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Freedom Restricted:
1.)Brainfrizz (p77)- If one family goes out of conduct, then entire family punished
2.)Fish (p102)-The people know nothing of the world before they were created
Fear of outside world:
3.) Hammer (p64)- The mother left the compound, causing a widespread investigation, and eventually execution of the mother
4.) Purring (p160)- Snowman tries to instill fear into Crakers regarding going far off
Constant surveillance:
5.) Rakunk (p57)-Finding ways to genetically alter animals to help aid humans against viruses but cost are high
1.) "Oryx said it must have been too bad for a child not to be chosen. Things would be worse for it in the village then, it would lose value,’... ‘She herself had been chosen first of all. Sometimes the mothers would cry, and also the children, but the mothers would tell the children that what they were doing was good, they were helping their families, and they should go with the man and do everything he told them." (p. 121)
2.) "So I learned about life," said Oryx. ‘Learned what?’ said Jimmy.’...‘That everything has a price.’ ‘Not everything. That can't be true. You can't buy time. You can't buy... ‘He wanted to say love, but hesitated.’…‘You can't buy it, but it has a price,’ said Oryx. ‘Everything has a price.’ ‘Not me, ‘ said Jimmy, trying to joke. ‘I don't have a price.’ Wrong, as usual.” (p. 138)
1.)What happens in the past is sometimes better left unsaid.
This theme relates mostly to Oryx’s past and what the society was like before the Crakers. Any time Jimmy would ask Oryx about her past, she was very vague. Jimmy never truly knew what happened in her childhood, but perhaps that was for his own good. After the catastrophe, Snowman gives the Crakers false ideas about the past.
2.) The collective loss of memory, history, and the outside world in a society will result in an easy psychological manipulation of mankind by a government, ultimately leading to dehumanization of the people.
In this novel, the newfound civilization lacks knowledge of the past civilization, having them unaware of the problems in the past
civilization. With this, and Snowman making up legends and myths about the past world and how everything was created, the civilization almost starts to become something inhuman, being completely different from the past civilization
3.) Society will always function under a higher being- whether it is forced upon humanity, or they make it up themselves.
This relates to the society before and after the Crakers. In the society when Jimmy was a child, the government controlled the Compounds of the elites. Then the Crakers came along and looked to Oryx and Crake as their “higher beings.” Although Snowman gave them the idea of Oryx and Crake, he never intended for the Crakers to use them as somewhat of a government.
Margaret Atwood was constantly raised around wilderness and brought up to appreciate what the land offered her in life. Her father worked as a zoologist, giving her a deeper knowledge of animals. Working as a nutritionist, her mother played the role of society's need for perfection.
Jimmy/ Snowman: Main character, Narrator
Crake: Jimmy's best friend, intellectual, genetic scientist, creator of the Crakers
Oryx: Elusive, Jimmy's lover as well as Crake's, Loves nature, Friend to the Crakers
Sharon: Jimmy's mother who left the compound and him as a boy with his pet rakunk because she didn't believe in OranicInc.
MaddAddam: Grand Masters of the childhood game Extinctathon, Crake ultimately became a Grandmaster, Group of individuals that plotted attacks against the dominating pharmaceutical and genetics companies, Crake hired them for his Paradice Project.
Father: Jimmy's father, resented Jimmy for not being good at science, divorced Sharon and remarried his lab technician.
Crakers: Humanoid creatures created to be immortal, and have only desirable traits.
3.) “How much misery…how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately won’t or can’t love you. As a species we’re pathetic in that way: imperfectly monogamous. If only we could pair-bond for life, like gibbons, or else opt for total-guilt free promiscuity, there’d be no more sexual torment. You’d never want someone you couldn’t have.’ ‘But think what we’d be giving up..we’d be human robots..there’d be no free choice.’ ‘..we’re human robots anyway, only we’re faulty ones.” (p. 166)
4.) “All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.” (p. 223)
The title is based off the main character's friends. Oryx is an elusive character who Jimmy falls in love with. She plays the role of his calm, reasonable, and forgiving side. Even after her death, he hears her voice in times of stress or depression. Crake was the friend that pushed him to think outside his own mind. He forced Jimmy to prove his own opinion even when he felt he was wrong.
Although it is never specified, the setting is portrayed to be in the late 21st century. In the time of Jimmy’s childhood, the story takes place in the Compounds and Pleeblands of the gated communities. After the catastrophe, the sea levels have risen, but the Crakers and Snowman live on what is thought to be along the shores of New England. The post-apocalyptic chapters take place along a beach, while at some points it is further inland when Snowman decides to go on an ‘adventure.’ For the most part, however, the main two settings are the Compounds and the shore.
This story is told from the point of view of Snowman, from a time after something caused an outbreak and only him and a group of humanoid creatures called Crakers survive. Snowman begins to have recollections of his memories before this happened. It's through out the book that we find out that Crake, Glenn, was his childhood friend who was greatly intelligent in science. As adults Crake owns a company and begins selling a BlyssPluss Pill that is supposed to reverse aging. At the same time he starts working on Paradice, a project that creates an immortal species with the best traits of different animals and no undesirable traits. This is where Jimmy meets Oryx in person for the first time (he saw her in a pornographic site with Crake as a kid). She works to market the Pill and teach the Crakers about botany. Soon the BlyssPluss Pill causes a pandemic to break out. Jimmy locks himself, Oryx, and the Crakers inside. Soon Crake returns and the ending is unraveled. During this time, back in the present, Jimmy is leaving the Crakers in search of supplies. Along this journey he is injured and upon his return learns that humans visited. Now he is left with a choice: live alone or accept others. What he chooses is unknown to the reader.
5.) “Maybe there weren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain. It was like a giant slug eating its way relentlessly through all the other bioforms on the planet, grinding up life on earth and shitting it out the backside.”
(p. 243)
6.) “The pleebland inhabitants didn’t look like the mental deficients the Compounders were fond of depicting, or most of them didn’t.” (p. 288)