose to relocate and was given a one-way Greyhound ticket to Winnipeg with no one waiting for her at the other end. She said, “I got onto that bus, I was happy to leave my community and got to Winnipeg an hour later and there was an Italian man … he lured me and I got into his vehicle.” She survived poverty, child abuse, sexual exploitation, trafficking in Manitoba and B.C., rapes, beatings and police brutality. Over the years, she says, she has “lost count” of friends and relatives who have gone missing or been murdered due to trafficking in Canada (Grant, 9). Human Trafficking violates children and denies them the ability to reach their full potential. They have experience horrible devastating horrors that have a huge impact on their lives, even after being rescued.

Canada is both a transit and destination point for human trafficking, and unfortunately it often goes undetected. Although many sources such as Margaret Atwood’s book, Oryx and Crake, try to help and bring awareness to the situation, many Canadians don’t do anything about it. Indigenous women, migrants and children are a couple major examples of people who become victims to a horrible crime. Human trafficking has been a problem in Canada for years. Only recently have they begun to engage and fix it. Since human trafficking is suddenly so pervasive, Canada cannot put aside the fact that it is a major problem in their country just as much as others.

Works Cited

1. Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, May 2003.
2. “Child Trafficking.” UNICEF, https://www.unicef.ca/en/child-trafficking. Accessed 20 Dec. 2019.
3. “Daphne Bramham: Human trafficking is pervasive and largely ignored in Canada.” Vancouver Sun, https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/daphne-bramham-human-trafficking-is-pervasive-and-largely-ignored-in-canada. Accessed 13 Dec. 2019.
4. Grant, Tavia. “The Trafficked: Sexual exploitation is costing Canadian women their lives.” 10 Feb 2016, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-trafficked-sexual-exploitation-is-costing-canadian-women-their-lives/article28700849/. Accessed 13 Dec. 2019.
5. ”Human Trafficking.” 5 Dec. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/human-trafficking:. Accessed 15 Dec. 2019.
6. “Human Trafficking.” Government of Canada, https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/cntrng-crm/hmn-trffckng/index-en.aspx. Accessed 20 Dec. 2019.
7. “Human Trafficking in Canada.” Province of British Columbia, https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/justice/criminal-justice/victims-of-crime/human-trafficking/human-trafficking-training/module-2/in-canada. Accessed 20 Dec. 2019.
8. “Indigenous Women’s Issues in Canada.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 7 Feb. 2006, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/native-womens-issues. Accessed 13 Dec. 2019.
9. “’Modern day slavery’: Why human trafficking often flies under the radar in Canada.“ Global News, 14 February 2019, https://globalnews.ca/news/4956517/human-trafficking-labour-canada/. Accessed 15 Dec. 2019.
10. “’They’re kids’: Expert on human trafficking speaks about victims, prevention in Thunder Bay.” CBC, 18 Nov. 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/human-trafficking-thunder-bay-joy-smith-1.5363904. Accessed 20 Dec. 2019.
11. “This Woman Was Trafficked at a Club When She Was 19.” Flare, 27 Dec. 2018, https://www.flare.com/news/reality-of-human-trafficking/. Accessed 13 Dec. 2019.
12. “Violence against indigenous women is woven into Canada’s history.” The guardian, Dec. 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/14/violence-indigenous-woman-canada-history-inquiry-racism. Accessed 15 Dec. 2019.

In the changing global scenario, climate change is the defining issue that challenges the very way we organize our society. Humanity is not only facing the impending climatic catastrophe but the constant negligence and decisions of the totalitarian government make it more evident. For instance, sea ice melted in both Arctic and Antartica, global average Co2 levels hovering closer to 410ppm, rising ocean water forced the Pacific island nation of Kiribati to purchase 6,000 acres of land in Fiji in 2014. The Yup’ik Alaska native village of Newtok requested in 2016, a federal disaster declaration to secure funds to finance the relocation of the entire community due to the erosion of village lands and thawing permafrost in particular places. Despite of all these disastrous events taking place, the Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, leaving global diplomats to plot a way forward without the cooperation of the world’s largest economy. Discussing the recent event of prolonged fire in Australia due to extreme heat, drought and strong wind which killed millions of wildlife and the ignorance of the government stating that “fires are nothing new and climate change is irrelevant” shows how much the authority is concerned about the climate crisis. Focusing on the earth’s functioning that is altered by the human acts, Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer defined the era as “Anthropocene- the age of humankind” calling the humans as “great forces of nature”. Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy no doubt addresses these gleaming issues of climate change and how it affects the social, economic and political sphere.

Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy speculates a dystopian future that articulate on a specific point of anthropogenic apocalypse: the release of “BlyssPlus” pill by the scientist Crake to clear away human species which he sees as faulty and destructive. And as a replacement he made Crakers, genetically mutated beings whom he believes will repopulate the earth without repeating the faulty human history, thereby making the “Great Rearrangement” which made the “Great Emptiness”. As Toby ( a god’s gardener, survivor, and the narrator of Madaddam) has pondered over it: “May be it’s what drove Crake on, maybe he wanted to end it…the grinning, elemental, malice. Begin us anew (Maddaddam 41).

The plot moves back and forth around this cataclysmic rupture, between and already dystopian past of corporate “compounds” (owned by big corporation having well equipped scientic technologies and well guarded security) and impoverished “pleeblands”(outside of compound walls, filthy slums where people are in constant fear of diseases and crimes) and a post-pandemic present that is the reader’s future. But the pandemic is not only the cause of apocalypse but the global warming as evidenced in the images of a sea turned to “hot metal”, the sky “a bleached blue…hole burnt in it by the sun” (Oryx and Crake 11). And “the coastal aquifers turned salty and the northern permafrost melted and the vast tundra bubbled with methane and the drought in the mid-continental plain regions went on and on, and the Asian Stepps turned to sand dunes and meat became hard to come by” (24).

The first part of the Maddaddam Trilogy, Oryx and Crake deals with Snowman ( self-named by jimmy), the only human survivor who lives among a group of Crakers (genetically bio-engineered species who are resistant to the ultraviolet, thick-skinned, inbuilt with mosquito repellent, grass-based diet and communal mating rituals conditioned for a peaceful and low carbon footprint society). The flashback memory of Jimmy enabled us to peep into the chaotic life of compounds and “pleeblands”. As the trilogy unfolds, this speculative world broadens with other human survivors: from the “Painballers” (aggressive dehumanized corps prisoners who have ruthlessly killed other combatants in the painball arena) to “God’s Gardeners”, a vegetarian cult who are called as ‘eco-freaks’ and the Maddaddams, the bio-terrorists.

Maddaddam was published in the year 2013. Set in the later part of the 21st century, it is a sequel to the first two parts of the Trilogy. The word “Maddaddam” was used by a group of bio-terrorist activists. In Oryx and Crake, the word first appeared in the “Extinctathon” game which proved to be a vital mode of communication (exchanging secrets to prevent hackery) between the members of the group . The motto of the game refers to naming of the animals too: “Adam named the living animals, Maddaddam named the dead ones.” (Maddaddam 194) players have to correctly guess the names of the species through analyzing its “Phylum Class Order Family Genus Speciess” provided by the opponent player. The story begins with the snowman’s encounter with the Painballers and the gardeners, Toby and Ren who are in a rescue mission to save Amanda from Painballers. It continues with survivors trying to sustain in the scarce, destitute remains of human civilization coinciding with the backstory of Zeb that covers all the gaps and silences of the first two novels. It deals with the story of the formation of a new community with outlived human race comprising of Maddaddamites, Crackers and Painballers. Like Oryx and Crake, this novel is written in double time narrative, the post- apocalyptic present and the pre-apocalyptic past from the perspective of Zeb, the leader of Maddaaddamites and the brother of Adam One, who is the founder of God’s gardener. The novel ends with a final confrontation with the Painballers giving a hopeful note towards a future community.

Atwood speculates the consequences of climate change which makes the world uninhabitable. In Oryx and Crake, snowman wakes up near the beach where “the tide coming in, wave after wave slashing over the various barricades…The offshore towards stand out in the dark silhouette against it, and the distant ocean grinding against the crests reefs of rusted car parts and jumbled bricks and assorted rubble sound almost like holiday traffic” (3) .

It shows the rising of the sea level due to global warming. Similarly, in Maddaddam, she portrays the wish-wash rhythm of the rising sea waves that had “swept away the beaches and the once upmarket hotels and condons were semi-flooded” (168) and the world where material stuff exceeds the number of living species leaving behind the survivors for nothing but “ waiting for meaningful time to come” (136).

Atwood outlined a dystopian future that is extrapolated from our contemporary modernity. It establishes a world of rampant capitalism of individualistic consumer societies, leading to a global ecological catastrophe. Ellis states that capitalism causes social inequalities that supported “audacious strategies of global conquest, endless commodification and relentless rationalization” and thereby results in Earth’s transformation. Inequality in human transformation of environments are merely a reflection of inequalities within and among societies resulting from socio-political and economic processes. In the novel, while the capitalist corporations like “OrganInc”, “AnooyoSpa”, “HealthWyzer”, provide best services like organ donation, younger skin to the affluent compound people, the pleeblanders are striving for trivial needs. Another instance in the novel is “The Church of Petroleum” and “OilCorps” groups who got rich and plentiful when “oil become scarce and the price shot up” causing “desperation among the pleebs…” (111). Zeb narrates, “we didn’t pray for forgiveness or even for rain…We prayed for oil…the Rev included that in his list of divine gift for the chosen.” (113) This is undoubtedly the extrapolation of the familiar event of the oil crisis that had started after the second world war during 1970s in US when the OPEC oil embargo decided to stop exporting oil to the united States resulting in increased oil prices that reduce U.S. economic activity by squeezing consumers discretionary income. Brian C. Black writes that “the inculcation is so dramatic that Americans during the postwar era can be said to exist within an ecology of oil.”

This capitalist corporation (OrganInc) disturbed the animal-human relationship through the creation of “pigoons”, as a medical organ donor of humans. Pigoons are the “transgenic knockout pig host” whose “organs would transplant smoothly and avoid rejection, but would also be able to fend of attacks by opportunistic microbes and viruses, of which there were more strains every year”(22). Moreover, they are infused with human DNA as they are customized using cells from individual human donors” (23). Calina Ciobanu notes that pigoons clearly destabilizes exceptionalist views by becoming in part human. This process of organ production in animal species “reduces the human itself to be a part of a technoscientific, mechanized view of nature.” The insecurity was already shown in Jimmy’s reaction to the rich assortment of pork products in the cafeteria: Pigoon pie again! , they would say. ‘Pigoon pancakes, pigoon popcorn. He did not want to eat a pigoon because he thought of the pigoons as creature much like himself. (Oryx 24) Eating of pork will be much similar to eating human flesh as it is practiced by the “SecretBurgers” when meat was in scarcity. Also in Maddaddam the humanity have no objection in eating the pigoons meat: “Frankenbacon, considering they’re splices. I still feel kind of weird about eating them. They’ve got human neo-cortex tissue” (19).

Atwood goes so far as to endow the pigoons with high intellectual power as human, attacking and threatening the humans creating their own animal culture but also gives them the opportunity of communication, politics and diplomacy. Towards the last part of the novel, pigoons were able to communicate with the humans via Crakers as well as they ally with the humans to fight against the painballers: the Crakers “kneel so that they’re at the level of the pigoons: head face head…they are talking…they are asking for help” from those painballers “who are killing their pig babies. The pig ones want those killing ones to be dead” (269). In the battle between the Maddaddamites and the painballers, Atwood portrays the pigoons as fine military experts, standing guards and clearing away possible cover, are running messages between the scouts and outriders and the main van of older and heavier pigoons: the tank battalion” (246). And later they also took part in the voting on the death decision of the painballers. These scenes have reference to Animal Farm, fitting with the clearly satirical tone of the scenes. The pigoons are more like pigs of Animal farm who believed in the equality and unity to fight against the common enemy (totalitarian government/ painballers) but they do not try to overpower the human beings unlike the pigs in Animal Farm.

Moreover, the novel talks about the sustainable living of the human survivor after the collapse of human civilization. The land in Maddaddam is so wrecked that the survivors have no choice but to continue scrounging among the remains of the very industrial civilization such as the soap, toilet paper, the bed sheet to protect their skins from damaging rays of sun. The “Cobb House” they chose for their place of refuge was a “parkette staging pavilion for fair and parties.” (26) It seems like humanity is going back to the point where the civilization started long before humans even existed as species. Also the hope of possibility of human existence through reproduction of human species by the women survivor and the urge of writing history by Toby presupposes a tomorrow that will bring with it those who will read the words written today. In Oryx and Crake, jimmy thinks that writing is a futile exercise because “he’ll have no future reader, because the Crakers can’t read”, then Maddaddam evidenced a ray of hope, when Toby thinks of writing the future that is yet to come. She thinks “what kind of story?- what kind of history will be of any use at all, to people she can’t know will exist, in the future she can’t foresee?” (205) also by teaching the Craker boy, Blackbeard the art of writing she wants to create a history of this new community. So in the end Maddaddam describes the course of history through the new strategies of altering and using environments that were passed on to future generations through writing. In this light, Atwood emphatically writes “Repair what can’t be repaired, mend what can’t be mended…Hold the fort” (28).

References

1. Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. London: Bloomsbury, 2009. Print. —. Maddaddam. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Print.
2. Black, Brian C. “Oil for Living: Petroleum and American Conspicuous Consumption.” The Journal of American History (2012): 40-50. Web. 28 Jan. 2020
3. Bowers, Mike. “waiting for the Tide to Turn: Kiribati’s Fight for Survival.” Guardian 23 Oct. 2017. Web. 1 Feb. 2020.
4. Carruth, Alison. Wily Ecologies comic Features for American Environmentalism.” American Literary History 30.1 (2018): 108-133. Project Muse. Web. 14 Jan. 2020.
5. Ciobanu, Celina. “Rewriting the Human at the End of the Anthropocene in Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy.” Minnesota Review 83 (2014): 153-162. Project Muse. Web. 23 Sep. 2019.
6. “Climate Change.” Un.org. Web. 24 Oct. 2019.
7. Ellis, Erle C. Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction. New York: OUP, 2018. Print.
8. Friedman, Lisa. “Trump Serves Notice to Quit Paris Climate Agreement.” New York Times 4 Nov. 2019. Web. 31 Jan. 2020.
9. Merola, Nicole M. “Archives of Ecocatastrophe, or Vulnerable Reading Practices in the Anthropocene.” American Literary History 30. 4 (2018): 820-835. Project Muse. Web. 14 Jan. 2020.
10. Newey, Sarah. “Australia is burning- but why are the bush fires so bad and is climate change to blame?” Telegraph 15 Jan. 2020. Web. 29 Jan. 2020.
11. Phillips, Dane. “Collapse, Resilience,Stability and Sustainability in Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy.” Literature and Sustainability: Concept, Text and Culture (2017): 139-157. Web. 23 Sep. 2019.
12. Schmeink, Lars. “The Anthropocene, the Posthuman, and the Animal.” Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction. 2016: 71-118. JSTOR. Web. 26 Sep. 2019.