Oryx and Crake- Margaret Atwood
By: Hannah Johnson
“The whole world is now one vast uncontrolled experiment – the way it always was, Crake would have said – and the doctrine of unintended consequences is in full spate.”
A master of dystopian worlds, Margaret Atwood writes a brilliant work of climate fiction, speaking to society in the aftermath of the end.
Oryx and Crake is told partly through the past, about two friends, Jimmy (later Snowman) and Crake. The book is reflecting on and telling the story of what led to the end of the world as one knows it, while Snowman still lives in the brokenness, amongst the new “perfect” artificially designed race, The Crakers. A chilling, sinister tale about humanity, science, power, selfishness, idealism, carelessness, hopelessness, and intelligence, Oryx and Crake deeply examines both the physical world, and the vital role humans have in it.
The world around Snowman, the “after” is so drastically different from the world humans are living in today. It’s post-apocalyptic, and the story behind why is so complex. The world around Snowman has been altered so drastically, artificially yet humanly, selfishly yet naturally, into something lost to devastation. The Crakers live as a part of this “new world”, almost biblical amongst the destruction, in their perfect, artificial, appearances. Snowman still remembers the “old world” though, becoming almost a mythical figure to creatures like Crakers, who can’t comprehend an authentic human experience, what is known today as authentic humanity.
Atwood leaves no stone unturned, no matter how disturbing, in her depictions of the world and human society. The most gruesome parts of humanity, the gruesome parts that aren’t fictional but are very real, the troubles that really exist in society, are closely examined in a world where humanity tries to play God. One can see the consequences that come with it. In a way, the book is a fictional novel as much as it is a brutal warning, told so insightfully by Atwood, a depiction of what humanity is really capable of, and the fragility of climate.
“And she used to snivel about her grandfather’s Florida grapefruit orchard that had dried up like a giant raisin when the rains had stopped coming, the same year Lake Okeechobee had shrunk to a reeking mud puddle and the Everglades had burned for three weeks straight.”
Oryx and Crake is overall a masterpiece not just in its depiction of the world and society, but in examining how something like this, a world so fragmented, could come to be, dealing with complex, intangible elements of human existence, things that perhaps can’t be seen as physical objects (though Atwood plays with this too with the existence of the Crakers), but a desire for perfection, for selfishness that can end everything in the blink of an eye. When people begin to rapidly die, when the world around them is now spiraling out of control, and one is left to just stand and watch, maybe then, one will finally realize the true danger.
“Possibly they now knew something, such as what Crake had really been up to, hidden safely in the deepest core of the RejoovenEsense Compound. Sitting in judgment on the world, thought Jimmy; but why had that been his right?”
