Michael Luna

Oryx, Crake and Owls

            Anyone who is familiar with utopian literature is aware of the conventions that tie into this type of literature. Readers experience accounts of newcomers as they become enveloped by a new land with new rules and new situations. The audience partakes as the protagonist receives lectures on what makes this new society better than the one that existed before. Old ideas slide to the back of the shelf and new and different ideas spring to the forefront in an attempt to show superiority. While this is what readers expect out of any utopian, and sometimes dystopian literature, this is not what happens with Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. Utopian literature is always fictional, but it is not science fiction or speculative fiction all of the time. The question arises, then, how does Oryx and Crake fit into this conglomeration of utopian and dystopian literature? The answer is not a simple one, as it requires knowledge of past utopian / dystopian stories as well as a general understanding of the novel. There are purposes behind utopian and dystopian stories. The usual purpose is to inform the reader of what is going wrong with the current society and what actions needs to taken to change direction before we reach that point of no return. Dystopian novels tell of a world in which everything has gone wrong and the protagonist is trying to recreate the beauty of what was lost. Atwood’s story does not attempt this, but it is still a story of worth in the annals of utopian / dystopian literature. Indeed, Atwood’s story adds a vital component for anyone who is interested in understanding utopian/dystopian literature.

There are certain conventions that appear in utopian literature that Oryx and Crake does utilize while leaving out others. Atwood has learned from her predecessors because she makes this work to her advantage in this story of apocalyptic suffering. The main character, a man named both Jimmy and Snowman, is the person from whom the reader receives all of the information of what has happened to the planet. He comes from within the system, and this concept breaks the usual convention that utopian stories use. In utopian literature, the speaker is somebody who is from the outside talking about his or her experiences while being on the inside of the utopian society. This appears in Herland and Ecotopia, as the main characters are men who immerse themselves into a utopian society. Does this take away from Atwood’s story? No. Rather, it helps this story. The testimony of Jimmy is excellent because it provides the reader with an objective view of the end of the world, as he knew it and the difficulties that Jimmy had while in a perfect society. Jimmy never paints a perfect picture of the compounds nor does he believe that they are the best aspect of society. He simply tells his tale in the most realistic way possible. In a sense, Jimmy/Snowman is both an insider and an outsider. He grew up in the perfect society and he is surviving as best he can in the disease-ravaged world.

Another convention that Atwood does not include in her story is the explanation aspect of the new society. Utopia, by Sir Thomas More, spends some time explaining how the society of Utopia came to be, established laws, relegates emotion and a slew of other aspects. Herland also uses several paragraphs to explain exactly what happened, why it happened, and how it has been working ever since. Generally, utopian literature seems like an encyclopedia entry. Oryx and Crake avoids this with both positive and negative consequences. The reader is not subjected to paragraph after paragraph of monologue detailing the society as it occurs with Raphael from Utopia and from the elder women in Herland. This omission does keep the reader interested in the story and helps to propel the elements of the plot. However, with this omission, the reader has to hunt through the clues spread throughout the pages in order to conclude what has happened. This does not work badly for the story, however, because part of the pleasure in reading Oryx and Crake is to discover the pieces bit by bit. This method builds upon the journey aspect that is usually found in the utopian genre.

There is usually some type of millennial event that occurs in utopian and dystopian literature and this is found in Atwood’s story. Atwood also includes the schism between the utopian world and the non-utopian world. In Herland, there is the tale of history when the women, who used to be slaves, revolted against their owners after they were trapped in a valley with no escape. Utopia relates the founding of the society be describing it as having once been a peninsula, but then Utopus decided it best to separate and he dug a massive channel which liberated the people from the rest of the world. While a specific incident is not given in Oryx and Crake, readers can surmise that disease has been the cause of separation between what is called the pleeblands and the compounds. In Atwood’s story, the compounds are the utopian versions of society while the pleeblands reflect the dystopian aspect of society. In the compounds, order is instilled, rules are vigilant and everything is regimented. Inversely, chaos is the ruling factor in the pleeblands. Just as previous utopian authors have done, Atwood creates separation between the “good life” and the regular people.

Atwood takes what has been staple in the utopian genre and enhances it by blending it into what she terms as speculative fiction in a seamless manner. She leaves out the outsider aspect of utopian literature but retains the storyteller. She does not delve into the explanation of society yet she installs enough vignettes of the past for the reader to decipher what the world used to be like and how it came to its abrupt end. She does include a millennial event and she maintains the separation aspect of the utopian society and the non-utopian society.

While Atwood’s story is not typical utopian or dystopian literature, it does compare nicely to both Ayn Rand’s Anthem and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia. Each of these stories are modern as they were published within the past seventy-five years, Anthem in 1938, Ecotopia in 1975 and Oryx and Crake in 2003. Each story contains elements of a utopian society and there are definite dystopian elements presented in Anthem and in Oryx and Crake.

Anthem focused on the struggle for freedom from a utopian society that felt more like a prison. Though the structure was created to instill a sense of brotherhood, there were too many regulations and life was not really worth living. Oryx and Crake does not aim to build a brotherhood-bound society; rather it is about how that single-minded mentality can destroy as well. The main character from Anthem is a man known as Equality 7-2521, who eventually renames himself Prometheus. Prometheus is a person who is smarter and taller and probably more athletically inclined than his societal brothers are. Jimmy, who calls himself Snowman, is the main character in Oryx and Crake and he is a person of average intelligence and some psychological issues. Unlike Prometheus, Snowman never attains his freedom in the sense that he was after. Instead, Snowman has to deal with a world that was decimated by a plague that his best friend developed. Snowman also looks after a new species of human known as Crakers. Prometheus finds the love of his life and they escape into the mountains where they find a house to continue living their lives while Snowman takes the Crakers from a compound and lives off the coastline. The plot in each story differs greatly, but there is still an essence binds these two stories. Society in Anthem has become stringent, and there are no personal choices in life. Snowman’s society was also regimented but people still had the freedom of choice, as long as those choices did not clash with the corporation in charge of your compound.

Both stories intertwine in their limited use of technology. Humanity has reverted to candles in Prometheus’ world while technology is practically useless in Snowman’s world. The only viable humans left have no concept of anything technological and they graze off the land as though they were herbivorous animals. There are remnants of a more productive age in both stories and these remnants serve as historical markers or reminders of better times.

One final relation between these two stories is the main character. Both Snowman and Prometheus were part of the utopian society in their respective worlds. Both had trouble fitting in with the rules of their society, though they show this in different ways. Snowman believed that he was a good person when he was younger and as he reflects on his actions, he realizes that he may not have been as good a person as he thought. Prometheus, on the other hand, knew that he was different and that there was only one path for him: escape.

There are fewer similarities between Oryx and Crake and Ecotopia. The main character in Callenbach’s story is a man named William Weston who is a journalist from American trying to find out the truth about the country of Ecotopia. This story centers on an outsider who is introduced to a utopian society. In the vein of utopian literature, Ecotopia spends some pages talking about the new society, why it came it exist, how it works and what is great about the new society compared to the outside world. There are some similarities between each of these stories as well. Weston finds surprise in how emotional the Ecotopians are and how freely they convey their emotions, both positive and negative. This is a concept that surfaces in some of the characters throughout Oryx and Crake. Snowman is perhaps the most emotionally unstable character in the Oryx and Crake who talks to hears voices and responds to them periodically. Oryx relies on positive thinking and refrains from thinking of the bad in life. In doing this, she creates positive emotions and conflicted emotions in Snowman. Sharon, Snowman’s mom, has a mental breakdown and leaves the family behind in order to try to do some good in the world.

This is not the only similarity between the stories as sex and violence play a role. Weston is a man who finds the open use of emotion strange, but has no problem with diving into the sexual appetites of the Ecotopians.  He has a relationship with Marissa and one with Francine yet he has no problem with going from one lover to another. Snowman is a person who, when he was younger, used sex as a coping mechanism since he really had no other way of establishing a relationship with anyone. The Ecotopians did not put much emphasis on marriage and were free spirits when it came to sexual encounters. Another similarity is the taste that humanity has for the so-called darker aspects of life. The Ecotopians practice war games in which two sides attack each other with spears until one side suffers a casualty. Weston is given an explanation of the wars games as a need of release “that seemed to be inherent in man’s biological programming”  (Callenbah 74). This same need for release is found in Oryx and Crake as Jimmy and Crake peruse through websites looking at sites that show porn and snuff. These websites are available to view for a price and seem to be encouraged to continue.

Stylistically, these three stories differ. Oryx and Crake is not about a utopian society like Ecotopia nor is it about a dystopian society like Anthem. Atwood’s story is simply about a man who has survived a pandemic and is trying his best to survive and live up to a promise he made to the woman he loved. All three stories work well as fiction and each of them contain certain amounts of realism too, but Atwood’s story is not trying to educate the reader on certain plights of civilization. She, Atwood, does enough to satirize conglomerations and she hints as how these businesses may rule aspects of society, but she does not directly attack institutions like Rand. Each of these stories entertains the audience yet Atwood’s story is much more entertaining than both Anthem and Ecotopia. Much of this is attributed to how she spends very little time trying to explain what has happened. Atwood also uses the limited third-person point-of-view while the other two stories focus on the first person.

Oryx and Crake may not be considered a utopian or a dystopian story, but it holds many elements of each. There are better parts of society, utopia, and there are references to degenerative parts of society, dystopia. There is a journey involved as Snowman tries to find more food and ammunition. A cataclysmic event occurs that results in the shaping of a new world. People are unhappy with the society that exists inside the compounds and revolt against it. Each of these instances is utopian or dystopian which is what allows this book to belong in a course that studies utopian/dystopian literature. It is perhaps best to read utopian literature and become familiar with it as this understanding helps to explain certain parts of Oryx and Crake and readers can depict what is happening and why if they are familiar with the concept of utopian and dystopian literature. This story, like other utopian and dystopian stories, contains possibilities and concepts that bring about some healthy and heated discussions.

Reading stories such as these creates many questions in a classroom and many directed answers. Some people will say that a society run by women is ridiculous. Others will argue that an island where people are shown like slaves before a marriage is utter nonsense. A majority of people will agree that a society in which all emotion has been brainwashed away will never happen. Many people want to believe that a corporation telling us what to eat and how to live our lives is impossible. These concepts are not hard to imagine. A simple reflection of how life operates reveals that many of these concepts are not only possible, they are already happening or they have happened and we are repeating them. Atwood may not write utopian stories, but Oryx and Crake does an excellent job in bringing the aspects of utopian / dystopian literature back to the general audience and providing new grounds for discussion.