The Year of the Flood

After a joyful reunion with Amanda, Shakie, Croze, and Oates, Ren contemplates if the five of them should have sex or not. She admits, “I thought maybe we should have sex, it would have been a kind and generous thing to do” ( ). Ultimately though, the group does not end up having sex but instead go “to sleep in a pile, on top of one another, like puppies.” ( ) Describing these teenagers and young adults as “puppies” struck me as one of the most innocent descriptions in The Year of the Flood; truthfully, I cannot really imagine a more precious image than a pile of puppies tuckered out, resting on each other. There is not much I would describe as “adorable” or “sweet” in this book, which makes the image of “puppies” stand out even more. The only other time Atwood uses “puppies” in The Year of the Flood is describing the bond between Amanda and Ren. Ren describes their relationship as being “each other’s family; I guess when we were kids we were both stray puppies” ( ). The group of stray “puppies” initially was only Amanda and Ren. Describing these girls as puppies puts a light of youthfulness on them which isn’t necessarily in the rest of the novel; the…

Oryx and Crake, written by Margret Atwood is about a man named Snowman, once called Jimmy; who is living on a beach with a non-human species called Crakers. Crakers ask him many questions about life which causes Snowman’s anger toward Crake, who is their creator. Oryx is a female voice that results in Snowman’s hallucinations. This essay will demonstrate the non-human adaptation that Snowman evolves as he is isolated from mankind. Evidence shows Jimmy’s emotional connection to animals when…

Humanity’s insatiable quest for immortality, to escape the cold clutches of death, roots itself in our oldest tales. The mythical Fountain of Youth, first fabled by Herodotus’ writings in the 5th century BCE, and actively searched for by the Spanish explorer Ponce De León in the 16th century CE, idealizes our infatuation with cheating death. The opportunities generated by society’s incredible ameliorations of science and medicine yields a world ever-closer to achieving perpetual life. Fueled by…

characters in the novel, Crake. In Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Crake is a character who has a bright, young mind in his earlier years, but seems to have a gradually increasing obsession with his idea of perfectionism as the years go by. Over many years, Crake realizes that there are many qualities about the human race that he finds to be negative. Crake feels the need to do something about this, which is why he decides to work on a project that he feels would benefit humanity, but actually…

Jimmy’s unusual childhood in the book Oryx and Crake In Margaret Atwood’s book, Oryx and Crake childhood plays an important role in the lives of all the characters. Talking about Jimmy, there are constant flashbacks to his childhood which explains how his childhood shaped his whole life. The story takes place in the future where Jimmy lives with his parents in a special compound isolated from the rest of the world. His father works at OrganInc Farms and is a major part of the Pigoon project…

Oryx and Crake is a post-apocalyptic world of Snowman and Crackers. The story itself is between the marriage of extreme science and capitalism. The post-apocalyptic world of Oryx and Crake is the consequences of a company playing with God. A giant corporation who uses science to the extreme in order to take over God in nature. The idea of perfection is embedded deep within the corporation’s mind. Overtime, the word perfection has been distorted. The perfection that human seeks has changed into a…

Although Rufus is the white son of a slaveholder in the 1800’s, Dana’s initial plan for autonomy was to change and improve Rufus’s perception. Coming from 1976, she believes she can make headway towards racial equality because she lives in a time which it has become a reality. She figures if she is saving his life on multiple occasions, he might be willing to listen to her. Mitchell agrees with this theory as she points out “Rufus lives only because Dana saves his life again and again” (54).…

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…

childhood. As unappreciated by his parents he always tries to them happy. Also, he has the obligation to do things which would make his mother happy. This habit grows with him, along with inferiority. His only friend, Crake adds to this insecurity, as he is a “number person” and understand the world logically. Crake outsmart him at school as well at Jimmy’s own home as his mother likes him more and is impressed by his intelligence. Later in his life, when he is living as Snowman with the…

Margaret Atwood’s dystopian MaddAddam trilogy, life before and after a pandemic that wipes out most of the human population is presented. This futuristic, postmodern, posthuman world carries only a small group of human survivors, who must come together to overcome a plethora of tough obstacles. Through the novels of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, the female characters in these novels create their own identities and aspirations in a world that attempts to leave them powerless. The…