Fighting for Moral Sense: Analyzing the Effects on Mental Health in The Post-Apocalyptic World of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake To survive in a post-apocalyptic time requires sacrifice, one of the sacrifices being moral sense. Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is set in a post-apocalyptic world, Jimmy or his post-apocalyptic name Snowman being the son of a scientist that was a contributing factor to the failure of humanity. The moral sense of Snowman has been dehumanized by society’s pre-apocalyptic state, and further dehumanized by society’s post-apocalyptic state. Crake or Glenn, best-friend of Jimmy, creates a new species known as Crakers, which was done by Crakes obsession with perfection and the idea that Crakers would replace humans.
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Crakers are intended to be used to breed out the imperfections of the natural human race. They lack many humanistic qualities like love, old age, and dreaming. They are essentially humanity less with regards to natural human characteristics, “We made a picture of you, to help us send out our voices to you. Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we’re in trouble” (361). Crakers developed through the care of Snowman the aspects of humanity. An issue with Crake’s actions is his single track tunnel vision towards himself. His views on how genetics splicing, animal warping, and cloning of reproductive creatures are mandatory, lead to the idea of lack of humanity and moral sense in the world of Oryx and Crake. Jimmy’s mother, who is one of few who disagreed with such experiments that Organinc completed, showed the lack of acknowledgement to what these experiments actually meant to humanity at the time by quitting her job and essentially leading to her own spiritual death. “There’d been a lot of fooling around in those days: create-an-animal was so much fun, said the guys doing it. It made you feel like God” (51). Atwood’s use of satire is evident with the irony of this situation being that the new born life of the Pigoons, lead to the eventual death of Jimmy’s mother; the Pigoons a large step for mankind viewed by men like Jimmy’s father, actually were a direct warning to humanity. Crake’s differentiation between right and wrong was altered due to his mental intellect and desire for perfection even if that meant removing his race from the world he lived
Crakers are intended to be used to breed out the imperfections of the natural human race. They lack many humanistic qualities like love, old age, and dreaming. They are essentially humanity less with regards to natural human characteristics, “We made a picture of you, to help us send out our voices to you. Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we’re in trouble” (361). Crakers developed through the care of Snowman the aspects of humanity. An issue with Crake’s actions is his single track tunnel vision towards himself. His views on how genetics splicing, animal warping, and cloning of reproductive creatures are mandatory, lead to the idea of lack of humanity and moral sense in the world of Oryx and Crake. Jimmy’s mother, who is one of few who disagreed with such experiments that Organinc completed, showed the lack of acknowledgement to what these experiments actually meant to humanity at the time by quitting her job and essentially leading to her own spiritual death. “There’d been a lot of fooling around in those days: create-an-animal was so much fun, said the guys doing it. It made you feel like God” (51). Atwood’s use of satire is evident with the irony of this situation being that the new born life of the Pigoons, lead to the eventual death of Jimmy’s mother; the Pigoons a large step for mankind viewed by men like Jimmy’s father, actually were a direct warning to humanity. Crake’s differentiation between right and wrong was altered due to his mental intellect and desire for perfection even if that meant removing his race from the world he lived