Oryx And Crake Analysis

It is difficult to tell the exact value of things such as science, nature, words, math, and the arts, but in Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood they seem to have it all figured out. The society in the novel is obsessed with the idea of immortality and because they believe science and math can help them reach that goal they consider them to be more important than anything else. Generally, when something is more important it is also considered more valuable, therefore the society considers science and math to be more valuable than anything, but Atwood argues differently. She shows that science and math are not more valuable than the arts, words, and nature, by putting them up against each other in three conflicts, words vs. numbers, the arts vs. the sciences, and nature vs. science. The …show more content…
science. The conflict is shown through the entire story, but is most evidently shown through the creatures that the society creates, creatures such as pigeons. Pigoons were pig hybrids that were “used to grow an assortment of foolproof human-tissue organs… that would transplant smoothly and avoid rejection, but would also be able to fend off attacks by opportunistic microbes and viruses, of which there were more strains every year,” (Atwood 22). Clearly, the pigoons were very useful to people, so they were kept locked up in the compounds to ensure their safety from the viruses and bacteria that were around outside the compound's walls. Later on when Crake nearly wipes out the entire human race, the pigoons are set free and even though science kept them locked up for their safety they do just fine in the real world relying on their natural instincts (the instincts of all the species mixed together to make them). Therefore, because when science ended up destroying life as the pigoons knew it, it was nature that rescued them and helped them continue to survive, which would make nature more valuable than