Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake - An Ecological Utopia?

Oryx and Crake - the first book of Margaret Atwood's recently concluded MaddAddam Trilogy - disconcertingly projects a myriad of current realities into what seems to be a not-too-distant future, characterised by all-powerful multi-national companies, paranoia, rising fanaticism, extreme poverty, mass surveillance, total mechanisation of nonhuman others – the list goes on interminably. Atwood’s suspected future has multiple settings that are divided by “the waterless flood”. This event serves within the novel to separate human created “Paradice” (354) from a post-apocalyptic earth and does so within the ever-present context of radical climate change. Before Crake’s worldwide annihilation of humans, corrupt multinational companies with unimaginable wealth and non-existent ethics shape society, and are posited against the lowlife of “the pleeblands” (31) and the distant “peasants” (210). These companies are portrayed as an element of current reality that will morph to become increasingly dangerous on both local and global scales. A number of clues to their power are illuminated through the flashbacks to the protagonist, Jimmy’s childhood, through which the readership learns that his family’s existence and all the material things within their lives “belonged to the OrganInc Compound” (30), that many educated people were fooled into believing that institutions such as “the CorpSeCorps” were their people (32) as opposed to corrupt protectors of industry secrets, and that dangerous individuals could be literally “dissolve[d]” (208), as seen through the death of Crake’s mother. These memories – all of which occur within claustrophobic imagery of “walls and gates and searchlights” (31) and daily thunderstorms with accompanying deluges (49) – reveal just some aspects of a society in which life is penetrated by global institutions that have a lot at stake and a lot of enemies. The concluding scenes of Oryx and Crake show the fulfilment of Crake's project, in which his Crakers have taken the place of humans, who have been virtually wiped from earth by his BlyssPlus pill. The innocent routines of the Crakeres emerge as they gather indigenous flora for food, copulate when necessary, and urinate to protect themselves and these activities contrast the desperation and creativity of Snowman’s survival. Whilst the contrast is stark, it is difficult for the readership to decide which existence is better - and which group Atwood endorses. This can be seen in Atwood's inclusion of Snowman’s stream of consciousness that anticipates a conversation with the Crakers, in which they ask a repetitive string of “what” questions

“Oh Snowman, please, what is violence? – or if they attempt to rape (What is rape?) then women, or molest (What?) the children, or if they try to force others to work for them…Hopeless, hopeless. What is work? Work is when you build things – What is build? – or grow things – What is grow? – either because people would hit and kill you if you don’t, or else because they would give you money if you did.What is money?” (426)

Taking up half a page, this internal dialogue is long and tedious. The Crakers’ lack of understanding renders them perpetual children, who must be protected and cannot, at any stage, be part of complex conversation. As a human reader it is difficult to decide which is better, a world inhabited by humans with all their accompanying anxieties, destructive habits, health issues, and differences, or a world of eternally happy, healthy, sustainable, and undifferentiated post-humans. Because Atwood endorses neither, or does so only subtly, readers must decide based on their own priorities and values. A technique that makes this decision difficult is the shaping of Jimmy’s character to be a wordsmith and man of impressive memory, evidenced when he recalls “the book in his head” which suggests he is to “ignore minor irritants, to avoid pointless repinings, and to turn one’s mental energies to immediate realities and to the task at hand” (51). This and similar expressions of human intellect work to inflame the readers’ love for the power of the human brain and consequently the Crakers’ world – without literature and art – seems empty of meaning. All this said, one line prompts me to suggest that Atwood does not endorse Crake’s project, and this is Jimmy’s recollection of Crake’s specific words: “symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall” (419-420) after the Crakers made a picture of him. Having begun the process of creating symbols, this scene foreshadows the evolution of the Crakers’ into something more human than was intended, which would render Crake’s project a waste.