Liz Fletcher, “From Jimmy to Snowman: An Examination of Identity, Bioengineering, and the Ethical Violations in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake,” 3rd Place.
Identity is made up of the interplay between memories, experiences, and the integration or submersion of traumatic memories. While these are distinctly different experiences, both trauma and memory contribute to the formation of one’s understanding of self. Individuality makes each person unique because of the events, beliefs, or people that influence their lives, contributing to the way they formulate opinions, respond to ethical issues, and develop as a member of society. The examination of trauma’s role in shaping identity in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake extends beyond the personal realm to unravel broader societal implications. Atwood’s narrative prompts an investigation into how the construct of identity shifts, as Jimmy transforms into his post-apocalypse persona, Snowman. The mortality of the human condition echoes through the fabric of this dystopian society, raising profound questions about the collective consequences of bio-engineering and the quarrel between scientific advancement and the ethical values of medicine. In a world that is dominated by science, professions such as bio-engineering, climate protection, and “medicine” drive the global economy. Through the jaded narrative of Jimmy/Snowman, Atwood challenges readers to reflect on the fragility of the human condition and the moral dilemmas inherent in technological progress. The integration of traumatic memories further complicates the construction of identity, highlighting how past experiences shape individuals and societies alike.
The human condition is described as the understanding of characteristics or events of human life. Many things such as birth/death, conflict, morality, and emotion are all traits that define this condition. Although unspoken, it is a communal experience of life from the human perspective that brings humanity together in a way that allows them to process life events and shape their identities. Part of the human condition is about experiencing hardships and it is through these experiences that one is able to grow as an individual. Without change or adversity, there is no growth and human development. Atwood’s Oryx and Crake explores this through Jimmy/Snowman’s character as he struggles with his mortality both pre- and post-apocalypse. Atwood separates her narrative through the fractured identity of Jimmy, who is his past self (pre-apocalypse), and Snowman who is the new post apocalypse self. In separating his identity, Atwood lays the foundation for the understanding of how trauma can result in a multifaceted interpretation of self, both with a support group and as the only survivor of the apocalypse.
Atwood’s dystopian novel serves as a cautionary tale for what can happen when people decide to play God and takes science into their own hands. The narrative switches between pre- and post- apocalypse, narrated by Jimmy/Snowman, as readers learn about the fatal consequences of bio and genetic engineering that led to the near extinction of humanity. Snowman reminisces on his past as Jimmy, telling the story of how he came to be friends with Glenn and how their friendship was doomed from the beginning. Glenn only exists for a few lines of this novel, as “there was never any real Glenn, Glenn was only a disguise” (Atwood 71). Here Atwood is suggesting that there was once a part of Crake that was human when defining a human as a person with morals, limits, and emotions. From the jaded perspective of Snowman, this person never existed because Crake was only ever “a sadist” and “[he] like[s] to watch [Jimmy] suffer” (Atwood 174). Crake’s infatuation with science becomes his sociopathic identity because it allows him to continue to manipulate those in his life, and later the world after it is destroyed by his hands. Crake’s name comes from an extinct bird from Australia, like the other chosen nicknames of those in his research group. He gathered a group of the Extinctathon Grandmasters best experts from a game called Extinctathon to carry out the Paradice Project. These Grandmasters are experts in their field with the knowledge of all extinct or close to extinct animals and monitor the game for others that are highly successful in the game as well. Their goal, on the surface of the Paradice Project, is to find a way to establish a better way of living for humanity in the attempt to save what is left of the Earth and preserve nature. Crake used this as a front for his real project of creating the Crakers and formulating a pill that would exterminate the reason for Earth’s destruction—humans.
After attending their separate colleges, reflective of their ties to science and art, Crake gets a job working with RejoovenEsense and begins a project to create a type of transhuman people, later known as the Crakers. Alongside these new people, he developed a magic pill that:
Would protect the user against all known sexually transmitted diseases, fatal, inconvenient, or merely unsightly;
Would provide an unlimited supply of libido and sexual prowess, coupled with a generalized sense of energy and well-being, thus reducing the frustration and blocked testosterone that led to jealousy and violence, and eliminating feelings of low self-worth;
Would prolong youth. (Atwood 294)
Unbeknownst to anyone but Crake, the BlyssPluss pill would cause a new plague, resulting in the death of all of humanity with the only known survivors: Jimmy and the Crakers. Before the end came to be, Crake secretly made his humanoid creations immune to the disease that caused this plague and dosed Jimmy with a vaccine to ensure their survival. The novel begins with Snowman’s struggle to cope and find a way to survive—not just physically but mentally as well—in the new world Crake created. Through witnessing three major traumatic events—his mother’s execution, the deaths of Oryx and Crake, and the downfall of humanity—Snowman struggles to find his new place in the world and where he fits in it, despite leading the Crakers through their new life outside of the confines of Paradice.
As he struggles to cope with this new identity, Snowman continuously hears voices in his head, but they are not all his own. His own consciousness has broken into various voices from his past. These voices remind him of past conversations, memories, or are his own words in the voice of others to bring him comfort while he struggles to accept the life that Crake forced him into. He uses this as a coping mechanism to ‘interact’ with other people, because there is no one left other than himself and the Crakers. They are not able to comprehend the things Jimmy knows because of the way that Crake programmed them. The Crakers’ minds “had been altered [with] nothing less than the ancient primate brain” (Atwood 305). Real human interaction was impossible with them, and to make up for it, Jimmy’s mind created conversations with himself in the voice of others.
In her article, “‘Time to Go:’ The Post-Apocalyptic and The Post-Traumatic in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake,” Katherine Snyder explores the “‘before’ and ‘after’” of Jimmy’s life, both pre- and post- apocalypse, “for its sole survivor, it also disrupts his immediate relation to time” as Snowman is, “cast away between a human past and a post-human future” (472). This separation of the “before” and “after” further signifies this separation of his identity. Before the BlyssPluss pill that sent the world into near human extinction, Jimmy was quarreling with the existential question of where his place was in the world, despite the scientific futurism seen in the genetic engineering of both Jimmy’s father’s work and Crake, that is so deeply ingrained in this world. After the death of humanity, Jimmy takes his time hiding with the Crakers in the safety of the Rejoov Compound, and waiting for the world to finish dying so they can safely leave Paradice. If they had left any sooner, there was a risk of infecting both himself and the Crakers with the plague that cost the whole of humanity their lives, or their deaths from those who were violently aggravated of the result of Crake’s work. To make a fresh start, Jimmy renames himself Snowman, “he no longer wanted to be Jimmy, or even Jim . . . he needed to forget the past—the distant past, the immediate past, the past in any form. He needed to exist only in the present, without guilt, without expectation . . . Perhaps a different name would do that for him” (Atwood 348–49). The changing of his name signifies the loss of his old self and life, creating a new identity that is stronger and more capable of navigating life in a post-apocalyptic world. In renaming himself, there is a distinct separation between his past and current selves. With the deaths of his friends, family, and humanity, part of Jimmy died too. He felt partially responsible for Crake’s actions and his own failure to recognize the signs that led to this mass destruction. The new persona, under the name of Snowman is one that should not have to feel guilt or remorse; it’s who Jimmy had to become in order to survive.
Despite his adamance to forget his old life, “Snowman is haunted by memories of the past, or, rather, he is himself a kind of ghost, a specter of the past who haunts an unimaginable present yet is denied the consolation of a future” (Snyder 472). Although he did not physically die, a piece of him did; which resulted in the creation of Snowman. Atwood suggests this separation of identity early in her work stating, “Once upon a time, Snowman wasn’t Snowman. Instead, he was Jimmy” (15). No matter how hard he tried, there is no escaping the past. Jimmy is at this point of his life now because of his past and there is, unfortunately nothing he can do to change it. By establishing this divide early, Atwood sets up the remainder of the story, as it floats between past memories in the eyes of Jimmy, and the present ramblings and psychic decline of Snowman as he is continuously haunted by memories and voices from his past. Snyder suggests there is, “a mingled, even contradictory, sense of self-recognition and non-recognition, of identification and dis-identification with the portrayed subjects of unspeakable loss” (473). Snowman desperately wants to distance himself from the past because it is a reminder of where he is now, but that acknowledgement is too painful to confront so he hides within this new identity. He is almost in a state of living comatose, where he floats between Jimmy and Snowman, completely disassociated from reality and unable to recognize who he is. The pain and toll of this extreme loss has resulted in the inability to recognize who Jimmy/Snowman is at this point in his journey.
With the new name of “Snowman” he is marking a change to himself. Crake had a knack for renaming the people in his life after species that had gone extinct, and in order to pay his own twisted homage to Crake, Jimmy settled upon the Abominable Snowman, a joke only to himself, but to signify the “isolation, solitude, but also oneiric and unreal atmospheres,” that are associated with this creature (Botta 2). The Abominable Snowman is a part-man and part-ape like creature that is known for his isolation, alienation, and is assumed to be the last of his kind. This is the likely reason for Jimmy’s choice in name, since he can also identify with these characteristics. In discarding the “abominable” part of this title, it allows the reader to see that Jimmy, is not reprehensible, “but a product of the abominable godlike projects of Crake” (Botta 3).
Language plays a major role in Snowman’s life. As he progresses into this new world, seemingly unimportant words, knowledge, or ideas begin to fade from his memory. He struggles to remember the word “Mesozoic. He can see the word, he can hear the word, but he can’t reach the word. He can’t attach anything to it,” and thinks to himself “this is happening to much lately, this dissolution of meaning, the entries on his cherished wordlists drifting off into space” (Atwood 39). Each time a word slips from his memory, Snowman loses a piece of his past, continuing to devolve into madness. When revisiting the old Paradice compound, after the apocalypse has taken over, he sees a “motivational lecturer from RejoovTV” say, “having to face a crisis causes you to grow as a person” (Atwood 237). Considering the crisis he finds himself in, Snowman retaliates and exclaims, “I haven’t grown as a person, you cretin . . . look at me! I’ve shrunk! My brain is the size of a grape!” (Atwood 237). He recognizes that he is beginning to devolve and hates Crake for it. As Jimmy wants to desperately escape from and forget his past, when the inability to remember becomes a reality, Snowman panics. He wants to escape to separate himself from the traumas that he witnessed and as a method to keep his sanity in check, Snowman uses trivial pieces of information from his past to keep his mind sharp and for the nostalgia of a simpler time. Crake ruined all of these things and Jimmy/Snowman continues to fall into an unknown sense of self as the memories and knowledge fall through his fingers.
When the apocalypse begins, and Jimmy witnesses the death of everyone around him, he experiences a disruption—a cancellation—to his human experience. While it is normal to experience trauma throughout one’s lifetime, the things Jimmy endured and was forced to witness contributed to the drastic change in his identity. From a young age, he was mentally and emotionally abused by his father, constantly being gaslit to believe that it was Jimmy’s fault for his father’s actions, “daddy’s a monster once again” (Atwood 20). His father pushes Jimmy to fix into a box that follow the same steps that his father made before him in the world of science. Jimmy is more emotional and sensitive than the masculine image his father believed in, often leading to ridicule and demeaning language towards him, believing “in his father’s opinion Jimmy couldn’t screw in a lightbulb” (Atwood 37). His mother was an emotional basket case and often took it out at Jimmy, “she might even slap him, and then cry and hug him. It could be any combination of those things;” until the day she abandoned him and his father (Atwood 33). This kind of unstable upbringing can have a deeply negative impact on the human psyche and alter how a child develops, not only mentally and emotionally, but in their overall identity as well.
There are two distinct moments in the “before” that contributes to the fracturing of Jimmy’s identity, which leads to his disassociation, beginning his rebirth into Snowman. The first was witnessing his mother’s execution. After his mother left when he was young, Jimmy had not heard anything from her, aside from the occasional postcards. She abandoned her family, leaving Jimmy under the “care” of his father. This stunted part of his emotional development and understanding of how interpersonal relationships. Seeing the way his parents interacted with one another and their treatment towards him shaped Jimmy’s perspective of how these human connections should be. The CorpSeCorps had brought him in over the years for questioning about his mother, re-traumatizing him each time as the feelings of abandonment and inferiority came back to the surface, but this day was different. This day they played him a video that “looked like a routine execution” (Atwood 258). Jimmy was forced to watch, “want[ing] to yell, but that was that, pullback shot, eyes covered again, zap zap zap. Bad aim, red spurts, they almost took her head off” (Atwood 258). In the moment all he was able muster up to was a fit of laughter in disbelief, but these were the moments where his identity as Jimmy began to crack. Piece by piece, Jimmy began to fade away as the traumatic events take place throughout the novel, and Snowman had to take over in order to keep Jimmy alive.
Jimmy’s final break came in the moments he realized everything was over. There was a cryptic phone call with Oryx, where she exclaimed, “It’s a worldwide plague! It’s the Red Death! What’s this about it being in the BlyssPluss Pills?” (Atwood 326). Hours after this ominous conversation with Oryx, Crake shows up at the Paradice facility with “his other arm around Oryx, who seemed to be asleep; her face was against [his] chest” (Atwood 328–29). It was in the next few moments that Jimmy died; not physically, but the pieces that made him Jimmy were gone when Crake said, “‘I’m counting on you’ . . . then he slit [Oryx’s] throat. [And] Jimmy shot him” (Atwood 329). The murder/suicide of Oryx and Crake was the final straw for Jimmy and is what led to the fragmentation of his identity. Although Jimmy pulled the trigger, Crake knew that his death would be at Jimmy’s hand and used that knowledge as a secondhand act of suicide. During another day of struggle in this post-apocalyptic world, Snowman has an episode of panic, “‘get me out!’ he hears himself thinking. But he isn’t locked up, he’s not in prison. What could be more out than where he is?” (Atwood 45). Snowman pleads with himself, or whoever is listening, “I didn’t do it on purpose . . . things happened, I had no idea, it was out of my control! What could I have done? Just someone, anyone, listen to me please!” (Atwood 45). This moment readdresses his isolation and the continual devolution of his mind. Jimmy was forced into this position of care over the Crakers, was forced to watch his friends and mother die, and then witnessed the end of human life as he knew it. Jimmy had no power in controlling any of the events that occurred and was forced to assume the responsibilities that were thrust upon him by Crake. In a way to find peace with himself, Jimmy often has conversations with the voices in his head, sometimes screaming out into the universe begging for anyone to listen, but no one ever replies.
In his article, “The Posthuman Future of Man: Anthropocentrism and the Other of Technology in Anglo-American Science Fiction,” Ralph Pordzik defines the posthuman condition “not as the end of humanity but as a pattern of resonance between the long-established dichotomies of self and nonself, order and nonequilibrium, body and consciousness, as a productive tension ‘between contingency and emergence’ . . . privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life” (2). There is a formula to life as a human: birth, learning, heartbreak, trauma, grief, death. Every person, at some point in their life, will experience these things, and these patterns hardly falter from the blueprint. In more simple terms, the posthuman condition is the disruption of “programmed” biology. Crake designed his transhuman creations to be the perfect version of a human. He claims “immortality . . . is a concept. If you take ‘mortality’ as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then ‘immortality’ is the absence of fear” (Atwood 303). The Crakers are, alongside Jimmy, the only survivors of the destructive aftermath of the BlyssPluss Pill. Although they died, both Oryx and Crake are immortalized by Snowman who tells the Crakers about their as a kind of “prophet.” Considering that the human condition is the communal life experiences of humanity, the post human condition is the interruption in this predictable inevitability. The Crakers were meant to break the “formula,” programmed not to “need to invent any harmful symbolisms, such as, kingdoms, icons, gods, or money,” and to be the perfected version of a human that knows nothing of a corrupted society (Atwood 305). Crake measured what he deemed to be the flaws of human society and worked to eradicate those vices within the Crakers. In wiping out human existence, aside from Jimmy, Crake tore apart the shared human experience, expecting his creations to become the new beings that would define what the “human” condition means in a post-apocalyptic world. Jimmy’s issue is to navigate this new world under the era of the posthuman condition. He is the only—known—human left and there is no communal experience for him to share in, once again adding to the fragmentation of his identity. Part of the human experience is the shared connections that they make with one another. Now that he is unable to experience life with other humans, Jimmy struggles to accept this new life, leaving his identity in pieces.
Alongside his reinvention as Snowman, he becomes a “prophet” for Oryx and Crake. The Crakers do not trust him, since he is not one of them, but tolerate his presence because of his direct connection to Oryx and Crake. This new “persona cements him in place, for good and for worse” (McNew 37). Snowman struggles with the role he takes on in fear “they’d turn their backs on him, they’d wanted away. He is Crake’s prophet now, whether he likes it or not; and the prophet of Oryx as well. That, or nothing. And he couldn’t stand to be nothing, to know himself to be nothing. He needs to be listened to; he needs to be heard. He needs at least the illusion of being understood” (Atwood 104). The Crakers are skeptical of others and only trust Jimmy because of his knowledge of Oryx and Crake. They were programmed to only have certain knowledge and to keep within their circle of beings.
Jimmy’s life as he once knew it had been torn away from him. Everything he built for himself, through the adversity of his childhood no longer existed, leaving him to feel like there was no longer a self-fulfilling life. Although, a purpose was designed for him, and it led to more internal torment that he had previously endured. The responsibility that Crake put on Jimmy is too much, leaving Jimmy to think of himself as a “corrupt vessel or else a puppet acting out their dramas for [the Crakers], or else bad company” (Atwood 85). It is in this moment that Snowman realizes Jimmy had always been another piece on Crake’s chessboard, a pawn to do his bidding, to follow his commands. Jimmy “had served his evolutionary purpose, as . . . Crake knew he would” (Atwood 107). No matter what Jimmy/Snowman wants in life, Crake finds a way, even from beyond the grave, to swoop in and overtake his life. Crake was the only real “friend” Jimmy had and as they grew older, Crake becomes more and more manipulative, acting as a puppeteer and does not stop to consider the consequences of taking his bioengineering projects too far.
Most of the events that occur in Oryx and Crake are not at the fault of Jimmy. He is simply a casualty, an innocent bystander, of Crake’s mad-scientist conquests. In her article, “Faustian Dreams and Apocalypse in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake,” Guiseppina Botta explains the discovery of DNA and advancement of genetics have contributed to a Faustian tragedy that led to the downfall of society within Oryx and Crake. The infinite possibilities of science would have great advantages for their society, “but such advantages, including the economic one, do not satisfy Crake, and the creation of Paradice allows him a “wielding of power over life and death” (8). Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy of Dr. Faustus explores the ethical and moral questioning of how far man is willing to go in order to gain worldly desires. Within the story, Dr. Faustus sells his soul to the devil in order to gain all of the knowledge of the world and the powers of necromancy, but he damns himself in order to gain these things. The story is meant to serve as a warning, stating that one may gain everything but lose themselves in the process. Although there are no fallen angels or demons in Atwood’s work, Crake falls victim to a similar deal that Faustus finds himself in. He made major scientific advancements, damning himself and humanity in the process. Botta uses the tragedy of Dr. Faustus to allude to the timeless question: What is man willing to sell their soul for? Atwood is warning readers of the potentially negative outcomes that are tangible within reality. This story is meant to serve as an introspective look into what it takes to fundamentally change one’s identity and warn against the greed of scientific advancement.
The sciences are most valued in this society as they continue to make advancements for the “betterment” of humanity. In part, the sciences in this dystopian world are used and funded for the “betterment” of humanity. It plays a major role throughout the novel as it funds the capitalistic machine that makes their society flow, but at an unknown point becomes corrupt and no longer serves as a positive influence for the people. Both of Jimmy’s parents were part of this machine but ended their careers on different sides of the fight; his father for the questionable ethics and his mother against. Jimmy’s father worked for OrganInc Farms as a genographer on the “pigoon project” (Atwood 22). The goal of this project “was to grow an assortment of foolproof human-tissue organs in a transgenetic knockout pig host—organs that would transplant smoothly and avoid rejection but would also be able to fend off attacks by opportunistic microbes and viruses … [and] could be customized, using cells from the individual human donors” (Atwood 22–23). Jimmy’s father was accomplishing great things in the medical field that would ultimately be good for their society, but this took a turn when OrganInc began genetically engineering different animal species together, just because they wanted to know if it was possible. Aside from the pigoons, there were wolvogs (wolf and dog), bobkittens (bobcat and domesticated cat), and the rakunk (racoon and skunk). While things began as a project for the betterment of humanity, Atwood shows how easily it is to fall into questionable projects that toy with Nature. The pigoon project is “not a product of Atwood’s imagination, but [is] one of the creations of current genetic engineering” (Botta 3). Considering that the scientific creations of Atwood’s dystopia have begun to come to life, where will scientists draw the line? It makes one wonder if the fiction of Atwood’s mind is on the way to becoming a new reality, dooming the world to its inevitable end.
Their scientific advancements were quickly becoming ethically questionable. When Jimmy’s mother left, she made sure to leave a message:
She’d trashed Jimmy’s father’s home computer, and not only the contents: she’d taken a hammer to it . . . She’d done her own computer too, if anything more thoroughly. Thus neither Jimmy’s father nor the CorpSeCorps men who were all over the place had any idea of what coded messages she might have been sending, what information she may or may not have downloaded and taken out with her. (Atwood 62)
Although the reader never gets an answer as to why Jimmy’s mother left so abruptly, or what she had found out, this moment shows that there were too many things wrong with the sciences they were “improving.” She abandoned her only child, but in order to fight against the industry that was on its way to tearing down their world. This once again begs the question, What is man willing to sell their soul for?
Readers later learn about the advancements that Crake makes with RejoovEsense, under the branch of Paradice. With all of its genetic possibilities, Crake had fallen under the spell of science, developing a god-complex. Early into their friendship, Jimmy “had his doubts about Crake’s honorableness, intellectual or otherwise . . . Crake could be a little too instructive sometimes, and a little too free with the shoulds” (Atwood 70). Even at the start, Jimmy was wary of their friendship and suspected that there was something he was unable to pinpoint about Crake. His ego, being “devoid of logos,” and ability to “exude potential” warns not only Jimmy, but readers as well to the disastrous recipe that Crake would develop, both in his development of identity and scientifically (Atwood 72, 75). Crake’s life’s work was to find and create a way to eliminate the worst of humanity. This act does not have the same intent that a serial killer would, but serves as a “logical” solution, or means to an end, to achieve his goal of ridding the world of imperfection and eliminating further harm towards the planet. His solution: the BlyssPluss Pill and the Crakers. They were “inextricably linked—the Pill and the Project. The Pill would put a stop to haphazard reproduction, the Project would replace it with a superior method. They were two stages of a single plan” (Atwood 304). Botta states, “the price paid by Crake for his Faustian dream is, first of all, the decimation of mankind. His dream, meant to be the most sensational of the discoveries of bio-engineering, aims at transforming both people’s lives and the world. He uses ‘science to alter life and influence human evolution’” (8). Crake wanted to create a perfect, “immoral” society that would cause further destruction, and this was his most reasonable way to achieve his goal.
While Jimmy is not part of the science itself, he was forced into the project by Crake, masked as a way out of a pit of depression, and marketed the pills on Crake’s behalf. The actions of both his father and Crake directly impact how his identity is molded. Growing up in a world that values only the sciences left him feeling left behind and insecure. His father treated him horribly and in his “opinion Jimmy couldn’t screw in a lightbulb,” allowing Jimmy to believe that there was something intellectually wrong with him, “as if Jimmy had a brain injury” (Atwood 37, 50). Even his own mother wishes he could be more like Crake, “‘Your friend is intellectually honorable,’ Jimmy’s mother would say. He doesn’t lie to himself.’ Then she’d gaze at Jimmy with that blue-eyed, wounded-by-him look he knew so well. If only he could be like that—intellectually honorable” (Atwood 69). On occasions like these, Jimmy was reminded by his parents that they did not think he was good enough, like their son had failed them by not having a brain wired for science. His post-apocalypse self as Snowman struggled with the voices in his head that reminded him of this feeling. When they would get to be too much, he stated out loud to no one other than himself, “I am not my childhood,” as if he needed the reassurance that he was no longer that person, and that his past does not define him (Atwood 68). As a child Jimmy was unsure of himself, weak, and easily manipulated. Now that he is at the point of being the only known human survivor with the Crakers, Snowman has a responsibility that does not allow any room for weakness. He has to remind himself that he is not the same person that he was in his youth.
Crake’s actions directly impact Jimmy. He had once said to Jimmy, “if anything happens to me, I’m depending on you to look after the Paradice Project” (Atwood 320). This is also reinforced when Oryx states “[she] wants [Jimmy] to take care of the Crakers,” alluding to the end of human life, and placing the responsibility of this project on Jimmy. Although he did not have a mind for science, Jimmy had the “empathy to deal with the Paradice models” (Atwood 321). The last few months they spent together were orchestrated by Crake, delicately planning where everyone needed to be at certain moments for his plan to end humanity to work. After the death of Jimmy’s mother, he fell into a depressive state and was “rescued” by Crake, who took him under his wing. Jimmy told himself to “get a grip … get a handle on it. Put it behind you. Move forward. Make a new you;” and this mantra continued to bring him comfort after his rebirth as Snowman in the new post-apocalyptic world (Atwood 260). Again, he is having remind himself to fully accept and become this new persona that he created. His past does not define who he is now, but more importantly it will not do him any good to continue to dwell in the past.
Jimmy and Crake are consistently compared to one another, but this extends deeper than the complexities of their characters. The debate between science and the humanities has been longstanding since the Renaissance period. In his article “From Art to Applied Science,” Eric Schatzberg explains the original, fundamental difference between art and science as “the distinction between the works of God and of man” (3). He continues to say, “in science, the mind was passive, and the contents of science flowed from God, unshaped by human agency. Art, in contrast, started with the stuff of science, which was then directed and applied by us . . . art was knowledge shaped by human purposes” (3). In Oryx and Crake, Jimmy represents art and Crake represents science. Although he is adamantly Atheist, Crake plays a role that is god-like in his development of the Crakers and in controlling the fate of humanity. There’s a sense of irony in the aftermath of Crake’s actions. He was adamantly atheist, believing in no god, but became drunk with power, immortalizing himself as a god, along with Oryx, in the oral stories of the Crakers’ creation.
Other points of Crake’s upbringing further solidify his god-complex and compulsive need for control. When they were teenagers, Jimmy and Crake would play many games that were focused either on the end of life or the major atrocities of the world. Extinctathon was a matching game where the player had to match the name of an extinct animal to a picture. Another game they often played was called “Blood and Roses:”
Blood and Roses was a trading game, along the lines of Monopoly. The Blood side played with human atrocities for the counters, atrocities on a large scale: individual rapes and murders didn’t count, there had to have been a large number of people wiped out. Massacres, genocides, that sort of thing. The Roses side played with human achievements. Artworks, scientific breakthroughs, stellar works of architecture, helpful inventions. Monuments to the soul’s magnificence, they were called in the game . . . it was a wicked game (Atwood 78–79)
The name of the game symbolizes the traits that both Crake and Jimmy represent. Crake was always Blood and Jimmy was always Roses each time they played this game. Crake is always Blood because he enjoys the violence and despair of others. The game foreshadows the parts they both play during and after the apocalypse. Crake enjoys watching others squirm and watching them fight to express their opinions against him. It was as if Crake wanted to watch the world burn, adding his personal “achievements” to the Blood category. He does not mind the sacrifice of humanity if it means his new definition of immorality will succeed under his project with the Crakers. On the other hand, Jimmy is more in touch with his emotions, cares for others, and sees beauty in the flawed nature of humanity, much like the side of Roses. The rose is a symbol of beauty and love, both things that Jimmy values. Roses have thorns, showing their resilience against natural adversaries, much like Jimmy. The separation in these roles, while just a game, is metaphoric of their physical selves. They were the Evil and Good in the world, and Atwood brings attention to this early in their adolescence.
While in conversation with Crake, they begin to debate these achievements. Crake claims that art is unnecessary and inferior to science, but Jimmy adamantly disagrees. In one of the few times he stands up for himself Jimmy states, “when any civilization is dust and ashes . . . art is all that’s left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning – human meaning, that is—is defined by them” (Atwood 167). Art is the catalog and proof of life through every adversity and flourishment that came before. Jimmy is arguing that these documentations are what’s left after all destruction and are meant to serve as a guide to improve the coming generations. To discount these claims, Crake states, “people can amuse themselves any way they like . . . anyway is serves a biological purpose” (Atwood 167). Crake, like the scientist he is, only sees things in black and white. He believes science is the only facet of life that can make these advances to “improve” society. He has no time for the free thought that provokes art, and no time to appreciate the goodness in the world because he only sees the wrongs that humans have done. There is no time to understand the Roses of the world, the Blood outweighs them all. In the end, it’s Jimmy who survived, the representative of art who has been left over to tell the story of generations before.
The colleges they attended also reflected these roles. Crake attended the Watson-Crick Institute, named after the two scientists who discovered the double helix in DNA and Jimmy went to Martha Graham Academy, named after a modern dancer and choreographer who changed American dance. Their schools serve as another reiteration of their separate roles. Crake’s school values science, while Jimmy’s is more focused in the arts. While in college, they pursue their higher goals; Jimmy is unsure of what he wants to accomplish, but decides to choose a path in marketing and not be part of the science that ruined his family. Crake attended one of the best colleges to gain what was necessary for his plans for the future. Watson-Crick was a school that assured the students’ future, “it was like going to Harvard” (Atwood 173). Atwood continuously compares them to these fields to show the contrast in their identities and how they are reliant on one another. Like the relationship between Jimmy and Crake, the sciences advance with the help of art; creative minds are what build new inventions and draw up the blueprints for new creations. They are meant to work together for the betterment of society, as science can at times be called an art, but Crake ignores the ethics of his project. He is too narrowly focused on ensuring that his creation will survive and attempting to prove that science is what matters most that Crake fails to consider the ethics of his project or how it will affect the generations to come, which is why he relies so heavily on Jimmy to survive.
Throughout Oryx and Crake Atwood presents readers with a world that holds science on such a high pedestal that it leads to its downfall. The sciences can do great things if it is used properly and not abused in the way that many of the companies in this novel had. Humans are known for their disregard for others and the environment. It’s never what they can do to benefit the world, but how they can get rich, have fame, and profit off of the monetized regime of a capitalist society. HealthWyzer was meant to find a way to help the medical field but began to take things too far when the mutation of numerous animal species was created. It began as a project to grow organs that would be used for transplant patients and was corrupted once scientists began to construct cross-species of animals that do not naturally go together. Crake wanted to find a way to help heal the planet, but the only way he saw fit was to create and market a pill that lied to its users and ultimately caused their demolition. He had perfected a new type of human that would be “immortal,” but only because he successfully took away their free will and had their lives predetermined for them. Unfortunately, Jimmy/Snowman was caught in the crossfire of these creations and was left to take care of the Paradice Project alone.
The continual comparison of Jimmy and Crake to the humanities and science largely defines their identities but also shows their character flaws. There are imperfections in both of these traits, neither being completely without fault. Jimmy is more easily manipulated, partly due to his blind faith in others, and lacks the voice to stand up to Crake. Despite all the red flags and warning signs that began the moment they became friends as children, Jimmy still trusts Crake, remaining loyal to his project after the world’s end. While Jimmy/Snowman reflects on his past traumas through the memories that frequently come to the surface, he finds himself struggling to come to terms with his new identity. He claims that his past does not define him, and to an extent it doesn’t, but it does inform the decisions he makes and results in the fragmentation of his identity. His two identities, Jimmy his pre-apocalypse self and Snowman his post-apocalypse self, are who he is, despite what he claims to be. It is in the human/posthuman condition that he begins to understand the separation of his traumas. While Snowman wants nothing to do with Jimmy, he fails to understand that there is no outrunning his past.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Random House, Inc. 2003.
Botta, Guiseppina. “Faustian dreams and apocalypse in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Local Natures, Global Responsibilities, no. 121, 2010, pp. 243–55. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789042028135_018.
Ralph Pordzik. “The Posthuman Future of Man: Anthropocentrism and the Other of Technology in Anglo-American Science Fiction.” Utopian Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 2012, pp. 142–61. https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.23.1.0142.
Schatzberg, Eric. “From Art to Applied Science.” Isis, vol. 103, no. 3, 2012, pp. 555–63. https://doi.org/10.1086/667979
Snyder, Katherine V. “‘Time to go’: The Post-apocalyptic and The Post-traumatic in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 43 no. 4, 2011, p. 470–89. https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2011.0057