Michaela Fox

Atwood’s Mashup

Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is unlike any piece of literature I have ever laid my hands on. It accomplishes the goal of literature’s purpose to entertain and educate, but does so unconventionally. Best described as, although incapable of being confined to, speculative fiction, the novel blends conventions of multiple genres. Atwood mixes literary elements of utopia, dystopia, post-apocalyptic, and apocalyptic to formulate the speculative fiction novel which makes it a “literature of ideas” inspiring a higher, alternative level of thought.

Ordinarily, a utopian novel has a narrative with a specific formula consisting of a series of chapters informing readers of a society’s functioning as told by an outsider looking in. In some ways, Oryx and Crake does mimic this formula. Snowman, the story’s protagonist, acts as our “in” to understanding the Crakers, a community he does not technically belong to. While he does inhabit the same land as they, he functions unlike them and describes it as feeling “excluded, as if from a party to which he will never be invited” (105-106). The separation between him and the Crakers allows him to provide details of their society, such as their blue belly mating practices, from an outside point of view similar to Van in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland. This similarity of formal conventions differs from the similarities of content conventions between Oryx and Crake and other utopian fiction.

During the flashback sessions of Snowman’s early life as Jimmy, Atwood presents several illustrations of attempts at establishing a utopia. For instance, Crake discusses the “misery” and “despair” of love as being “a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones,” which could be fixed by “pair-bonding” and then there would “be no more sexual torment” (166). Crake’s twisted, yet seemingly feasible heartache cure makes an attempt at improving society, just like utopian societies aim to do. However, Crake’s solutions do not involve altering the world, as in utopian societies, but rather the biology of the beings that inhabit it. The race of Crakers may gain their utopia, but our world must go down to accomplish it.

The end of mankind by some sort of catastrophe represents one of the major characteristics of a post-apocalyptic or apocalyptic novel. In the case of Oryx and Crake, we do see a dying out of a race, but with that dying out, Crake creates a new species of beings. In post-apocalyptic novels, the race dies out, with the exception of a few beings. Those beings remaining are left to repair or repopulate the land back to its original state. Snowman often questions the existence of other beings like himself, but fails to come in contact with them, until the end of the novel. If this was a true post-apocalyptic novel, Snowman would join forces with his fellow humans and begin to restart the race, but Atwood leaves us hanging, and we do not know what Snowman chooses to do.

Along with this post-apocalyptic characteristic, Atwood continues to blend genres, one being dystopia. Once again, the traditional characteristics of dystopic novels are not present. Of course one could view Snowman’s part in the Crakers’ civilization as dystopic because he exists unhappily in a land intended to be utopic. If we look back to Jimmy’s life, we also see conventions of dystopia. In a way, the novel can be a reverse “topia” where you begin with the dystopia and end with the utopia. Although the concept of the “topias” is circular, most novels follow this pattern. Our future, and Snowman’s past, is a version of our world on steroids where Atwood intensifies current social norms to reveal our tendency to continuously seek improvement (if you would call it that). It demonstrates how out of hand out world had become, which is where dystopia meets speculative fiction.

In speculative fiction, an author takes existing concepts and transforms them such as Atwood’s clever use of wordplay for company names: “Happicuppa,” “OrganiInc,” “CorpSeCorps,” “ChickieNoobs,” etc. The names, along with the companies’ functions, reveal our potential future. Although these advancements seem “normal” to their society, the idea of genetically engineered chicken parts screams dystopia to our society.

The variety of genre conventions incorporated into Oryx and Crake makes it a novel that inspires discussion and thought on a multitude of levels. Perhaps this ambiguity accounts for the significance of it as a text for our seminar. In fact, I could see basing an entire course on this novel. It most definitely fulfills literature’s purpose to entertain and educate and so goes into my list of “to read, re-read, and re-read again.”