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.”
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