LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias

Lecture Notes

Oryx & Crake

 

Maddaddam Trilogy

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

plebeian

 

 

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