Lori Wheeler

Oryx and Crake: Disproving Utopia

          Margaret Atwood insists that her writing is speculative fiction, not science fiction or dystopian fiction.  She reminds critics and readers that what she writes about is entirely possible in the near future.  I think this is one of the aspects of her writing that intrigues readers; however, it creates a bit of difficulty for the critic who analyzes her work and compares it to similar texts.  Oryx and Crake is proclaimed by Atwood to be speculative fiction, but I would classify it as a utopian / dystopian blend. 

          In previous research posts and midterm essays, I have come back time and again to the idea that utopias are dystopias waiting to happen, and dystopian fictions are the result of some utopian society gone wrong whose main characters are attempting to return to a better utopia.  In Atwood’s Crake, I see this combination more articulated than in any other text I have read.  Crake sees his modern world as nothing but dystopian: a world full of greedy, selfish people.  Upon his father’s death, Crake begins to look for ways to improve his society and ultimately settles on creating what Snowman refers to as the Crakers.  Unfortunately, at the same time that he begins to create his own utopia, he realizes that it has no place for him in it.  Consequently, the utopian world he creates becomes a dystopia for him, for Oryx, and for Snowman.  The world Crake envisioned has no place for the three of them in it, or any other homo sapiens sapiens. 

          Stylistically, what Atwood creates fits perfectly into both the utopian and dystopian genres.  Her refusal of such classifications brings an interesting perspective on what is and is not possible, but the text of Crake does not perform any differently than other definitive texts of those genres.  Much like Utopia and Herland, Oryx and Crake takes an almost pained journey through the development of the structures which govern the biology, psychology, and sociology of the Crakers.  Atwood walks the reader through detailed explanations of Crake’s design through Snowman’s realization narrative.  Even the most miniscule details are described by Crake through Snowman.  These accounts not only explain the how of the Crakers’ existence, but they provide the why of it as well—the justification and meaning behind those choices.  The chapters detailing these specifics function as breaks from the plot development and allow the pace of the novel to slow, so that the ideas of the text can be communicated to the reader.  It is in these slower moments that the “literature of ideas” is completely manifested.  These moments allow the reader to consider just how appropriate would be a species of human that can, for example, digest its own excrement and extract further nutrition from it. 

          Much like Weston’s character in Ecotopia, who serves as both outsider and eventually society member, in Oryx and Crake, the Jimmy/Snowman character serves double duty, but to a greater extent.  Atwood uses the Jimmy/Snowman character to show the utopian / dystopian dichotomy functioning in the novel.  As Jimmy, he enters as an outsider into the Paradice utopia Crake has established.  From this vantage point, he can ferret out answers to a reader's questions about this new people.  He serves as the curious outsider and functions as a player in the dialogue of Crake’s new utopia.  As Snowman, however, he articulates the position of the main character in a dystopia who finds himself a disgruntled member of a dysfunctional society.  He involves himself in the action of creating a better situation for himself and even for the Crakers, and at the end of the novel, the reader is left to assume that he will begin to forge his own version of utopia now that he knows Crake’s utopia is insufficient for him.  Atwood establishes Jimmy/Snowman in such a way as to serve both utopian and dystopian genres, but also to show the dichotomous nature of both kinds of texts.  As I have said from the beginning of the semester, thanks to a comment Jan brought to the discussion, these texts are cyclical, and Jimmy/Snowman serves that argument through his role in Oryx and Crake.

          Atwood is careful in her novel to include the fast-paced progression of dystopian texts so that the reader remains engaged.  This attention to action-driven plot serves to combine with the distress, discomfort, and disillusionment of Snowman to complete the requisite hallmarks of dystopian texts that we have seen in Anthem.  Through the juxtaposition of Jimmy and Snowman perspectives, Atwood assembles a utopian/dystopian blend that keeps the reader on his toes.  Each numbered chapter has sub-chapters that bounce between past, present, and somewhere just between the two, so that the reader welcomes Atwood’s idea of speculative fiction because it no longer asks the reader to distinguish the text as either utopian or dystopian.  It can simply exist, perhaps, as both in this hybrid genre that does not define itself as positive or negative. 

          Although Oryx and Crake is not easily labeled as either utopian or dystopian, and thus the concern is that it fits only marginally within the course, I would argue that it is a perfect complement to our studies.  As a text, it embodies a literature of ideas, so that not only do readers examine the content of the text, but they begin to stretch their own classifications of what literature of ideas can do as a literary form.  As a single text, Crake pushes the boundaries and blurs the lines between utopia and dystopia so that critics and readers can see not only the differences, but also the similarities between the two.  As a text, it embodies the cycle of blended utopian / dystopian genres, but what is more, it asks where those genres go next.