Lea Aures

Exploring dystopia

An analysis of Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

Table of contents

1.Introduction

2. Summary

3. Biography

4. Genre

5. Stylistic devices

6. Implementation of characteristic themes

7. Margaret Atwood's admonition to future generations

8. Conclusion

Bibliography

Impressum neobooks

Table of contents

1.Introduction

2. Summary

3. Biography

4. Genre

5. Stylistic devices

5.1. Narrative technique

5.1.1. Narrative perspective

5.1.2. Narrative timeline

5.1.3. Additional narrative thread

5.2. The choice of names

5.2.1. Names of the main characters

5.2.2. Names of brands and companies

6. Implementation of characteristic themes

6.1. Language

6.2. Religion

6.3. Power

7. Margaret Atwood's admonition to future generations

7.1. Environment

7.2. Genetic engineering

8. Conclusion

Bibliography

1.Introduction

“[The bonds that] hold nature together may be at risk of unraveling” (internet source 6).The United Nations report 2019 warns of a mass extinction. One million species might vanish from our earth within the next years. Thoughtless human action has caused this development that will surely have “serious consequences for human beings as well as the rest of life on Earth” (internet source 6). (cf. internet source 6)

Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake, published in 2003, predicted the situation we currently find ourselves in. Atwood is not a scientist working with statistics and probabilities. She is an author creating fictional situations. She could have chosen a more comfortable topic. So what was her intention in writing Oryx and Crake? That is the question this paper is meant to answer. Based on this question the following aspects are going to be discussed: How did Margaret Atwood's life influence her writing? Which formal elements did she use in Oryx and Crake to transfer her message? What are characteristic themes of Atwood's novels and how are they implemented in Oryx and Crake? In what way can Oryx and Crake be seen as an admonition to future generations?

2. Summary

Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake tells about the so-called “zero hour”. Humanity was eliminated by a man-made disease. The protagonist Snowman – formerly Jimmy¹ – is the last surviving human as far as he knows. He involuntarily became guardian of the Crakers, genetically engineered beings who are meant to replace the human race. The mad but brilliant scientist Crake, designer of the pandemic as well as of the Crakers, used to be his best friend. He died right at the beginning of the pandemic together with Oryx, with whom they were both in love. Left without the two people he loved the most, Snowman does his best to survive in the post-apocalyptic world. Through flashbacks of his life before the pandemic he gradually unravels the causes of the disaster.

3. Biography

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian writer. She was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1939 as the second of three children. Her father, Carl Edmund Atwood, was a zoologist and her mother, Margaret Dorothy Killiam, used to work as a nutritionist. From the age of sixteen Margaret Atwood studied at University of Toronto and later at Harvard. In the 1980s she spent some time in Germany, England and France. Today she lives in Toronto. (cf. Quimbaya 2011: 1-2)

Atwood has published works of several literary genres including science fiction, speculative fiction, historical fiction and realistic fiction. Many of her books including Oryx and Crake treat science as an important topic. She affirms that this is related to her father being a scientist and interesting her in this field. Other issues her books often deal with are the power of language, the necessity of storytelling, religion, feminism, power and truth. Her novel Oryx and Crake was published in 2003. (cf. Quimbaya 2011: 1-2)

(picture 1)

4. Genre

Oryx and Crake belongs to the genre of speculative fiction. Speculative fiction deals with things which may actually happen to our world in the near future based on the status quo of social and scientific possibilities. Books of this genre are not necessarily futuristic but “allow[ ] for alternate histories and futures to be explored” (Quimbaya 2011: 111). as shown in Atwood's Oryx and Crake. Their content is based on empirically observable facts. Atwood describes speculative fiction as follows:

I write about something called the future, which is a wonderful thing to write about because nobody can fact-check it. But I try to base my futures on realities that are with us today. So I’m not writing about Planet X. I’m not writing about a galaxy far, far away. I’m writing about this Earth in the near future. And everything that I’ve put in has a basis in reality, something we’re doing now, something we’ve already done, something we’re thinking of doing. (internet source 10)

Oryx and Crake is based on current scientific possibilities such as genetic engineering and on social, economic and environmental tendencies like increased privatisation and global warming and therefore can be allocated to the genre of speculative fiction.

Speculative fiction helps “to imagine the long-range effects of our actions” (Adami 2011: 145). This is an effect Atwood makes use of. Her books are not only meant to entertain the reader, they are meant to change something for the better, to prevent her dark visions by pointing them out. She herself stresses:

[Oryx and Crake] is not a prediction. It's not saying this would inevitably happen. Nobody can really write about the future because we haven't been there yet. [...] You're really writing about now, about your concerns in this life. (internet source 3)

The concerns she has focused on in Oryx and Crake are most notably environmental destruction and the ethics of genetic engineering. Those will be further discussed in chapter 7.

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