Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It is definitely an odd novel, but it is a very good read. I would love to ask the author about some of the themes in the novel, if she feels our would is heading down a similar path. I would also want to ask her about Crake, why he decided to wipe out humans. Another thing I am also confused about is Oryx's character. It did not seem like she had that big of a part in the novel, but she had such a huge and lasting impact on Jimmy. 

What I really liked about the novel is the writing style. I like how the time frame would jump all over the place and you would not really know where you are in Jimmy's life until the end. For example, in the middle of the book there would be chapters devoted to Jimmy talking with Oryx, yet Oryx was not introduced in the novel yet. We only truly meet her in the end, where we find out Jimmy was an adult.

I liked getting to know Jimmy and Snowman as two separate people until the time frame blurs and Jimmy becomes Snowman. I think that represents how much Jimmy changed in the short amount of time what the world was in chaos. He wanted to be a different person. He wanted to leave Jimmy behind in the compounds.

I would also have liked to know what happened to Jimmy's father. Most likely he also died with the infection, but it would have been interesting to have one last meetup with Jimmy and his dad because they have not seen each other in a long time.

The ending also kind of threw me off. Snowman is just about to meet the other humans, and it ends. Also with his foot infection. Does he meet the other humans, and then dies? Or does he outlive the infection? I would like to think he does, but maybe it is irony. Everyone else in the world dies from this horrible disease which Jimmy is immune to, but he ends up dying from a small cut on his foot.

Even though there are questions left to be answered, I really did enjoy the book. It is not as bad as I thought it would be to read between the lines and make up conclusions for myself.

Chaos

Everything is coming together. I was very shocked to find out that Crake meant for everything to happen. He purposely planted the infection in his pills so that essentially the human race would be wiped out, except for Jimmy.

It is somewhat irritating how the book never fully explains why Crake did it, but I think that is because Jimmy never truly knows why he did. I think it is because Crake wanted the world to be run fully by his Crakers. I think he knew that humans would continue to destroy the world, so he decided to 'play god' and make the world a better place. If that was his logic, then I do not understand why he did not want to be there for himself instead of enlisting Jimmy with the Crakers.

Then this poses another question; did he expect Jimmy to shoot him? If he did, then he must of known about Oryx and Jimmy's affair. If he did not, then he must have thought Jimmy would not care if he killed Oryx in front of him.

When Jimmy is alone, playing over the events that have entailed in his mind, one of his thoughts really stuck out to me, "How long had he been planning this? Could it be that Uncle Pete, and possibly even Crake's own mother, had been trial runs? With so much at stake, was he afraid of failure, of being just one more incompetent nihilist?" (Atwood 409).

Nihilist: Someone who rejects theories of morality or religious beliefs.

It really stuck out to me because the doctors could never explain Crake's mothers death, and Uncle Pete suddenly dies too. If they both died from a mysterious infection, Crake could have used them as a trial to test out what his microbes were capable of.

But why his family? This is why another one of Jimmy's thoughts stuck out to me, "Had he been a lunatic or an intellectually honorable man who'd thought things through to their logical conclusion? And was there any difference?" (Atwood 409).

Maybe Crake was just a psychopath.

Crake's Plan

Crake's plan ties in with, what I think are, the main themes of the novel. That people will do anything for money, as well as people want to be perfect. These two can be combined with one major theme: Humans become caught up in the material things in life.

The first part of Crake's plan is a pill. A pill that he knows everyone will want. The benefits of the pill include,
     
        a)    would protect the user against all known sexually transmitted diseases, fatal, inconvenient, or merely unsightly;
        b)    would provide an unlimited supply of libido and sexual prowess, coupled with a generalized sense of energy and well-being, thus reducing the frustration and violence, and eliminating feelings of low self-worth;
        c)    would prolong youth. (Atwood 355)

And with these points only, everyone would be lining up to buy the pill because you could pretty well do what you want with little to no consequences, as well as staying younger longer. This is not the end of Crake's plan though. What he would not tell people is that upon consuming the pill, it sterilizes you.

Crake's logic is that it will reduce the population in a positive way, but I find it horrible. I do not think he is visualizing how this will effect people in their everyday lives. People will not be able to start families when they are ready. They will have to go through all the heartbreak knowing they never will be able to.

But this is where the Crakers come in. All these people who consume the pill and now cannot have children can purchase the next best thing. The ones who have enough money anyways. They can buy a 'child' made in a lab and pick out what features they want to to have and how it will look. One thing is for sure, every one of them will be the parents ideal of perfection.

I find this very sickening. Would anyone actually want to buy one? They are not even humans. They do not look like humans. The way Snowman describes them in the wasteland, they seem more alien then anything. So, if people were that desperate to have a baby, would they succumb to one of these Crakers? That is what Crake is hoping for.

If I could ask Crake some questions, I would ask him:

Do you expect everyone to take the pill?
Are you expecting no one to catch on that your pill makes them sterile?
Are you trying to make your Crakers the dominate species?
Are the Crakers supposed to take over the world?
Why do you feel that every child has to be perfect?

What I don't understand...

I am quite confused about a lot of things in the novel so far, but one thing is on the top of my list; the people in the wasteland besides Snowman. There are the children of Crake, and there are these other adult beings. Snowman describes both as perfect, and alien like. So, who are these people, where did they come from, and why is there no other humans like Snowman?

Snowman gives little information about how he has become to living in a tree, but there are a few hints here and there. Whenever he thinks about exploring more of the land, he thinks about how there were a lot of raids at one point, and how people had to leave quickly, so there are some supplies left were people used to live, and nothing in others.

When Snowman thinks of the past, it has been about his childhood and adolescents, rarely about his adulthood. His frequent visits to the past could end up in the present at some point though.

I also find it strange how Snowman is the leader of these people. He is viewed as a sort of godly figure in their eyes. They are constantly asking him questions about their past, and Snowman makes up stories that they believe, but leaves the reader guessing on what is truth. Which must mean that these people have absolutely no prior knowledge to what the world was once like.

I do have some predictions though. When he talks about the world he is in now, he brings up Crake a lot. He talks about how they socialized these people together and seems to blame Crake for a lot that has happened. So, I predict that the world, or this part of the world that Snowman lives in, became a wasteland because of Crake. I think it has a lot to do with genetic altering too. That would explain why the people and the children of Crake are not human like. Maybe Crake was doing some wild experiments, that Jimmy was helping him with, but things got out of hand, and something terrible went wrong that caused something extreme to happen to the world they once knew. I also believe Oryx had something to do with it because Snowman tells the people that the animals are the children of Oryx, and that is why they must not kill or harm them.

I hope a lot of my questions are answered in the book, as to not leave me guessing for myself once I turn the final page.