Except for the children of Crake, the garbage and the strange animals: wolvogs, rakunks and pigoons, Jimmy, alias Snowman, is alone in the world. Naked except for a sheet to protect himself from the relentless sun, he spends his days interpreting things for the naive Crakens, collecting drinking water in his empty beer bottles and going on rampages back into the compounds for food or other useful objects.
This story is typical Margaret Atwood. Here, as in many of her works, survival is the theme. Men and women try to exist in a dystopian world that has gone awry.
In ORYX and CRAKE, the protagonist, Jimmy, never really fits in, he isn’t "a numbers boy." He attends the Martha Graham Academy to study art. Living in a world dominated by science and technology, he finds that what he learns there is absolutely no use in the real world.
Jimmy grows up in a world in which people are suffering from the after effects of global warming. He lives with his parents in the gated community of OrganInc.Farms. His sought after scientist father, “helped engineer the Methusalah mouse as part of operation immortality” and developed "pigoons." These pigs are used to grow human organs, which can be transplanted without rejection. “The pigoon organs can be customized by donating your own cells.”
Although Jimmy’s mother is a scientist, she finds that the gene splicing, cloning, engineering and ersatz food make her uneasy. Depressed, she approaches her work in a half hearted manner.
For his tenth birthday Jimmy's father gives him a rakunk, a cross between a skunk and a raccoon. Jimmy names him Killer.
Soon after, his father gets a new job and they move into a compound where security is tight. The CorpSeCorps are secret police who patrol the compounds. They try to prevent “crazies, muggers, addicts and paupers” from infiltrating from the "plebeland," the devastated outside world where life is unpredictable and unsafe.
Jimmy’s father says, “life in the compounds is the way it was when he was a kid.” Jimmy’s mother says, “it is artificial like a theme park and the old ways will never come back.”
It is no surprise when she leaves taking Killer with her in order to liberate it. Her disappearance keeps the CorpSeCorps questioning Jimmy for years about where she went.
While lonely at first, at his new school, Jimmy meets Glenn, soon to be called Crake, a boy his age who is a science whiz and expert at hacking computers. They become good friends. They play computer games like Extinctathon, which charts the demise of the species, and Blood And Roses, in which genocides and atrocities are pitted against human achievements.
One day, while surfing porno sites, Jimmy notices a beautiful girl, Orax, on the HottTotts pornographic website. He becomes obsessed with her and thinks he is in love.
After high school Crake studies at the prestigious Watson and Crick Institute. He becomes involved in some bioresearch in the RejoovenEsense Compound. He invites Jimmy to come and help him with his project.
Jimmy is astonished, when he is led into the climate controlled lab full of naked creatures called Crakens:
"These are tall, multihued, beautiful creatures, empty of all thought that isn't required for simple survival and whose small society is void of violence or aggression because there's no such thing as sexual frustration among them. They mate cheerfully and in groups when the females come into estrus."
There is also a beautiful naked woman, working with the creatures, who turns out to be Oryx.
But now these children of Crake, created by his friends Oryx and Crake, who are now dead, inhabit the afterworld with Jimmy. He finds himself very lonely and spends too much time daydreaming about his past. Interpreting the world for the Crakens is difficult because of their lack of former knowledge. Worshipping Oryx and Crake is a solution, but Jimmy is having difficulty with explanations. He concludes that the answers don’t matter anymore.
Atwood has created an exciting, disturbing world of unanswered questions and intriguing possibilities. This dystopia offers readers a window into the world in which we live and encourages us to think about what we are doing to our environment. Atwood doesn’t try to answer the questions raised but only presents reasons for why we would find ourselves in such a predicament.
This is a wonderful book and I enjoyed reading it.
Oryx and Crake
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2003
ISBN: 0-7710-0868-6
Hardcover Price: $37.99
Seal
ISBN: 0-7704-2935-1
Paperback Price: $11.99
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