Hannah Wells

June 29, 2013 

Oryx and Crake: A Hybrid Utopia

            Whether a work is considered utopian or dystopian, its power and effectiveness lies in the idea that the world of the novel is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. This is true of utopian and dystopian literature all the way down to the genre level. The proposed world involves items we know and love that are twisted and manipulated for good or bad. The author creates this world with a combination of familiar, appropriate conventions and those that belong to other genres and may surprise.

            This semester, works in the utopian genre proved to be prime examples of genre blending. In past midterm essays, students argued that the entertainment value in utopian novels comes from borrowed conventions that remove the works from the world of literature of ideas. Characteristics of romance, travel and adventure genres blend with utopian conventions to create more readable novels. Utopian works undoubtedly combine with the genre of speculative fiction since they commonly present a world that appears like one from our past, present or foreseeable future. Finally, utopian works are invariably connected to dystopias because they often bleed into each other. Dystopian literature usually features a society that is or was someone’s idea of utopia. The fact that utopian literature is made up of other genres leads me to an interesting analysis of Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.

            Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake may not belong in the utopian genre, but it is truly a novel of hybridity (Hollinger 456). At its base a work of speculative fiction, Oryx and Crake still includes conventions from other genres to make it more effective. In no way a straight utopia, the novel does share some interesting characteristics with the utopian genre. For example, Jimmy is in some ways a visitor to an ideal community. Jimmy, “like Wells’s time-traveler,” is a “survivor from the now destroyed world of technology and commodities…an anachronism among” the new species” (Hollinger 458). He is strictly an outsider in terms of his relationship with the Crakers whom he has promised to look after. The Crakers are perfect specimens who do not contract illnesses or fight over mates. Jimmy is a leftover dinosaur who, in the end, achieves demigod status among the curious Crakers. In a twist on the instructor or guide typical in utopian works, Jimmy the visitor is also Jimmy/Snowman the guide. He literally leads the Crakers to a new home and safety and encourages their way of life. Further, Snowman builds and perpetuates the Crakers mythology.

            The Crakers themselves are utopian beings. Like citizens of Herland, they are calm, curious and cooperative in every manner. Equality of the sexes exists among the Crakers and all members of the society pull their weight. Competition among the Crakers, even the struggle for mates, is nonexistent in their tiny utopia. Insects do not bite Crakers, and intestinal problems have been eliminated. At this point, however, we reach the point where utopia ends. The Crakers are perfect not because they live in a perfect world, but because they have been engineered out of a terrible one. They are bio-engineered specimens whose “’undesirable’ human traits have been ‘edited out’” (Hollinger 457). Oryx and Crake has utopian conventions, but it also mixes in characteristics of a dystopia.

            Like both utopian and dystopian pieces, the world of Oryx and Crake is marked by a millennial event. In this case, the event is the near total destruction of the human race by a horrific, man-made virus.  Oryx and Crake is not classified as a dystopian novel, but it also borrows from this genre. Distinct from utopia, the survivors have not settled into a beautiful garden, but live in a devastated world ripe with dangerous animals and decaying bodies. These horrible animals, like the structure of the novel itself, are hybrids. Creatures like the pigoon were engineered to help people, but in the dystopia that now reins, the feral pigoons hunt and corner Snowman so they can devour him. While Snowman suffers, we are not privy to his perspective. Unlike a utopia, Oryx and Crake is told through a limited omniscient, third person narrator. Few dystopias in history (with an exception for Anthem) seem to feature a first person narrator, whereas most utopian fictions use this convention. In the end, Oryx and Crake has many dystopian elements, but even Atwood herself admits that it is not “a classic dystopia” (517).

            Another important genre blended into Oryx and Crake is satire. In fact, Atwood calls the novel “a Menippean satire” combined with an “adventure romance” (517). The adventure romance part is appropriate, as Atwood says, because her hero goes on a quest. Indeed the romance with Oryx and the extremely entertaining quest through the destroyed land are some of the most entertaining parts of the novel. A Menippean satire, then, is a satire that attacks mental ideas or “intellectual obsessions” instead of individuals (Atwood 517). This form fits very well with speculative fiction since it deals with current thoughts or objects. What is Atwood satirizing in Oryx and Crake? In one article, author Veronica Hollinger described the novel as “a satire about the catastrophic potential of increasingly commodified techno-science” (452). Oryx and Crake is a warning against over-convenience and misuse of biotechnology. While the other genres mixed into Atwood’s novel entertained, the satirical edge to Oryx and Crake educated the reader.

            To return to an earlier point, both utopian texts and novels like Oryx and Crake exhibit a world of both the familiar and unfamiliar. This characteristic is one way that works can both entertain and inform. For example, in Ecotopia inventions like biodegradable plastic containers that return to the earth in a short time are both reality and future for the reader. Also, one of the most intriguing parts of Ecotopia, the war games, feels both familiar and foreign to the reader. As the narrator suggests, the pomp and parade to the games was very similar to a homecoming or football precession from his past. But the unfamiliar part comes when the men, painted like warriors, attack opponents with spears. This one particular moment in Ecotopia, one that stands out as more entertaining than the rest, plays very heavily with what we know and what is strange. While not a utopia, Oryx and Crake likewise has a world that effectively combines the familiar and unfamiliar. The combination in this novel educations and entertains, but also frightens. Internet accessibility, extreme consumerism, bio-technology and global warming are all current issues. But Atwood subtly pushes these familiar items over the line into the unfamiliar, like the fact that global warming has destroyed the southern states and east coast of the U.S. Whether it is to entertain or educate, utopian, dystopian and other novel genres create worlds where the reader recognizes similarities and identifies the untried.

            In this seminar, Oryx and Crake was an excellent exercise in investigating utopian conventions. The utopian novel proved to be one with precise conventions, but also a true mixture of genres. Oryx and Crake, a fairly advanced hybrid of a novel, features utopian conventions along with several others. It was interesting to find the utopian characteristics present in Atwood’s novel and to see how they may be twisted to become something else entirely.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. “The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake ‘In Context.’” PMLA , Vol. 119,

No. 3, Special Topic: Science Fiction and Literary Studies: The Next Millennium (May, 2004), pp. 513-517. Online.   

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.