Jan Smith

Snowman Lives!

Margaret Atwood has convinced me that speculative fiction is much closer to reality than I would like to imagine. She gives Oryx and Crake a foothold in modern day science with the use of  bio-engineered viruses (Ebola, Anthrax), violent internet saturation: brainfrizz (internet porn, Faces of Death), and organ-harvesting pigoons (Enviropig 10 Genetically Modified Animals You Might Not Know - EnkiVillage. In the novel, scientific advancements have gone awry, resulting in a moralistic breakdown of society. The book left me with the uneasy feeling that the-not-so-distant-future was upon me—and it was frightening. In a way, Atwood’s tonality vibrates with a prophetic “warning signal”. This highly stylized form is deliberate. And it is through the use of this form, Atwood can argue how the classification of Oryx and Crake falls within the reality-based genre of speculative fiction rather than science fiction. Not to say that speculative fiction is exclusive. As I compare Oryx and Crake to Dystopian and Utopian fiction, the associations become more evident. Using a mixture of intense emotion, along with horror and fear, the novel utilizes conventions relative to Romanticism. At the same time, I see evidence of “tracts”, giving further support to the claim that her novel is blended. Atwood not only uses conventions from other genres, she optimizes them. She purposefully blends utopian conventions with plot development and adds speculative science as a way of moving the story along. Perhaps Atwood is splicing literary genes in an attempt to create a genre separate but equal to science fiction. Hollinger calls Atwood’s Oryx and Crate a “novel of hybridity” (456). I will demonstrate how Atwood takes speculative fiction adds a bit of Romanticism and writes a book that repurposes Utopian conventions in an attempt to raises consciousness and entertain the reader.

Society Gone Wrong

Utopia is a systemic concept. On a very basic level, it is a system comprised of many parts. The parts can be defined as ideals, mores, attitudes, etc. When one or more of these “parts” begins to malfunction, you see the utopia decline. With decline comes the passing away of the old system to make way for a new society. This is a fundamental convention of dystopian plot. At first glance, the society in Oryx and Crake looks like a futuristic utopia, with its communal living and scientific advancements. It didn’t take long before I noticed the blatant misuse of science. -a sure sign of dystopia. Then I noted that this misuse was effecting all the characters. That’s when I realized that the misuse of science was relative to character development. Throughout the story science changes everyone for better or worse. By creating the tension in this way, Atwood uses reflexive behaviors as means of driving the utopia into a dystopia. And finally this chain of events serves to show how Atwood utilizes speculative science to develop a dystopian plot.

Competition vs Cooperation

There are numerous dystopian devices employed by Atwood to facilitate the narrative, competition for example. The advancements in bio chemical as well as genetic engineering have reached a fever pitch. Unlike communal Utopias where resources are shared, the technotopias are in constant competition for the resources. Corporations like Genie Gnomes and AgriCouture via against the giant, HealthWyzer to see which company can splice-up the latest and greatest perversion of nature. You can get everything from new skin to pills that turn you into a sexual dynamo (BlyssPluss Pill). The frenzy surrounding the competition is a definite example of what Plato refers to in The Republic as “the feverish state”. This feverish behavior is much like a red light indicator on the dash board of your car. The competition versus cooperation convention serves as Atwood’s “check engine” light if you will. With competition at an all-time high, speculative science becomes the catalyst fueling the dystopian plot. As the story developed, I found myself thinking, “What will they think of next?”

Personal Profit vs Shared Wealth

It isn’t hard to see how profit margins are related to attitudes in Oryx and Crake. The materialistic mantra of society could best be summed up with the words “take it if you can”. This attitude is not only acceptable, it is expected. Jimmy’s dad and Glenn’s Uncle are examples of characters with this mentality. When there is money to be made, little concern is given to the negative impact on society. What a contrast to the environmentally conscious society in Callenbach’s Ecotopia. Members willingly “take their modest place in a seamless, stable-state web of living organisms” and “sacrifice present consumption” to “ensure [their] future survival” (47). In Atwood’s novel, she uses profits as a dystopian convention. In this systemic breakdown it is the profits from scientific research causing glitches in the utopia not science in and of itself.

Control vs Compliance

 Dystopian narratives always have a controlling body at work in the story. Since corporate heads govern the compounds in Oryx and Crake, they control the lives of their workers. Everyone is under surveillance by the CorpSECorp, a policing body much like the Thought Police from George Orwell’s 1984. With industrial espionage as an ever present threat, it is not uncommon for someone that’s under suspicion from the company to dissolve into a pile of goo or liquefy from the inside. There is also a constant presence of fear the novel. And it is seems to affect everyone. There are two levels of fear at work here.-corporate fear and employee fear.  Corporate heads fear losing scientific knowledge to a competitor. The ruling body not only locks down the complex, in an attempt to keep information safe, they surveying the employees, and kill any one that is a threat. Corporate paranoia is felt by the employees. The simple fact that employees know about company inventions makes them susceptible to retribution. Together these two levels creates a negative vibe in the novel. -a looming presence.  I mentioned earlier how Atwood’s tonality vibrates a warning. The fear generated in the novel serves to enhance this device. It gives the novel a dark edginess, making it uncomfortable to read.

Perversion of Nature vs Harmony with Nature

What would speculative fiction be without a little gene splicing? Altering chromosomes to produce a better offspring tends to crop-up quite often in dystopian narratives. The ever popular gene manipulation in Oryx and Crake is also present in the dystopian novel, Brave New World. Both novels use genetic altering as a way of enhancing life styles.  In Huxley’s book, the production of children has been taken over by the state. At the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, eggs are fertilized inside a Petri dish, and harvested inside an incubator. “Bakanovsky’s Process” involves a complex manipulation of the gestation process that involves suspending the embryos within a viscous solution, turning them at regular intervals and enhancing or depleting the oxygen level to determine the intelligence level of the child. The level of oxygen will determine the caste to which the infant belongs (Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, Epsilons). In both novels, splicing is a means to an end. It is presented as a way of improving the lives of humans. This advancement has great value in the quest for perfection in Huxley’s book. Determining a child’s status at birth ensures a properly balanced society: upper, middle and lower classes.  For Atwood, splicing is a means to an end for the corporations; science drives the society.

Pain, Suffering and Punishment

In Atwood’s book, the gene splicing war has become so competitive that fear takes on a whole new dimension.  Early on in the book, Jimmy’s father describes a scenario of how a woman tried to sneak out a “hostile bio form concealed in a hairspray bottle” (Atwood 53). She is “spray gunned at once and neutralized in a vat of bleach” (Atwood 53).  I can only imagine the effect this has on employee morale. Glenn’s father is said to have committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. I discovered later in the book how Crake (Glenn) hacked his dad’s computer and found information implying that his death was not a suicide. Then there is Jimmy’s mother. Troubled by her conscious, she breaks out of the compound then sends Jimmy postcards from all over the world signing them Aunt Monica. Each postcard brings with it visits from the CorpSECorp along with interrogations. They visit Jimmy four times a year in an attempt to find his mother. Towards the end of the novel, the police catch Mother. Jimmy is then subjected to a video of her execution. During which time he is hooked to a lie detector machine so that they can monitor his pulse. The interrogation with its intense emotional torture, is reminiscent of Winston’s visit to the Ministry of Love in 1984.  In all instances, Glenn’s dad, Jimmy’s mother and Winston, struggle against a malignant system of ideals. A system ruled over by an oppressive institution. Their choice to act against the body results in punishment and death. These deaths are Atwood’s way of demonstrating how the moral fiber of the community has been compromised. The greed resulting from this misuse has negatively impact a community. So much so that it’s left with nothing but materialism and fear to guide it.  

The physical pain endured by the characters in the Oryx and Crake reminded me of Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Equality 7-2521 endures several types of pain. While living in the House of Infants, he fights with his brothers and is “locked in the cellar most often” (Rand 20).  In the House of Students, he tries to forget his lessons and is “lashed more often that other children” (Rand 22).  When Equality 7-2521 is caught coming home late, he is confronted by the Council of the Home. Without fail he refuses to tell them where he has been. Then he is taken to the Stone Room in the Palace of Corrective Detention. There they lash him with a whip and punch his face until he bleeds. These are all instances of a society being controlled through the use of fear and punishment, much like Glenn’s dad and Jimmy’s mom. Atwood uses punishment as a way of identifying the antagonist. But unlike Anthem, she does this gradually, dropping hints about Healthwyzer to keep you engaged and guessing. The greedy corporate heads along with their CorpsSeCorps goon squad, are the perfect bad guys. While Anthem exposes the antagonist up front, Atwood uses a “slow reveal” technique to build momentum. This device, specific to Romanticism, blends nicely with dystopian fiction. At one moment it makes the novel engaging and the next moment frustrating. 

The intense reactions directed at the protagonists are identifiably the result of Romanticism techniques. At times I am given over to feelings of disgust at the strong sexual nature in the novel. At other times, I want someone to take matters into their own hands and change the course of society. I feel a great injustice has been done to Jimmy and Crake. These characters not only have to live with the loss of their parents, they wrestle with the knowledge that Healthwyzer caused the deaths. This suspense got so dense at times that I had to step away from the book. I became so enraged by the lack of moralistic accountability and the absence of humanity, I almost didn’t finish it. This is exactly the kind of strong reaction to literature that Atwood intended. It serves to keep the pages turning all the way to the conclusion.

Crake & Equality: Break Away

The hardships so important to character and plot development lead the reader to what is often referred to as the break throw moment. In dystopias, the protagonist is tearing down an unhealthy system and pulling away from the corrupt oppressors. Coronado refers to this in her 2011 final as the “optimization of social structure”. This “break away” convention is the climactic part of the dystopian novel. The system has been broken and a new system is to be established. In Oryx and Crake, the technotopias crumble because of Crake’s masterfully engineered genocide. He is both instigator and liberator. He plans and executes the demise of society leaving Snowman, the protagonist, to care for the new race of the gene-enhanced humans, the Crakers. In Atwoods interview titled The Road to Ustopia she says, “The Crakers are well behaved from the inside out not because of their legal system or their government or some form of intimidation but because they have been designed to be so.” They represent the Utopian element that follows the dystopian climax. This same sort of optimization happens with the liberation of Equality 7-2521. Equality is brave enough to listen to his consciousness and follows his own trajectory of thought. Through his discoveries, he leaves the oppressive society and starts a new life with Gaea. Self-aware, he becomes the ego-driven Prometheus. In both instances Crake and Equality initiate the break through moment that starts the new utopia. However in Crake’s instance, his character is representative of the old system that must die away. He cannot exist in the new world because he represents the part of society that has gone wrong. The society cannot optimize if he is allowed to live.  Equality on the other hand has struggled with the oppressors and earned his liberation without being tainted by their judgement. Therefore he goes onto become the progenitor of a new race of free men. In Anthem, this is seen as his reward for putting his individuality above the brotherhood. In Equality’s case, he is the liberator of the dystopian novel and goes on to establish a better society. Crake is the opposite of Equality in that he puts the needs of his newly developed race above his desire to live on. He cannot go on to guide the Crakers so Snowman will become the leader of the new society. In this case, Equality and Snowman become parallels for the reader. Atwood’s use of Crake as a protagonist/antagonist is an instance of taking a convention and morphing it into something that resembles Utopian literature. The lines are blurred. One minute he is the maniacal scientist representing the world gone wrong and the next the God figure bringing about his plan for the liberation of his children. She has managed to not only blend speculative fiction into dystopia, she’s managed to wrap up the world gone wrong inside the liberator himself. A paradox that works nicely to our favor.  

Hidden Utopian Tract

My least favorite convention of classic Utopian literature is the informational portion of the text. At times the reading becomes tedious, but without the information, the reader could not understand the inner workings of the system. So regardless of my feelings, they are a necessary component of the Utopian genre. I must praise Atwood for the clever way she inserts tracts into Oryx and Crake by way of dialogue. It becomes the vehicle for her Literature of Ideas. Through dialogue, exposition occurs. And therein lay the blended “tract” portions so closely associated with classic Utopian text—brilliant. “By defining a new genre that incorporates Utopia conventions, she is able to extend the literature of ideas throughout the exposition and make the informative aspects of Utopian text more enjoyable as well as engage the reader” (Hollinger 456). At first I didn’t recognize Snowman as the host of my Utopian experience. But then I noticed the voices surrounding his character. At times he hears a women speaking to him and other times he talks to himself. One minute he day dreams then the next chapter he flashes back to the past. At first, the shifting around within the text created a disjointed feeling. I was confused and nothing made sense. Atwood does it on purpose. Snowman isn’t meant to give you all the information you need, only portions, snippets. It is up to the reader to piece all his musings together. I was forced to construct the dystopia as Snowman’s character developed –classic Atwood trait. The fractured nature of his character is meant to unsettle the reader. So from the beginning, you see Atwood utilizing techniques from the Romantic genre in character development. He reminds me of the men in Herland. The male counterparts in Gillman’s novel serve the same purpose as Snowman in Oryx and Crake. In that they all help the reader to identify the “human progress”. While Snowman identifies a society gone wrong, the men in Herland show how far society had advanced.

When he is not serving as a dysfunctional host to the reader, some of Snowman’s dialogue/musings involve the Crakers. He reminds me of a parent that is worn out at the end of hard day. He has so many things on his mind, but he knows he has to care for the children regardless of his physical or emotional state. (I think Gillman would sympathize.) This is the part of Snowman that I like most of all. He cares about the society. He represents the humanity that technotopia forgot in the race for science. We need him to survive because he represents the “one shred of human decency” left in society. I never imagined I would regard him this way. Atwood’s gradual exposition of the character through the literature of ideas changed my mind. Through his eyes we see how greed and competition infects society. We feel his fear and pain as he suffers through the loss of his mother and Oryx. Finally we struggle as he is forced to break away and watch society crumble: not by his choice, but by the will of another, Crake. And yet, he still manages to find a way to be responsible for the Crakers.

When I was young, my father and I often watched The Evening News with Walter Cronkite together. More often than not he would say, “The world’s going the hell in a hand basket.” I never quite understood the full implication of his words. With my introduction to speculative fiction, I not only understand his words, they have become a truism. I can apply this truism to many aspects of Atwood’s novel. She masterfully blends genres and utilizes utopian techniques to formulate a frightening scenario of what could happen. After reading the novel Oryx and Crake and analyzing its implications, I have become more aware of how dangerous our society has become. Reading her book makes me think that human nature perverts itself when there is profit to be had. It is frightening. But not so much as to keep me from reading her next work of speculative fiction. 

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. New York: Anchor Books, 2004.

Margaret Atwood, "The Road to Ustopia." The Guardian 14 Oct. 2011

Callenback, Ernest. Ecotopia. Berkeley, CA; Banyan Tree Books, 1975, 2004.

Coronado, Sarah. “Human Progression in Utopian and Dystopian Literature.” UHCL, 2011. Web. 25 June.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1998. Kindle   file. 

Hollinger, Veronica. “Stories about the Future: From Patterns of Expectation to Pattern Recognition.” Science Fiction Studies , Vol. 33, No. 3 (Nov., 2006), pp. 452-472. Online.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. London. Chatto and Windus, 1932. Print.

More, Thomas. Utopia.   Online Texts for Craig White's Literature Courses. 1 July, 2013

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/UtopTexts/republicplato.htm

Rand, Ayn. Anthem. (1938) Literary and Historical Utopias Website for Dr. Craig White.  http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/UtopTexts/anthem.htm