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Oryx and Crake,
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Paulina
I think that the purpose of Oryx is definitely hard to grasp. For me she was a victim of society, of these communities forced to sell their children in order to give their other children a chance. She was exploited and abused but she never saw it that way because she didn't know anything better. Even after she gets out of those situations, she still sees her life as changing but never seems to compare her previous situations with her current ones. She takes her lot in life with the best attitude possible. I think that Atwood doesn't give her a voice because Jimmy and Crake don't either, I think her point is that they decide what's happened in her life: she's been sold, abused, exploited, saved, killed. She never has any kind of agency and I think that since that's all she knows she lives like that, seemingly a flat character, but it might be because her world and her "saviors" made her that way.
Do we want her to be more than that? We might be like Jimmy, wanting all the answers and forcing her to give them to us, but possibly just to make ourselves feel better, to know that she's not as broken, to hope that she's actually okay.
Do we want her to be more than that? We might be like Jimmy, wanting all the answers and forcing her to give them to us, but possibly just to make ourselves feel better, to know that she's not as broken, to hope that she's actually okay.
Jim Bilbro
I agree. For me, the two male characters ranged from from unlikeable to dispicable, but I was perplexed that an author known for her feminist work should create a female character as one-dimensional as Oryx. Certainly, we see her through the lens of Snowman/Jimmy's memories, but even if he idealizes her, she seems never even once to have given him cause to doubt his idealisation: she is always gentle and patient; he never "finds her anger" (despite pushing for it); she is utterly unfazed by experiences in her youth that would leave scars on anyone else; she is sexually willing and compliant with both male characters; she is smart, talented, sexy, beautiful, proficient with languages, resilient, patient, forgiving, giving, etc., etc., etc. The one thing she doesn't have is a personality that the reader can believe. If there is some sort of point being made with such a flat female character, then it's sailing high over my head. Anyone else care to comment or speculate?
IvanOpinion
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