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LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias |
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Kristine Vermillion
July 5, 2013
Atwood: The Genre-Splicing Genius
"Only that which is itself developing can comprehend
development as a process."
M. M. Bakhtin
Raccoons in and of themselves are interesting
animals. A lot can be said about them. They are nocturnal. They eat garbage.
They are cute but rascally. For some reason, they think that the pier at my lake
is a latrine. I disagree. They don't care. It's gross. C'est la vie. Skunks are
interesting too. These are the relevant facts concerning skunks: they are black
and white and stink something fierce. The existence of these two wild little
animals merits observation, study and questions. One of the main questions that
comes to my mind is: Why? Things get a little more interesting, however, when a
science genius, just for the fun of it, decides to see if he can combine the two
and make a "rakunk." This new creature is interesting. Others then have fun for
awhile making new combinations of animals for varying reasons: "pigoons,"
"wolvogs" and "snats" to name a few. However, splicing gets even more intricate
when the ultimate mad genius, the splice king, uses his knowledge and doesn't
just combine two animals together but combines several parts of a
large variety of breeds to make a new race of humans. The creation of "Crakers"
is pure splicing brilliance.
This picture of animals and the
art of splicing can be used as an analogy to describe what has happened within
the realm of utopian fiction since its official inception almost five hundred
years ago. The original
Utopia by Thomas More is a
pure breed utopian genre—a raccoon if you will. It is not a novel. It is not
even a short story. It is the original utopian work and is worthy of reading and
study for this reason alone. An understanding of the original helps us to
appreciate what happened next. Gillman's
Herland
and Callenbach's
Ecotopia
are products of splice experiments, i.e. "rakunks," and are great specimens in
the study of the development of the genre. Each manifests elements of maturation
as literary techniques have developed over time. Gilman attempted to write a
short story utopian piece, and Callenbach combined the novel and utopian
fiction. In the progression we see great development in character and plot
lines. Oryx
and Crake exhibits an advanced stage of
development. It is a bona fide "Craker," and Atwood is the genre splicing queen.
Atwood is an extremely skilled writer. To borrow
from a chess analogy, she knows all the various pieces on the board and can play
them all competently with great foresight and panache. In terms of genre,
Oryx and Crake
is a dynamic novel that contains a fabulous hybrid of some of the strongest
elements and tools in the literary toolbox. It is utopic and distopic at the
same time as well as a mix of speculative fiction and a literature of ideas. It
contains scathing satire and good old fashioned humor. One of my favorite lines
in the book comes after the jaw-dropping ends of Oryx and Crake. Jimmy is
limping and needs a cane to help him walk. When he finds a suitable stick he
thinks, "Good thing about sticks, they grow on trees."
The
insertion of humor at this extremely intense moment in the book is a nice little
gift to the reader. Little moments like this are given all throughout the book,
and they make a big impact.
The intertextuality of the work
is surprising. We noted in class the allusions to
Robinson Crusoe,
Huckleberry Finn, and
Frankenstein. I am certain there are many
others. Atwood's work is talking with and to other pieces of literature; a
quality Bakhtin describes as the special language of the novel. "The language of
the novel is a
system of languages that
mutually and ideologically interanimate each other" (Bakhtin 47). Atwood takes
these literary images and phrases and integrates them into her own work,
tweaking her specimen with the unique qualities of others.
The
multi-layered dialectical component within the work is also worth mentioning.
Jimmy is a walking contradiction, and since we are told the story through his
point of view, we get to see all these parts of Jimmy interacting with the other
parts. He literally goes back and forth with himself in a quasi stream of
consciousness way that shows a complex synthesis of character. This correlates
with Bakhtin's observation of the novel's strength in characterization. "One of
the basic internal themes of the novel is precisely the theme of the hero's
inadequacy to his fate or his situation. The individual is either greater than
his fate, or less than his condition as a man.... There always remains an
unrealized surplus of potential and unrealized demands.... There always remains
an unrealized surplus of humanness" (37). Jimmy's complex and utterly flawed
character is a necessary component of the novel.
The elongated conversation between Jimmy and Crake
is also an important element for several reasons. It establishes the passage of
time and the development of characters. "Time, as it were, thickens, takes on
flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and
responsive to the movements of time, plot and history" (Bakhtin 84). The
dialectic conversation that takes place between Jimmy and Crake at different
points along their adolescent years and young adulthood establishes the
"chronotope of the road" that aids the progression of plot. The interchange
between Crake and Jimmy also serves as an integral feature of the utopian pulse
of novel as well.
The conventions of utopian literature are relatively
simple, and Atwood nails down every single one of them with creative accuracy.
Jimmy is the traveler. Although he is a compound kid, because he is a word
person, he is always on the outside circles. He really does not belong there. He
is also not a pleebland man. Any which way he goes he is a "traveler". The
pleeblands and the compounds can be labeled either as utopias or dystopias but
neither are sold as such, it just depends on how you look at it. In either land,
Crake seems to be the guide. Throughout the story, Crake is the guide and the
conversations and experiences the two have are the dialectical and Socratic
interchanges that are fundamental to the utopian genre. Jimmy challenges Crake,
but Crake rarely gives in and there is no synthesis of ideas—but it does give
the reader a tour of the envisioned utopian land.
Crake is also the wanna-be
creator of a utopia. He, like More's Hythloday, wants to solve the problems of
mankind. The first book of
Utopia lays out the case
against
Oryx and
Crake contains all the elements of the utopian
genre: the judgment against society as it is and a desire for betterment, the
millennial event, the traveler, the guide, the garden and the wilderness, the
love interest, and we even get to walk in Crake's proposed utopian community
with Jimmy. The Crakers are multi-colored and beautiful. They live communally.
They are vegetarian and have a sustainable food source. They don't need clothes.
They don't have marriage of family units. Property and ownership are not an
issue. They've no need for hospitals for they take care of each other with their
purring mechanism. They grow up fast and die early therefore taking care of the
problematic years of childhood, old age, and population problems. The sex
problem has been hardwired out and now they mate only at specific times for the
purpose of procreation only. They're essentially non-violent, generous and kind.
All of the issues that utopian fiction takes on are dealt with in Crake's
utopian creation, yet the dystopian pattern is also at the forefront.
Jimmy alone gets to experience
what it is like to live in the created utopian community, and he offers three
observations of them that lead the reader to see that dystopia is lurking in the
bushes. First Jimmy comments that they are "placid, like animated statues. They
leave him chilled" (Atwood 100). Then he describes how they kill the fish for
him, as a group "That way the unpleasantness is shared among them and no single
person is guilty of shedding the fish's blood" (Atwood 101). This would be great
and all but later when Jimmy's mother is killed by a firing squad, the same
rational is given and it is unnerving to imagine how this could play out with
the Crakers in the future. The other statement that is telling is when Jimmy
describes the Craker's curiosity towards him. "... the Crakers can't help
peering. The spectacle of depravity is of interest even to them, it seems,
purified by chlorophyl though they are" (Atwood 101). This is exactly what Jimmy
and Crake were doing all those afternoons after school, and as Crake says:
"Those were definitive times" (Atwood 300).
They
were captivated by the "spectacle of depravity" and for Crake not to have
hard-wired that predisposition out just screams future ill-will.
The benefit of including
Oryx and Crake
as the last reading on the syllabus is that it is an excellent example of the
morphology of the utopian genre, and it is a good example of current trends in
literature, such as the stylistic short chapters with subdivisions. It is so
different, and yet at the same time it is so similar. It cultivates and
propagates all the elements in new and surprising ways. It is truly an example
of pushing boundaries and creating something new. I have argued elsewhere that
this genre yields power in its influence upon society. All our work looking into
the historical utopias shows that it is not a literary phenomenon alone, but
utopic action also takes place in the here and now in the social engineering
constructs. People literally implement ideas into their lives and society.
Bellamy's progressive vision has been influential over the past century as the
social gospel has spread like wildfire. Bacon's scientific vision is in full
swing. Modern scientists are literally trying to solve all the physical ills
that mankind suffers from.
Dystopias are also quite helpful, because they are
the place where the potential ramifications of actual movements might lead.
Speculative fiction might be a tool to help reign in the experiments. Therefore
Jimmy's commentary on the catastrophic situation in the book is particularly
insightful. "Already the weeds are thick along the curbs... a clutch of shrubs,
unpruned and scraggly, flares with red and purple flowers. Some exotic splice:
in a few years they'll be overwhelmed. Or else they'll spread, make inroads,
choke out the native plants. Who can tell which? The whole world is now one vast
uncontrolled experiment—the way it always was, Crake would have said—and the
doctrine of unintended consequences was in full spate" (228). Though talking
about the natural vs. the spliced vegetation, this thought is totally applicable
to the few remaining survivors and the Crakers. Anything could happen, and I
can't help but wonder what's going to happen between the two in part three of
the series. Regardless, the reading of the first installment Atwood's trilogy
has really enriched the study of utopian literature as well as the development
of the novel.
I mentioned in my first
research post that Sir Francis Bacon is Crake's great-great grandfather. Upon
further reflection, this might be where the first splice began because more than
being an ancestor of Crake, he is also the father of Science fiction. The world
of utopian fiction and science fiction were spliced together way back in the
early 1600's. There is an eerie connection between Bacon's
The New Atlantis
and its imaginary innovations in science and Crake's experiments. In Atwood's
fiction, mankind has tried and done all that Bacon envisioned, and still the
world is not a utopia because of man and his passions and drives. This is the
same premise that Gilman was working with in
Herland,
and it is why she imagined a world without the male gender.
How else could the problem be solved? Atwood's utopic vision takes it to the
next level by erasing mankind as it is and recreating the human race via
science. There seems to be an inherent connection between utopian and science
fiction. While actual social experiments and social changes happened as a result
of Callenbach's and Bellamy's utopic works, I hope Crake’s utopian experiment is
never tried in real life. A general benefit of including this study is that it
might lend to ethical and practical conversations about the current trends in
science and where they are leading us.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret.
Orxy and Crake.
Bakhtin, M. M. http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/xcritsource/theory/BakhtinDialogic.htm
