Oryx and CrakeNd mourning the loss of his best friend Crake and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved In search of answers Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wil One Generation AwayI find it difficult to tell whether Atwood’s dystopian fantasies are meant as constructive social criticism or as sarcastic prophecy Recent headlines suggest that her prophetic skills dominate and with them her anticipatory sarcasmIn the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the MeToo movement for example the British actress Joanna Lumley is reported to be fervently hoping that “not all men are bad” As Spencer Tracey said in the 1955 film Inherit the Wind when told by the trial judge in the Scopes monkey case that he hoped that Tracey wasn’t mocking the court “Your Honor has every right to hope” So no Joanna it’s hard to find a good one; but please go on hopingI think it’s fair to say that there is little hope for males in Oryx and Crake Certainly not for the protagonists of JimmySnowman nor the eponymous Crake who are both thoroughly misogynistic from puberty onwards They humiliate females in their fascination with kiddie porn and their fantasy of women as either saints or incompetents But the obliue references to male oppressors goes far beyond the characters of the story If I interpret Atwood correctly she includes Adam Smith Moses Freud Darwin Gandhi and perhaps even the genetic scientists Watson and Crick as symbols of a male dominated corporatocracy And she’s undoubtedly right The XY genetic make up is clearly defective After all how does one otherwise explain the recent tragedy in Toronto in which ten people were killed and another fifteen seriously injured ? This insane atrocity was carried out by a so called ‘incel’ that is an involuntarily celibate male His murderous grievance was against women because they found him sexually unattractive His considered strategy for revenge was random homicide by motor vehicle One such nut case would be embarrassing for man kind; but it is reported that than 40000 men subscribe to a Facebook account which promotes an Incel MovementAtwood’s anticipation of the Incels is remarkable Crake is a Jim Jones type of scientific genius who is responsible for a world wide genetic make over Part of the Crakian genetic re design for humanity thereby creating the ‘children of Crake’ is the ritualization of sexual activity so that males don’t feel bad when rejected by prospective female mates Otherwise the world would continue to be plagued by “ the single man at the window drinking himself into oblivion to the mournful strains of the tango But such things could escalate into violence Extreme emotions could be lethal If I can’t have you nobody will and so forth Death could set in” As a solution the losers in courtship rituals in Crake’s new world immediately lose all sexual desire as well as their glowing blue penises as soon as they receive the negative news Men are pigs and are in need of fundamental reconstruction in other words even by their own assessmentOr accurately men are ‘pigoons’ according to Atwood’s story line Pigoons are one of the many new species created by modern genetic ‘splicing’ In this case of pigs and raccoons Other varieties include rakunks snats wolvogs bobkittens spoat giders and rabbits that glow with the genes of jellyfish These invasive and predatory animals are mis attributed as the ‘Children of Oryx’ This is another misogynistic swipe since Oryx is an Asian girl sold into slavery who becomes both a porn star and Jimmy’s feminine muse a dig at Jung? whenever he has enough booze to stimulate alcoholic hallucinationsOne might think that Atwood’s literary reach might have exceeded her intellectual grasp in conceiving such strange creatures as pigoons But in today’s news appears the astounding announcement that pigs’ brains are now being kept alive outside their bodies The scientists involved apparently all of them men believe that it is possible to repeat this remarkable feat with any mammal And that therefore inter species splicing is indeed feasible Human immortality some believe is at hand The children of Crake indeed “ human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else some new version of themselves and live on forever”It is not just their genes that are uestionable Male minds are philosophically harmful in their rationalization of male power as beneficial in an Invisible Hand sort of way The benign logic of competitive personal ambition for advancement for reputation for wealth for making the world better is a mere excuse for power seeking The male mind is warped in its essential isolationism “He Jimmy wanted to be himself alone uniue self created and self sufficient”The uest for power ensures only one thing an increase in the destructiveness of power Another way of saying the same thing an increase in power reuires exploitation of the environment of animals and of other people particularly of women Someone or something always loses in the competitive hormonal struggle “Crake made the Great Emptiness” say the menThe zero sum game in the male dominated world is enshrined by the children of Crake in its creational mythology “Crake made the bones of the Children of Crake out of the coral on the beach and then he made their flesh out of a mango But the Children of Oryx hatched out of an egg a giant egg laid by Oryx herself Actually she laid two eggs one full of animals and birds and fish and the other one full of words But the egg full of words hatched first and the Children of Crake had already been created by then and they’d eaten up all the words because they were hungry and so there were no words left over when the second egg hatched out And that is why the animals can’t talk”Crake in other words not only eliminated sexual rivalry he also destroyed the possibility of intelligent conversation Even Jimmy his disciple and uondam advertising copywriter recognizes the profundity of the loss ‘“Hang on to the words” he tells himself The odd words the old words the rare ones Valance Norn Serendipity Pibroch Lubricious When they’re gone out of his head these words they’ll be gone everywhere forever As if they had never been”’Crake’s debasing of language is actually part of an ideology “The whole world is now one vast uncontrolled experiment – the way it always was Crake would have said – and the doctrine of unintended conseuences is in full spate” This ideology is I think the central theme of Oryx and Crake It is an ideology of chaos of irrational rationalistic inuiry and technological development an ideology which conforms to the competitive driven strangeness of masculine ‘nature’ The latest headlines from California about Bill Cosby’s conviction make it difficult to disagree with Atwood at any point

Mobi ☆ Oryx and Crake ↠ Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake Õ Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future Snowman known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human a I wonder if all Margaret Atwoods books are like this one? Having read Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid's Tale I am curious now how many other ways of horrifying me she has up her sleeve Oryx and Crake is a dystopian or as Atwood calls it herself a speculative fiction novel set in a future where genetic engineering rules the world The story is told from the POV of Snowman a seemingly last Homo sapiens sapiens on Earth He is surrounded by the new breed of humans passive docile Children of Crake who are physically flawless void of envy and jealousy do not understand violence or sexual drive unable to be artistic or comprehend technology As the story progresses through Snowman's recollections we gradually learn the seuence of events leading to the fall of humanity as he knew it and Snowman's own contribution to it The structure of the book is very similar to that of The Handmaid's Tale So if you liked the writing style of that book with constant shift of tenses past and present mingled together you'll enjoy Oryx and Crake too Once again Atwood takes a current trend this time it's biogenetic engineering and extrapolates it to an insane extent creating a horrifying world of social disparity violence genetic hybrids raging man made viruses The author's imagination is limitless her command of English language is mind blowing This book is so much than a science fiction novel that it so often labeled It is a deeply philosophical book that raises numerous uestions is it wise to artificially alter something created and perfected by Nature over millions of years? does a man have a right to engineer a perfect human and decide who lives and who dies? or is there such a thing as a perfect human?Just like The Handmaid's Tale the ending is uncertain The fate of Snowman and humanity is uestionable Will the humanity survive? Will Crakers overtake? Are Crakers really what Crake intended them to be the perfect beings? There are no answers and I am happy there aren't This book is not intended to tell us what is right and what is wrong rather it makes us think about what might beReading challenge #13 3 of 5 Mobi ☆ Oryx and Crake ↠ Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood ↠ Oryx and Crake Book

Margaret Atwood ↠ Oryx and Crake Book Derness that was so recently a great city until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagini How can someone make up such a fascinating and terrifying story? Wow I absolutely loved it It took me some time to take this book from my book shelves it was there already some time it seemed a bit weird but after having read the Handmaid's Tale I took up the challenge and it was well well worthed An apocalyptic story about a guy who seems to have remained as the sole human alive after an epidemic catastrophy leading to mankind going down Together with the weird Crake's children he survives and it's tough The story alternates beween his youth and past and the apocalyptic world in which he has to survive and the story leads up slowly to the events that lead to the catastrophy Highly recommended and highly fascinating It took me some time to read it as I did not have much time to read but every page was worthed and it was even worthwhile taking everything in intensively in stead of reading fast I am now officially a big fan of Margaret Atwood and looking forward to read the seuel