LITR 5439 Literary &
Historical Utopias
Lecture Notes
Oryx & Crake
Oryx & Crake notes
O&C
[flashbacks to premillennium] present time: post-millennium; all happens in Crake's journey
YoF
premillennium characters Toby, Ren, God's Gardeners / millennium / last chapter coincides with end of journey in O&C
Notes below are from O&C previewing Year of the Flood:
95 tower flocks in water, roof gardens, birds
188 fundamentalist vegan called Bernice
189 God's Gardeners T-shirts
230 girls' diaries, cap letters, exclamation marks, extreme phrasing
231 Brenda (!)
243 Amanda Payne, reinvent herself
abusive, wite-trash, sugar-overdosed family
244 from TX originally before it dried up and blew away
Vulture Sculptures x God's Gardeners & Bernice
257 God's Gardeners safe hourse, outlawed now, d. Bernice
289 oral sex on trapezes [Brenda?]
Notes from Year of the Flood:
more women characters
dystopia of sex work, but like Oryx women are resilient, not ruined
increasing inequality
11 human words of god x observable data > geology
12-13 naming
20 waterless flood = pandemic
post-apocalyptic journeys; Toby to parents' house for rifle
21 looting
24 weaponless
39 fringe cults incl Petrobaptists
39 gangs
God's Gardeners; Animals R Us
40 Secret Burgers
Adam One a scientist, measurement
42 welcome to our garden . . . children
43 Rebecca
43 The Garden
47 die-off, Ararats
54 Hymnbook w/ DNA
56-8 Amanda = woman Crake
61 Zeb = Mad Adam
66 Gardeners' clothes
99 bees
102 x-personal questions
(original sin = too much curiosity)
105 x-any pill from corporations
Pilar as ecotopian
Style issues
immediate character focus
you don't so much identify with characters as see them as comparably human
successfully introduces exotic terms without frustrating reader
repeated motifs cf. strings
11 [style]
158 inconsistency? Crakers fire-tending
Utopia / Dystopia
27 outsided, unpredictable; Inside, the way it used to be when J's father was a kid
J's mother: all artificial, theme park
27 the city
better neighborhoods cf. Compounds, with high walls
pleeblands
28 castles with high walls > kings and dukes? (cf. Huck)
95 laying down the laws [cf. Utopus]
115 a village, trees all around + fields or paddies; cf. 122 no one could read
127 Uncle En would always be watching them [utopia /
dystopia]
132 too public [utopia / dystopia]
136 Poor Uncle En. He liked me . . . he could have done
much worse thingst o me, and he didn't do them
house for rich people, high wall around [utopia /
dystopia]
151 Paradice bubble-dome [utop]
165 x-prostitution, sexual abuse of children, x-haggling
over price, x-pimps, x-sex slaves [dystopia]
x-father matters, no more propterty to inherit [utopian]
166 Watson-Crick Institute [allusion? style]
pair-bond for life or guilt-free promiscuity
never want someone you couldn't have [utopian?]
169 gods cavorting [utopia]
185 pleeblands as dystopia
203 [tour of campus resembles tour of utopia]
228 Crake's charmed dome [utop]
useless money [utop]
245 [dystopian tubes + cannibalism]
246 What people want is perfection. In themselves. [utop]
need steps pointed out
art of the possible with no guarantees
247 prey on phobias and bank accounts of anxious and gullible [dystop]
253 the news: more plagues, famines, floods, outbreaks, droughts, boy-soldier wars [dystop]
289 nothing's perfect
291 the Paradice dome
sparkling clean, ecologically pristine, and very expensive [utop]
297 went to Paradice
304 inextricably linked: the Pill and the Project
Millennium
3 zero hour
7 things from before [millennium]
43 Oryx, great danger, booming sound [millennium]
103 people of chaos eating Children of Oryx
Let us get rid of the chaos > Empty
Great Rearrangement > Great Emptiness [millennium]
217 after the whole system, shut it down [millennium]
253 the news: more plagues, famines, floods, outbreaks, droughts, boy-soldier wars [dystop]
338-9 street preachers . . . Apocalypse . . . where were
trumpets and angels?
342-3 [cf. Revelation: get to watch, unaffected]
344 end of a species taking place before his very eyes
374 Zero hour
Climate Change
15 leaves still turned color then
63 sea level and drought--beach house washed away
71 one of those months that used to be called Autumn
89 March, already hot as hell
173 graduation warm humid day in early February
224 "Winter Wonderland" . . . long after the last itme it snowed
population
89-90 countries where life was / cheap and kids were plentiful
119 Crake: minimum access to food + expanding population
120 homo sapiens doesn't seem able to cut himself off at the supply end
thought of impending death: aphrodisiac
208 sex workers from Pleeblands, x-diversion of energies to unproductive channels [i.e. reproduction]
293 BlyssPluss Pill: eliminate external causes of death = war, misplaced sexual energy
x-overpopulation
295 species in deep trouble--demand for resources greater than supply
fewer people, therefore more to go around
322 I believe in his vision. He wants to make the world a better place.
too many people, makes the people bad
Realism
38 [style: parental pressures; psychological realism]
76 hate + like Crake
113 [psychological realism; style]
128 [psychological realism; style]
233 plastic garbage bag, right where it should be
371 Rapture . . . after everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful [psychological realism]
Ideology
41 Life-Skills class: teacher a shambling neo-con reject > self-reliance, individualism, and risk-taking
Multicultural
54 school caf, ethnic choices
100 every known color, cf. retouched fashion photos, workout program ads
288 all skin colors, all sizes, x-all prices
asymmetries, deformities x uniformity of compounds
302 first view of Crakers . . . so beautiful. Black, yellow, white, brown, all available skin colors
religion
57 sacrilegious
180 God is Green
188 fundamentalist vegan called Bernice
189 God's Gardeners T-shirts
200 Moses Model
257 God's Gardeners safe house, outlawed now, d. Bernice
258 remake of Frankenstein
366 a mission, sermon
371 Rapture . . . after everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful [psychological realism]
dystopic individualism
58 x-drunk or addict; different, secret person living inside him
176 wanted to be himself, alone, unique, self-created and self-sufficient [cf. Rand]
symbolic thinking
96 Oryx 2 eggs: animals, words
138 mystery and hidden significance, a symbol free of all contexts > link Oryx's story and real world . . . code, password
244 game over since agriculture invented 6-7000 years ago
361 We made a picture of you, to help us send out our voices to you
Watch out for art . . .
Symbolic thinking = downfall
363 destroying image: teaching of Oryx: after a thing has been used, it must be given back to its place of origin
privacy
218 picture of Oryx, a private thing, this picture--guilt, shame, desire
309 Crake was in love, first time ever
310 private arrangements
313 Crake's friend . . . x-unhappy
Crake loved her, touched her, Mine, mine.
Reading notes from Oryx and Crake
3 offshore towers
zero hour
4 dirty bedsheet, sunglasses
6 children x-ultraviolet
7 things from before [millennium]
never seen snow
8 how own secret hair shirt
children amazingly attractive, different skin color, green eyes
hat > invented a fiction
9 Children of Crake
11 woman's voice; x-Oryx
[style]
15 snowman < Jimmy
leaves still turned color then
16 burning hair: an experiment
17 women . . . mysterious, important, uncontrollable
why nothing about . . . men?
18 fire: "this is where it ends up . . . . Once things get going"
nutbar, cult thing
19 this bug is something new . . . bioprint
20 disease invisible
rearranged you cell by cell
the tiny cells
22 organInc Farms
mapping the proteonome, the pigoon project (sus multiorganifer)
foolproof human tissue organs in a transgenic knockout pig host
22 opportunistic microbes and viruses, more strains every year
5-6 kidneys at a time
23 happier days
much cheaper than cloned, illegal baby orchard
x-bacon and sausages
24 coastal aquifers turned salty, northern permafrost melted, drought in plains
x-eat pigoons, much like himself
Ramona
25 so many new pills
numbers people, not word people
What J's mother used to be
26 finely honed genetic material
pigoon: as if they saw him, had plans for him later
I'm their friend
Cape Cod-style house in one of the Modules
furniture called reproduction--an original somewhere
all belonged to the OrganInc compound
27 the city
better neighborhoods cf. Compounds, with high walls
pleeblands
forge anything
27 outsided, unpredictable; Inside, the way it used to be when J's father was a kid
J's mother: all artificial, theme park
CorpSeCorps
other side, other sides
Other companies, countries, various factions and plotters
28 hardware, hostile bioforms, weapons
envy, fanaticism, bad faith
castles with high walls > kings and dukes? (cf. Huck)
29 J's mother microbiologist
30 war games: cells vs. microbes
Dolores, live-in from Philippines
31 Are you infected?
32 flat voice, blank eyes, tired staring out window
33 all shit, hopeless
37 sunblock [consumer realism]
such things as weeks
[joke]
38 $ for knife, x-bad luck [karma] > Blanco's knife in Year of Flood [style as masterful control of text, god-like creative intelligence]
pigoons + tusk: reverting to type
rapid-maturity genes
[style: parental pressures; psychological realism]
spraygun
39 word: Mesozoic [age of reptiles, 250-66 million years ago]
[voices in head of solitary; cf. novel-reading?]
40 His time
after-school times with Crake
Extinctathon, 3-D Waco, Osama
parallel strategies
lots of paper lying around (cf. Time Machine)
41 [allusion: Robinson Crusoe] cf. 226
Crakers can't read
Any reader in the past. [funny + style as self-referentiality]
caterpillar: unique > flashes of irrational happiness
41 Life-Skills class: teacher a shambling neo-con reject > self-reliance, individualism, and risk-taking
42 [source?]
cave with good ventilation
43 Oryx, great danger, booming sound [millennium]
45 endless labor > endless crumbling
x-on purpose, out of my control
the book in his head
49 pet rakunk
50 scent of vanilla: Dolores
[style as loving character x-loving self as author; cf. negative capability?]
Dreams Come True
demand that he measure up
By OrganInc's math and chem and applied bio yardstick he must have seemed dull normal
51 create an animal, feel like God
snat
fell in love iwth it (rakunk)
52 faint smell cf. soap for men
53 Nooskins, HelthWyzer compound
security incident, fanatic, bioform Ebola or Marburg spliced [Marburg hemorrhagic virus 1960s] [style preview]
54 bugged, spies
ethanol-solarvan
school caf, ethnic choices etc
Alex the parrot
55 Wakulla Price
skin-related biotech
[life extension] Nooskins for Olds
hidden a tiny mike
56 neuro-regeneration project, neo-cortex tissue
57 making life better for people--not just people with money
sacrilegious
something honest? basic?
[both sides right: style]
58 x-drunk or addict
different, secret person living inside him
60 Evil Dad & Righteous Mom
61 note: conscience, hiding, lifestyle
taken Killer to liberate her
62 CorpSeCorps
others involved
63 sea level and drought--beach house washed away
Remember when everyone lived in Pleebland? When voting mattered?
64 ether cells
65 Ramona moved in
67 his real, strange, insufficient, miserable mother
postcards < England, Australia
68 words gone forever
69 Crake + Mom
intellectually honorable, doesn't lie to himself
70 Crake didn't say much
Crake = Glenn
"Not everything has a point."
71 one of those months that used to be called Autumn
Ultratexts
72 green eyes
cool slouchiness, energies being held back, in reserve
73 pleeblands: kids in packs, hordes
a Compound brat
LyndaLee
75 a good imitator
76 hate + like Crake
77 computer chess: this is a real set . . . neither is a plastic set
The real set is in your head.
77-8 Aztecs rep civ, Spaniards barbarian hordes
78 Blood and Roses
79 [list of canon + western history]
80 winning: inherited a waste land
something new: Extinctathon > Maddaddam names dead animals
81 codenames: Thickney, Crake
83 "What is reality?"
assisted-suicide site
84 At Home with Anna K. [allusion + Macbeth; cf. Huck]
85 Uncle Pete's private code
86 a lily-pad labyrinth, erasing footprints
skunkweed
whipping the wage slaves. scientist > manager
88 cheesefood
privacy
89 March, already hot as hell
HottTotts (cf. Hottentots: Khoi)
89-90 countries where life was / cheap and kids were plentiful
90 first saw Oryx . . . just another little girl on a porno site
3-D from the start
at least three layers of contradictory make-believe
91 I see you (cf. Pigoons)
the moment when Oryx looked
"I don't think this is me."
92 You want me to pretend?
95 tower flocks in water, roof gardens, birds
rabbit glow
the Children of Oryx
laying down the laws
Get your story straight, keep it simple, don't falter [style, self-reflexivity, consciousness of artifice]
Oryx: two eggs: animals, words
Children of Crake ate up all the words
only one left who'd known Crake [?]
97 wishing star
indigenous peoples, book in his head
98 avoid arcane metaphors [style: sf + metaphor; also 100]
99 monkey brains
village if any houses
100 every known color, cf. retouched fashion photos, workout program ads
x-lust, > human imperfection
preferred sad women who needed him
placid, like animated statues
Abraham as in Lincoln
101 Empress Josephine, Mme Curie, Sojourner Truth
no single person guilty
never eat a fish themselves
spectacle of depravity
purified by chlorophyll
102 green eyes luminescent
smell citrus fruit, x-mosquitoes
a story is what they want [style]
In the beginning . . . chaos
103 people of chaos eating Children of Oryx
Let us get rid of the chaos > Empty
Great Rearrangement > Great Emptiness [millennium]
104 demanding dogma
Crake's prophet, prophet of Oryx
Crake was never born
105 human voices. If you can call them human
As if crystals are singing [style]
106 what they may have been once. I'm your past
of what use wisdom and maturity now?
107 last burst of carpe diem [style]
out, out brief candle
served his evolutionary purpose: saved the children
108 wolvogs: look, behave like dogs; reverse 50,000 years of human-canid interactions
house pets
sink or swim
109 stars, light millions, billions of years out of date
be someone else, get a chromosome transplant
110 Oryx, not even her real name
113 [psychological realism; style]
feel Oryx floating toward him
It wasn't the sex. . . feel her disbelief
114 "I love you" a tool, wedge, key to open women [style?]
not your business, pictures in your head
None of it was your fault. None of what, Jimmy?
Crake's story about her, Jimmy's story more romantic
her own story about herself, quite different, not very romantic
story of the man who bought her, second man after that, third man's story
115 triangular face
a difficult life, but not scrubbing floors
Oryx born, some distant foreign place
a village, trees all around + fields or paddies; cf. 122
Vietnam? Cambodia? It didn't matter
x-remember language as child
a place where everyone was poor + many children
115-16 quite little when she was sold
116 illness = shame
pretty and healthy--sold for more
x-"selling" > apprenticeship
x-only get married and make more children
117 It's long ago now
honorable businessman + watch [style]
118 weather so strange, crops suffering
no money ever sent to village
119 give remaining children a better chance in life. So they told one another. [classic style; moral ambiguity or complexity]
you would like it better if we all starved to death?
Crake: minimum access to food + expanding population
120 homo sapiens doesn't seem able to cut himself off at the supply end
thought of impending death: aphrodisiac
as species, doomed by hope . . . or desperation [doomed by hope only as individuals
121 no choice
122 remember, like pictures hanging on a wall
Uncle En or N
Nobody in our village could read
123 animals: no names, but I knew what they were
124 birdcalls, her mother's spirit
some people could send their spirits out, old women could teach
a sign against evil
never been inside a car [style: MA's range]
126 children cry [x-maudlin; style]
money value no substitute for love
love undependable
one better than nothing
127 treated new children as if cats, let get used to things [style, metaphor]
Uncle En would always be watching them [utopia / dystopia]
128 shiny watch to ear > tell him
[psychological realism; style]
to another country called San Francisco
"home" becoming hazy in mind
129 new name: Susu
130 smile was perfect
brother no luck > melon-bum boy + messenger for gangs
131 a bed for giants
132 too public [utopia / dystopia]
penis nose [style: fearless x gratuitous]
Uncle En plunged suddenly into the room
so that became her game
133 made her feel strong to know that the men thought she was helpless but she was not . . . . they who were helpless
as close to love
His real children . . . went to school
let her listen to his watch
135 protect him from the image of herself
136 Poor Uncle En. He liked me . . . he could have done much worse thingst o me, and he didn't do them
house for rich people, high wall around [utopia / dystopia]
a rich smell [style]
137 truck, red writing, picture of red parrot
138 mystery and hidden significance, a symbol free of all contexts > link Oryx's story and real world . . . code, password
139 everything has a price
Being in a movie = doing what you were told
140 washed a lot
white cameraman, smelled, meat-eater [style]
Jack: movies best in world
141 videocam antique-roadshow junk
What is my will?
He taught me to read [style: moral ambiguity > realism, mimesis]
142 If I hadn't done it I couldn't be talking to you.
Where was her rage?
144 All sex is real.
147 guzzled, yelled, gibbered, indulged in pointless repinings
if tomorrow is another day, what's today? [allusion]
148 empty towers; salt marsh on landfill w/ semi-flooded townhouses
head: obsolete fridge magnets
something to read, view, hear, study, compile
What are all those things he once thought he knew, and where have they gone
149 words swirling down
slowly starving to death
150 towers unstable, crashing down
no maps, risk getting lost
151 RejoovenEsense Compound
Paradice bubble-dome [utop]
152 a mission
imitation Spam
a free meal among the leavings of catastrophe
153 Crakers' irritating qualities--naive optimism, open friendliness, calmness, limited vocabularies
They're immune from him
154 scent-marking x wolvogs, rakunks +- bobkittens, pigoons
155 allotted men something important to do
smells like a rarely cleaned zoo
cf. entire Baroque fountain [metaphor]
"Watch out for the leaders," Crake used to say
156 cured by purring, self-healing mechanism
hyoid apparatus modified
botched experiments
157 never seen the women do this before--communion with Oryx
developed reverence
likes when Crake proved wrong
158 body thermostats set for tropical conditions
fire-tending = work
dung < vegetarians
growth rate, x-child rearing
caecotroph
159 boy-genius concept
bobkittens smell rabbit
objections purely aesthetic; Crake: bad one
160 longer journey (intersects w/ YoF sequel)
161 their gratitude towards Crake
vexation
162 irony lost on the trees
163 bobkittens as control on green rabbits + eliminate feral cats > songbird population
164 bindweed [morning glory]
laughter & singing: mating. 4 men & 1 woman in heat
baboon pigmatentation + chromosphores of octopus
165 blue-dick dance
x-prostitution, sexual abuse of children, x-haggling over price, x-pimps, x-sex slaves [dystopia]
x-father matters, no more property to inherit [utopian]
love equaled transparent bubble-dome, excluded
166 Watson-Crick Institute [allusion? style]
pair-bond for life or guilt-free promiscuity
never want someone you couldn't have [utopian?]
courtship behavior x hormone robots
what about art? > inspiration
167 Byron quote: Who'd write if they could do otherwise?
art all that's left > gnawed bones, old bricks, ossified shit
a biological purpose
168 female artists are biologically confused [> Amanda]
brunette poet renamed Morgana; 28-day sex fast for Great Moon-Goddess Oestre
> cosmogony for Crakers
Martha Graham
169 x-jealousy, wife beater, husband-poisoner
gods cavorting [utopia]
Where's my Bride of Frankenstein? [good allusion]
173 graduation warm humid day in early February
old style: fathers in panamas [Ecuador!]
Crake top of class < bidding by rival EduCompounds at Student Auction
Watson-Crick cf. Harvard before drowned
174 Crake + mtuant
look differently, beauty, chess, pattern?
Those dump bins they call "the public system"
Compound schools awash in brilliant genes
kak-hearted parents [?]
Martha Graham Academy
175 Ramona's bio clock ticking
cerise lipstick [bright light red; F. cherry]
176 wanted to be himself, alone, unique, self-created and self-sufficient [cf. Rand]
Crake's mother died month before, acccident, sabotage
hot bioform chewed through her like a solar mower
transgenetic staph
177 so nil about it . . . preserving dignity?
178 HelthWyzer Gated Vacation Community
gen-mod coffee wars
179 resistance movement global
"There aren't any sides, as such."
x-anything like it since first decade of the century [i.e., time of writing and reading, publication]
180 Australia still had unions
Boston Coffee Party
God is Green
181 labyrinth
his vanished mother: Love, abrupt and painful > anger
182 Crake's dad buggered off too
183 acting worried lately . . . improvement of the human lot
185 we'll email [dated]
pleeblands as dystopia
186 Bilbao-ripoff cast-concrete buildings [Basque city in Spain w/ Modernist architecture]
the hand life had dealt him
Retro feminist shit; MG as Judith
now-dead rich liberal bleeding hearts from Old New York
Arts-and-Humanities college
187 like studying Latin, or book-binding: pleasant to contemplate . . . but no longer central to anything
188 curricular emphasis > Webgame Dynamics + Problematics
Spin & Grin
decorating hard cold numerical real world in flossy 2-D verbiage
fundamentalist vegan called Bernice
189 God's Gardeners T-shirts
projected a form of melancholy attractive to a certain kind of woman
191 Oryx had neither pity for him nor self-pity
192 falling in love a hormonally induced delusional state
gave love object too much power
193 more competition
Asperger's U., brilliant weirdos, social ineptitude
194 high tolderance for mildly deviant public behavior
Neurotypicals (= minus genius gene)
195 better libraires burned books > CD-ROM (dated?)
shelves of mouldering paper
pursue the superfluous as an end in itself
lists of old words = children abandoned in the woods
Applied Rhetoric: Self-Help Books
196 Pleeblands from train
cars x electric golf carts
boundless, porous, penetrable, wide-open, subject to chance [utop / dystop]
198 transgenics
serf, nobility
199 spoat / gider, successful spice
huge fake rocks from recycled plastic bottles and lithops [pebble plants or living stones]
absorb water, release in drought
200 Moses Model
butterflies: real or fake? cf. cosmetic surgery
"After it happens, that's what they look like in real time. The process is no longer important."
201 "Wave of the future"
Smart Wallpaper
202 chicken parts, sea-anemone body plan
203 cf. chicken hookworm
high growth rate built-in
[tour of campus resembles tour of utopia]
ChickieNobs--takeout franchise operation in place
204 women remind of Bernice
205 BioDefences: socially spastic scientists
wolvogs: bred to deceive
206 some line crossed, some boundary transgressed [dystop?]
207 pair-bonding at this stage not encouraged
208 sex workers from Pleeblands, x-diversion of energies to unproductive channels [i.e. reproduction]
209 talked all the time about ideas developing
The proper study of Mankind is Everything.
enhanced weed
210 axiom: illness isn't productive
211 need more diseases--x-discovering, > creating them
hostile bioforms in vitamin pills
patient should either get well or die just before all of his or her money runs out. It's a fine calculation
212 murdered / executed father . . . acting for the general good [as defense for murder]
212-13 Crake + Mom
214 Extinctathon, MaddAddam
215 picture of Oryx
a private thing, this picture--guilt, shame, desire [utop]
Grandmaster Rednecked Crake
sense of forbidden, door opens that should have stayed locked
217 after the whole system, shut it down [millennium]
Compound or Compound-trained
218 Crake never remembered his dreams. Snowman remembers them instead.
221 traffic mayhem that must have lasted for days
ban on pleeb guns
botany thrusting through every crack
222 all visible traces of human habitation will be gone
curious monkey brain
made by dreams, and now that no one is dreaming them any longer they are crumbling away
223 civilization can never be rebuilt
once those people died, that would be it
elimination of one generation
224 what difference to anyone but himself
Crakers doing fine
"Winter Wonderland" . . . long after the last time it snowed
225 Compounds, CryoJeenyus
226 objects dropped in flight, treasure hunt in reverse
[cf. Robinson Crusoe 3.50: realistic details]
227 curtain wall
hot bioform isolation facilities
228 Crake's charmed dome [utop]
pigoons rooted up lawns
whole world one vast uncontrolled experiment
useless money [utop]
229 smells like a thousand bad drains
bathrooms = sanctuaries [utop]
230 girls' diaries, cap letters, exclamation marks, extreme phrasing
231 Brenda (!)
looks 20 years older than he really is
232 I have been unintelligent
233 plastic garbage bag, right where it should be
233 Norton Anthology of Modern Poety
it's his own house he's broken into?
234 quintuplet of pigoons
they see him, all right
235 brainy and omnivorous animal +- human neocortex tissue
236 twister
Crakers' thunder home
237 nobody to measure himself by, no benchmarks
238 sense Oryx drifting toward him
a state of misery and peace
243 library job earmarking books for destruction or digital form
Amanda Payne, reinvent herself
abusive, wite-trash, sugar-overdosed family
244 weak-spined, degenerate offspring of Compounds e.g. Jimmy
ChickieNobs Bucket O'Nubbins [nubbin = small, underdeveloped ear of corn]
game over since agriculture invented 6-7000 years ago
245 doomed to gigantism, then extinction
correct analysis, not correct solutions
Human society a monster, giant slug eating all other bioforms
245 [dystopian tubes + cannibalism]
self-sustaining and perpetual
244 from TX originally before it dried up and blew away
Vulture Sculptures x God's Gardeners & Bernice
245 words vulturized, 4 letters: PAIN, pun
job with AnooYoo, minor compount
self-help books > improvement items (cf. learn compassion > explotiation)
246 What people want is perfection. In themselves. [utop]
need steps pointed out
art of the possible with no guarantees
247 prey on phobias and bank accounts of anxious and gullible [dystop]
[JImmy talks like Dad. "Joke!"]
V Sculpture: Love
248 corporately speaking, a drudge and a helot
with time he improved, whatever that meant [dystop]
hope and fear, desire and revulsion
249 sounded scientific, convincing effect [style]
sexual desert, no status
250 Infantade, Foetility, Perfectababe
251 pleeblands ultra-hazardous
253 Uncle Pete dies, sabotage
the news: more plagues, famines, floods, outbreaks, droughts, boy-soldier wars [dystop]
254 sex scandals got newscasters excited
adolescent girls, some content with situations
255 recognized her
look the same: blend of innocence and contempt and understanding
257 God's Gardeners safe house, outlawed now, d. Bernice
258 remake of Frankenstein
virtual bullet
Remember Killer.
259 Why drag Killer into it? So he'd know.
260 wanted revenge. But against whom, and for what?
261 girls in danger, in need of rescue
a threatening presence
perhaps he was the danger.
I see you.
265 something's wrong, the time's wrong
266 scraping continues, land crab
267 seven pigoons, something in mind > another group
as if theyve had it planned
if they'd had fingers, ruled the world
268 team players
269 a flight of stairs
270 the watchtower
at ease, alert, on lookout
271 impressiong it's grinning
cunning
272 real beer!
wind-up radio
273 once it got started, the thing was airborne
"Is anyone reading me? Anyone out there?"
274 more possibilities now
276 sunset _ videocam screens
If I'd killed Crake earlier
given right conditions, old addictions
277 magenta dressing gown still smelled of mother
278 the third day
279 x-windup radio
280 smoke
283 towards the bubble-dome
Why didn't he leave me alone?
284 x-hurt anyone, not in real space-time. Fantasies didn't count
286 I can cure you look
brainfrizz
287 Crake: I just came to see you. See if you were all right.
to the Pleeblands
Crake was still his friend
all-purpose short-term vaccine
Pleeblands giant petri dish
nose cones
fewer whirlpool purifying towers
288 all skin colors, all sizes, x-all prices
so much to see--so much being hawked
asymmetries, deformities x uniformity of compounds
Street of Dreams
Herediseases removed
body-oriented Compounds
289 nothing's perfect
Gender, sexual orientation, hight, color of skin and eyes--it's all one order, . . . done or redone
oral sex on trapezes
[Brenda?]
Job. You. Rejoov.
a whole new chapter [style]
291 lovers discreetly informed by Crake personally . . . long tentacles
the Paradice dome
sparkling clean, ecologically pristine, and very expensive [utop]
Rockulators
292 who pays? . . . grief in the face of inevitable death . . . wish to stop
working on . . . immortality
x-die first (x-cryogenics)
293 BlyssPluss Pill: eliminate external causes of death = war, misplaced sexual energy
x-overpopulation
steer nature of human nature in more beneficial direction
> pygmy or bonobo chimps: indiscriminately promiscuous; x-pair-bonding
294 low intraspecific aggression factor
a. protect
b. libido & prowess
c. prolong youth
+ d. birth control
sterilize people under pretext of ultra in orgies
large-scale benefits
all upside, no downside at all
295 species in deep trouble--demand for resources greater than supply
fewer people, therefore more to go around
errors, false directions, close to solution
crank religions based on misery, indefinitely deferred gratification, and sexual frustration
296 tide of human desire could overwhelm
You'll do the ad campaign
297 went to Paradice
298 research facility < quality of brains
biggest ant in anthill
You're looking at MaddAddam
299 cf. German rocket scientists
game over: move chessboard elsewhere
300 a MaddAddam name . . . Thickney?
Crake, the alpha wolf, the silverback gorilla, head lion
301 Dream steals from its lair towards its prey.
302 What is really?
first view of Crakers . . . so beautiful. Black, yellow, white, brown, all available skin colors
proteonome fully analyzed
303 These people are sui generis. Reproducing.
rapid-growth factors
programmed to drop dead at 30
immortality the absence of such fear
enhanced immune-system functions
304 Paradice method whole populations with pre-selected characteristics
inextricably linked: the Pill and the Project
305 ancient primate brain, x-desctructive features
pseudospeciation
x-register skin color
no territoriality, nothing to inherit, no family trees, no marriages, no divorces [utop]
recycled own excrement
floor models: art of the possible
We've done our market research
306 for jokes you need a certain edge, a little malice
307 Snowman--goon, buffoon, poltroon . . . object of general derision
the place in the tragic play . . . Enter Oryx
308 that look, that stare
[sublime] pure bliss, pure terror
real, 3-D, he felt he'd dreamed her
309 Crake was in love, first time ever
encountered her through Student Services
310 private arrangements
an alpha smile
Crake his best, only friend
311 Oryx Beisa . . . chose it herself [An African antelope, Oryx gazella beisa.]
the Crakers . . . Oryx called them
ever ask where they came from? . . . edited out
312 his staff
Leman (lover). Queynt. (female external genitals)
Oryx seduced him.
313 Crake's friend . . . x-unhappy
Crake loved her, touched her, Mine, mine.
314 C's sexual needs direct and simple
the best poker-faced liar int he world
the essential, hidden thing he'd always wanted
315 digital TV: erotic wallpaper
giant cabbage trees
316 if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here. You should like him.
You always think the worst of people.
319 He's outside Paradice.
Away from here? From Paradice? Why?
320 get away from Crake . . . Crake needs us!
Crake: Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain?
look after the Paradice Project
321 specialists . . . wouldn't have the empathy to deal with the Paradice models.
A great ability to sit around doing not much of anything. Just like them.
no marketable skills in Pleebland
322 I believe in his vision. He wants to make the world a better place.
too many people, makes the people bad
Oryx: take care of the Crakers
324 bioterrorism . . . in Brazil, Taiwan, Bangkock, Saudi Arabia, Berlin, etc.
325 rogue hemorrhagic
It was in the pills . . . supposed to help people
326 C: "Everything's under control." . . . sounded drunk
327 three staff . . . already dead
inner bubble: himself & Crakers
Windlestraw (dry withered stalk of grass)
Woad (blue dye-stuff)
328 antibody serum in the pleeb vaccine
329 I'm counting on you.
333 Crows say Crake, crickets say Oryx (alliteration, style) (short attention span pleasures)
some of that darkness is Snowman's
334 [s-v disagreement]
slug
335 Crake & Oryx, what's left of them
his one true love and his best friend
336 high ranking Corpsman
337 Look in Bermuda
[Crakers] sat for long hours doing what appeared to be nothing
Where is Oryx?
She is always teaching us. She is teaching us now.
338 riots in cities
exodus to small towns and rural areas
God's Gardeners liberating a ChickieNubs production facility
some genius let out the pigoons and wolvogs
338-9 street preachers . . . Apocalypse . . . where were trumpets and angels?
339 epidemic maps: dark pink, as for British Empire
commentators
images of the virus . . . supervirulent splace
JUVE: Jetspeed Ultra Virus Extraordinary
conspiracy theories
cf. oranges and cloves x- Black Death
Crake: "Change can be accommodated by any system depending on its rate."
342 the water's moving faster than the boat
old birthday card
342-3 [cf. Revelation: get to watch, unaffected]
343 How could he exist in this clean, dry, monotonous, ordinary room . . . while the entire human race was kakking out
. . . did not really touch him
not hard-wired to individuate other people in numbers above 200: size of primal tribe; Jimmy > 2
Uncle Pete, Crake's mother trial runs?
lunatic or intellectually honorable man? Difference?
344 end of a species taking place before his very eyes
346 Jimmy's last note
social disruption maximized
347 Crake's fridge magnets
348 Jimmy showed himself to Crakers for first time
never seen textiles
x-evasion, euphemism, lily-gilding
My name is Snowman
349 different name, x-past
sentence structure simple, message clear
to a new place . . . more to eat
like blank pages
350 although the Crakers weren't his business, they were now his responsibility
352 clearing away the chaos
chaos smells bad
[sick people] piece of a bad dream that Crake is dreaming
Crake unable to eliminate dreams and singing
353 their crystal voices
A lifetime of deviousness came to his aid.
354 so beautiful here . . . what called? . . . home.
357 one last backward look at Paradice
358 that smoke he saw
359 the Snowman Fish Path
people like himself--smoke-making people
360 never done anything like it before
effigy
Mun
cf. day-care rhythm band
361 x-Amen > Snowman
We made a picture of you, to help us send out our voices to you
Watch out for art . . .
Symbolic thinking = downfall
363 destroying image: teaching of Oryx: after a thing has been used, it must be given back to its place of origin
. . . as if he himself has been torn apart and scattered [allusion: Bacchae]
364 some others like you came here
two men, one woman
365 a noisy stick, like yours
as if they're discussing rabbits
366 rehearsing the future
a mission, sermon
371 Rapture . . . after everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful [psychological realism]
372 already this routine of his is entering the past, like a lover seen from a train window
a human footprint. In the Sand. [allusion: Robinson Crusoe]
373 three of them, sitting around a fire
two men, one brown, one white, a tea-colored woman . . .
374 they haven't done anything bad, not to him
Zero hour