Oryx and Crake, (Conclusion)

This was a conclusion worth waiting for.  The events that explain how things got the way they are make for a very satisfactory ending.  Some of it was fairly easy to see coming; for instance, the fact that Crake was at least deeply involved in bringing about a catastrophe that led to the collapse of civilization.  In fact, his scheme turns out to be a very complicated and comprehensive plan, requiring some very critical timing and the assistance of a number of accomplices, all of them – including Oryx, as it turns out – unaware of what it was they were really helping to bring about.  

What we didn’t predict was that Crake would kill Oryx in cold blood, and that he would do it right before Jimmy’s eyes as a way to commit suicide.  Had Crake really been in love with Oryx?  It’s hard to tell with what we now know to be a twisted mind at work, plotting the destruction of his species for so many years.  The implication is that he was embittered by the murder of his father when his father learned too much about the secrets of one of the mega-corporations that controlled society, presumably in lieu of a government.  The fact that a government, per se, was never really mentioned in the narrative is the clearest clue we get that one no longer exists in this reality, and that the corporations have succeeded in taking its place. 

Oryx turns out to be a rather tragic figure, after presenting herself for so long as one who understands all, accepts all, and is completely at peace with the world of her past and her present.  Her betrayal by Crake is the only really meaningful element of Jimmy’s betrayal by Crake.  At one point Crake had asked Jimmy to promise him that if anything happened to him, Jimmy would take over the project of the “Crakers” – the bio-engineered humanoids created by Crake – and take care of them.  This explains much about the action in the early pages of the story.  When Jimmy points out that Oryx would be a better choice to take over the project, Crake enigmatically states that if he is no longer around to be in charge of it, she won’t be either.  Neither we nor Jimmy really understand what is being revealed here until the climax of the story. 

The “real time” story has Jimmy escaping the trap set for him by the pigoons and then making his way to the huge glass-like dome where the Crakers had been kept.  In the process, he notices a rising column of smoke on the horizon near, but not at, the site of the Craker settlement.  Another cause for concern in an already convoluted plot and a further complication for Jimmy.  Having achieved his purpose of stocking up on survival supplies; including a “spraygun” (something like an uzi, but more advanced, perhaps); he makes his way back to the tribe.

 

Upon his return, he finds that the Crakers have indeed been visited by people they recognize as being much like Jimmy (the Snowman, to them) and that the encounter had disturbing aspects.  He feels obligated to resolve the issue, not so much to fulfill his promise to Crake, but to satisfy his own sense of moral obligation to these innocent beings.  He takes his spraygun; knowing now that the party of humans has at least one of them as well; and sneaks up on them.  Here, he encounters yet another moral dilemma.  The only way to really ensure that they don’t kill, plunder or enslave the Crakers is to use the advantage he has right now to kill them all.  Any more humane approach puts his charges at a very real risk.  Our author chooses this exact moment to end the story!  After all, this isn’t a part of the story we’re reading, and it gives us a sense, not of closure, but of the very real fact that life goes on, dilemma after dilemma.  Beautifully done!






August’s book of the month: "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim," by David Sedaris. This author has become recognized as one of the great satire/humor writers of our time. “Sedaris has a satirical brazenness that holds up next to Twain and Nathaniel West.” – The New Yorker. “David Sedaris’s brilliance resides in a capacity to surprise, associate and dissociate, and the result is something like watching lightning strike in slow motion…One of the most shameless, acid, vaulting wits on planet earth.” – Boston Book Review. “You’ll just have to read it to find out what’s in it!” – Nancy Pelosi. [I made up that last one.]

Oryx and Crake, (Parts 8-11)

Now we get some real momentum going in the “real time” story as we continue to be given glimpses into the characters’ pasts.  Jimmy gets into a rather lowbrow college, with the help of some string-pulling by his father.  Crake is given red carpet treatment at one the most prestigious universities around, Watson-Crick.  The two friends continue to keep in touch with occasional get-togethers, during one of which Jimmy’s mother is seen in a TV clip as a member of a subversive group.  Jimmy is pulled aside for questioning from time to time throughout his college days by what amounts to a secret police group, and questioned at length in a search for anything he might know about his mother.  At one of these sessions, he gives away the fact that one of the women in the video clips they show him is, in fact, his mother.  We don’t know yet where this is leading, but the ominousness of it is intriguing. 

In “real time” his journey on foot takes him back to a scene from his past, the RejoovenEsence Compound.  A huge shining dome seen in the distance from this compound is identified as Crake’s base of operations, though what that means, exactly, has yet to be entirely disclosed.  An earlier scene presents Crake letting on to Jimmy that his father had somehow been in trouble with authorities over knowing something he shouldn’t know about their clandestine schemes, and that he was even assassinated, with the assassination made to look like an accident. 

Jimmy’s journey turns out to be more perilous than he had bargained for, as the Compound is now overrun by genetically altered wildlife, particularly the “pigoons” about which much of the earlier events revolved.  Apparently the experiments in implanting parts of the human brain into these creatures have been partly successful, because they now pull off a rather organized plan to catch Jimmy, which almost works, followed by cornering Jimmy in a building of the compound and proceeding to outwait him.  All this sounds very science-fictionesque in retrospect, but seems very real and believable in the reading. 

Our hero has really been something of an anti-hero all along, with numerous weaknesses, character flaws and the tendency to make mistakes by not thinking clearly.  We still don’t know how he managed to escape the disaster that killed off almost all of humanity; possibly a head’s-up from Crake, or some kind of antidote to what appears to be a runaway genetic disease.  We know there was a great Panic in which everybody fled, many dying as they ran.  Shades of Stephen King’s The Stand.  We get several references to a victim’s flesh foaming up as they perish, along with hints that Crake has had something to do with the causes.

 

Margaret Atwood’s other novels present a very broad array of genres, crossing from one to another with grace.  The Handmaid’s Tale is science fiction, or more accurately speculative fiction, but it doesn’t venture as far into “otherness” as this novel does.  Novels like Catseye and The Blind Assassin, while displaying some real cutting edge fictional concepts, don’t speculate wildly about the future as these do.  All in all, her status as a writer isn’t generally perceived as a “science fiction writer” per se; but she does it as well as anybody – and I say that as a reader who has explored the genre very deeply in the past.  Anyone who has seen the movie I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, will see definite similarities in this book, especially in the scenes depicting the desolation of Civilization’s collapse.  The conclusion of this book promises to be very rewarding!



Next week: Conclusion.



August’s book of the month: "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim," by David Sedaris. This author has become recognized as one of the great satire/humor writers of our time. “Sedaris has a satirical brazenness that holds up next to Twain and Nathaniel West.” – The New Yorker. “David Sedaris’s brilliance resides in a capacity to surprise, associate and dissociate, and the result is something like watching lightning strike in slow motion…One of the most shameless, acid, vaulting wits on planet earth.” – Boston Book Review. “You’ll just have to read it to find out what’s in it!” – Nancy Pelosi. [I made up that last one.]

Oryx and Crake, (Parts 5-7)

Snowman’s relationship with the local natives is illuminated with more filling in of the details of how this relationship came to be.  They bring him his weekly offering of a fish dinner, though they themselves are vegetarian – truly vegetarian, in that meat-eating is simply not a part of their society or culture.  Even their digestive systems have been designed to be something other than human, even less carnivorous than ours.  Toward the end of this section, we see how their mating instincts and physical manifestations have been unrecognizably altered in rather alien ways.  And all of this is attributed to Crake, Jimmy’s childhood friend, whose design is reflected in the people.  Presumably we get to see how this came about later in the story. 

The narrative continues to be about ninety per cent flashback in order to gradually reveal how things got to the present.  The main story creeps along at a snail’s pace as a result.  Other books that have followed this pattern have bored and irritated me; this one works, largely due to the strange, almost otherworldly subject matter, and largely due to Ms. Atwood’s considerable skills as a writer. 

Now that the mysteries of who Crake is and what he means to the story have been explored, it’s Oryx’s turn.  Although her role in the main plot has yet to be disclosed, her past is gone over rather thoroughly, especially her experiences as a child prostitute/porn actress.  We get snatches of conversation between Jimmy and Oryx that show that he is much more outraged by what happened to her in her youth than she is.  Jimmy gets hints as to where her childhood took place, but she won’t divulge that information, saying that it doesn’t matter.  The hints seem to suggest a large, dangerous city, someplace like Bangkok, Shanghai, or Jakarta; someplace Middle East or Far East or western Pacific Rim.  When he mentions child rape, she asks, “Why do you want to talk about such ugly things? … We should think only of beautiful things, as much as we can.  There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around.  You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy.  It’s not good for you.”  [Oryx’s voice sounds in my head, as I read, like the voice and accent of a young lady I know from Nepal.]  Regarding the child porn movies she was in, he asks, “It wasn’t real sex, was it? … In the movies.  It was only acting.  Wasn’t it?”  “But Jimmy, you should know.  All sex is real sex.”   

Feeling especially sorry for himself, Jimmy polishes off a bottle of scotch he’s been hoarding and wakes up with a hangover.  It’s interesting to observe his rationalization that he must go on a foraging expedition to locate more supplies, while we recognize that the depleted “supply” that triggered the urge to forage is alcoholic beverage.  The psychology of a man in his position is also explored through voices from the past that speak to him sarcastically or pedantically, or passages that seem to be remnants from some educational text (“Do not overlook a plentiful source of nutrition that may be no farther away than your feet”).  He even argues sometimes with the seemingly uninvited advice that enters his mind.

 

“Watch out for the leaders, Crake used to say.  First the leaders and the led, then the tyrants and the slaves, then the massacres.  That’s how it’s always gone.” This old advice from Crake enters Jimmy’s mind as he is welcomed by the leader of the local tribe of Crake/Onyx worshippers.  There are also interesting passages about the need to worship, or at least venerate someone or something; a trait which Crake grudgingly admits may be necessary to any primitive group of people and therefore has “designed” into this group.





Next week's chapters: 8-11.

Oryx and Crake, (Parts 1-4)

I have always enjoyed a good post-apocalypse story, or post-collapse-of-civilization story, having been a science fiction buff for many years before moving on to other genres.  Margaret Atwood manages to write in this vein without getting classified as a science fiction writer; witness her most famous novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale.”  She approaches fiction writing on her own terms, ignoring conventional classifications, which I greatly admire.  The term “speculative fiction” applies to her futuristic works better than most, and she speculates in her own unique way.  The opening of this story just picks up the pre-existing thread and runs with it, explaining the setting off-handedly as it goes, letting us figure out through such hints and clues what the premise of the story might be.  Love it! 

At least in the first quarter of the book, there is no mention of what might have happened to the Government.  It seems to have been replaced by the return of the city-state, this time in the form of “compounds” run by corporations, or perhaps corporate conglomerates.  Have corporations replaced government?  The original “Rollerball” movie, the one starring James Caan painted a fascinating portrait of what the world might be like if this were to happen.  Atwood’s book seems to (excuse me) take the “ball” and run with it.  But this is presented as the way things were in Snowman/Jimmy’s childhood.  Something has happened to disrupt the system and we’re left with a pretty bleak outcome.

Some authors design plot to revolve around a sequence of events or a premise, and some design it around the “life and times” of a character.  Atwood seems to favor the latter; so, for instance, in this book we get a lot of detail in the beginning about Jimmy’s childhood to describe not only him, but the plot/premise as well.  Kurt Vonnegut and Amy Tan are two other authors that come to mind who often used this approach.  There are probably some readers who only enjoy these “character-driven” types of novels.  In the hands of these great authors, I find it appealing enough, though it’s usually not my favorite style of writing. 

In the meantime, the exploration of Jimmy’s relationships with his parents is fascinating.  His father, after forgetting Jimmy’s birthday would “come up with a gift for him the day after, a gift that would not be a gift but some tool or intelligence-enhancing game or other hidden demand that he measure up.  But measure up to what?  There was never any standard; or there was one, but it was so cloudy and immense that nobody could see it, especially not Jimmy.”  Also, “Jimmy’s father had been apologetic towards him lately, as if he’d punished Jimmy for something Jimmy hadn’t done and was sorry about it.  He was saying Right, Jimmy? a bit too much.  Jimmy didn’t like that – he didn’t like being the one handing out the good marks.  There were a few other moves of his father’s that he could do without as well – the sucker punches, the ruffling of the hair, the way of pronouncing the word son, in a slightly deeper voice.  This hearty way of talking was getting worse, as if his father were auditioning for the role of Dad, but without much hope.”  Great characterization; we feel we know these people. 

After several sidebar mentions of both Oryx and Crake, we finally get to meet Crake, beginning as a childhood friend of Jimmy’s.  Jimmy, at this point, almost takes on the role of narrator, as the story focuses on Crake; actually Glenn, but we get to see how he acquires his nick name.  Another nicely developed and interesting character, adding impetus to an already captivating story.

 

 

 

 

Next week's chapters: 5-7.