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Oryx and Crake
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Oryx and Crake - Chapters 01 - 05 , No Spoilers Please (October 2013)
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Solely based on the first five chapters, I found Snowman a bit incomprehensible, though I caught flickers of nostalgia and melancholy in him, both seeking and afraid of the lost world.Jimmy, the kid, on the other hand, seemed pitiful, and like him, we find it hard to realize what exactly is wrong between his mother and father. I really liked these chapters the most - later, I felt, these characters, especially Snowman wasn't drawn too well.
Do you think he always had the potential to be easily led?
I find he was easily led a lot of times, mostly on account of his hunger for appreciation - he was, like all kids, trying a lot to gain approval from whoever would give it.Even later, he does mostly the same. Actually, I loved Jimmy and Crake when they were young - they seemed very believable - but beyond that phase, they didn't 'grow' - they became more like obsessed stereotypes without any apparent reason.
The first few chapters are lovely, endearing - but I feel it stagnated and in fact, worsened. The ideological premise was brilliant - I can easily foresee a future like this. But the characterization spoiled it all. It made the whole book sound dubious for me.
I agree they are not finely drawn. But perhaps that's Atwood's point. It's nerds like this that have the potential to destroy the planet. Jimmy's father explains that the CorpSeCorps are needed because there is 'too much hardware, too much software, too many hostile bioforms, too many weapons of every king. And too much envy and fanaticism and bad faith.' What is more dangerous in Oryx and Crake – the technology or the people using it?
It strikes me that this is the very same dichotomy we are facing down in contemporary society.
No, I don't have issues with the kind of cynical radical Crake is - my issue is he is not convincing enough. Brad Pitt as Jeffery Goines in 12 Monkeys is the same as Crake - but he is a lot more convincing, and not because he can be seen onscreen, but because his character is written well.Which is why I said that the ideas in the book are perfect, but the execution brings it down.
I've not seen the film, so I can't comment! But, I take your point about the characters feeling a bit two-dimensional.Why does Snowman feel compelled to protect the benign Crakers, who can't understand him and can never be his close friends? Would the Crakers would be capable of survival in our own society?
Maybe because they're the last specimens of humanity - nobody would like to see their species wiped out - perhaps he also sees traces of innocence in them, which he might think will salvage future generations. It is like going back into the Neolithic age, albeit an artificially created one....I'd love to know what you think...
I imagine he's desperate for any signs of life. He must be very lonely. I don't imagine the Crakers would last long. They don't seem to have an antagonistic bone in their bodies.
I thought they'd last longer than we did - precisely because of the lack of antagonistic bone.
Sophia wrote: "Why does Snowman feel compelled to protect the benign Crakers, who can't und..."I think it's hard to answer this without spoilers. I'll have to do this in another thread tomorrow.
I'm struck by Snowman's loneliness and his relationship with words. What do you think words represent for him?
Words are for communication. Without someone to communicate with, they lose their value.(Hope that's not more simplistic than it should be.)
Not at all! But Snowman gives me the impression that he loves words, for their own sake - they still have a value whether or not he can communicate with someone (other than himself.)
But they and he are decadent.
Really? Tell me more!
Snowman reminded me of in the old movies when a person would become shipwrecked upon some island somewhere and than the tribal people would revere the stranger as a god. Or like a Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. In a way he does seem to be marooned, a stranger, a sort of exile and yet because of his strangeness (and because of his connection to their creator) he is revered by the Children of Crake, though he will always be a thing a part from them living on the outskirts. I have to say I am quite curious to discover just how Snowman ended up in such a position as Crake and Oryx it seems have indeed become essentially these god-like figures, or some kind of masterminds who recreated the world. I wonder what because of them, and how Snowman had become left behind where he is.
I thought the instances of Crake's and Jimmy's Internet searching and the type of content of which they accessed was very reflective of our Reality TV culture. With the popularity of Reality TV, and with the Internet and blogs, facebook, videoblogs, youtube etc.. we are a very voyeuristic culture of people who like to watch and like to be watched. I could easily believe that many of those websites visited by Crake and Jimmy could actually be found on the Internet today.
One of the things that I have found quite interesting about the book, and that I have found quite enjoyable is the presence of some of the various different strange hybrid animals. As the one thing that has always seemed a bit curious to me and somewhat bothersome is the fact in most books that deal with this sort of dystopian future, the impression is given that all other forms of animal life have become nonexistent.
I like this strange little creatures and I like Atwood's imagination in having created them.
Yes the animals are very interesting. What do you think of the Children of Crake? Do you think it will one day be possible to create such modified humans?
Yes, I thought the parallels between our world and this one were striking. Is any novel a form of virtual reality entertainment, or a one-way mirror?
RE: The Children of Crake... I thought the focus on the skin color was interesting. In these 5 chapters it sounds like everything else about the CoC is standardized except their skin color. For example there isn't much variation in body type or temperament. In fact Snowman mentions something in Ch. 5 about not being able to tell which female was speaking because she was in the shade of the forest (and he couldn't see her skin color). In (real) society today there still seems to be a lot of focus on skin color as an important factor for what makes people/groups similar or dissimilar to each other. However in these chapters of the book...it is not that attitudes have changed, and this new group of "humans" doesn't care about differences anymore...It's more that the differences that truly make people unique have been erased. I'm wondering...is the fact that skin color is the only variation in the CoC a commentary of some kind by Ms. Atwood, or is it just a way for her to avoid choosing one color over another?
I'll be curious to learn more about the Children of Crake in the coming chapters...
Angelina wrote: "RE: The Children of Crake... I thought the focus on the skin color was interesting. In these 5 chapters it sounds like everything else about the CoC is standardized except their skin color. For ex..."
That is an interesting question. I have to admit I did not even really notice the fact (or give it much thought) that the color of their skin is the only thing that remained a difference between them.
Crake was very practical minded so maybe once the impulses within the people to be hostile, aggressive, or judgmental of each other were removed Crake decided that skin color was really irrelevant and changing it to one thing or another would not have a functional purpose. Perhaps it is Atwood herself making a statement about how truly it does not matter what color our skin is.
I think that if Atwood wanted to avoid seemingly choosing one race over another she could have just said they were all made purple or something to that affect.
To what extent would a different choice have coloured (sorry!) our feelings towards the Crakes? I wonder what the Crakes feel/think about Snowman's skin colour; the way it reacts to the sun, for instance.Come to think of it, I wonder how observant they are?
Surely, at some point they will evolve into more critical and analytic creatures.
What do you think of Snowman (Jimmy)?