I think its confusing for a reason

Clever and Witty Intro

Just in case you were wondering, the book has not gotten less confusing yet. Reading Oryx and Crake is no easy task for that reason. Trying to auto-pilot read through sections of this book is like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle when like 2 of the pieces are stuck under the couch. You can get most of it done, but the picture will never be quite full and make sense, and sometimes you will have to cram a piece into a slot where it isn't supposed to fit. All this cramming isn’t going to do anything in the end other than leave you with a feeling saying “That's not quite right”. So long drawn out simile aside, I think that the confusion of the book is starting to make more sense though, if that makes sense.

Being completely honest, I had to think for a little bit what exactly makes Oryx and Crake and AP level book. This is not to say that the book is not good, or that I outright don’t think that the book is worthy of AP status, however what I mean is that it is difficult to pinpoint what gives the book AP merit. So after thinking for a while, what makes the book AP level, for me, is the non-linear storytelling combined with the readers need to connect information not given to them.

Why AP?

I have complained to what seems like no end about the storytelling of Oryx and Crake, but I think that is really what makes it a higher level book to read. If the book was not confusing and jumping from different time period to time period following a character that goes by two different names, then it would probably be really easy to read. As much as I didn’t like in the beginning how Snowman would casually hint at some worldwide catastrophe that led to the current fallout of a world, I appreciate now that the story did not just chronologically follow Jimmy.

This is where I find Oryx and Crake to be much like The Handmaid’s Tale. In both stories, the storytelling is nonlinear and seemingly very random at times. This writing style was very central in our reading of The Handmaid’s Tale and without it the story would just be a chronological telling of a revolution in America resulting in a corrupted new government. None of those ideas would be original or profound, however with this stylistic choice, they are accented in a new and interesting way. The same can be said for Oryx and Crake. If it were simply chronological, it would be a telling of a futuristic capitalist society that went too far with genetics and low key ruined civilized mankind. This would also not be that interesting, but it would make more sense to a simpler reader. Instead, giving an unreliable narrator and a weird nonlinear story telling produces a higher level of reading necessary for the audience to understand.

For example, in Chapter 9, while Snowman is rummaging through a house on his way further into the city, he finds a skeleton of a woman who reminds him of Oryx. There then proceeds to be a short sequence of Snowman remembering a time he had with Oryx. This flashback vaguely gives us more information about his relationship with her, specifically what she may have been into in the bed. Then it is almost as quickly and abruptly as it had started, it is cut off by Snowman actively continuing his ransacking of the house.

This is a good example of Atwood making the reader not only wait to hear the actual story on how Jimmy and Oryx became together, but what the actual context of that flashback was. She makes the reader remember what they know about Oryx so far and about her background, and makes the reader try to combine that with their inference skills of how this flashback may have occurred. This story telling is the exact kind that is random enough that it would deter lower level readers from wanting to continue reading. That is to say because the writing style combined with the storytelling creates a difficult atmosphere to easily understand the narrative.

          This is much like how in The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood did not outright tell the readers that the story was set in Boston. She made the readers think about the context of the river, the wall, and the subways into and out of the city to make this conclusion. Not all readers would have even figured out where the book took place, which is the same style as is used in Oryx and Crake. So like I said in the beginning of the post, I think that the confusion of the story is starting to make more sense as I read on.