I swear I'm not complaining anymore

Non-Whiny Intro:

I think it is fair to say, now that I have finished the book and read the ending, that I can and will stop complaining about the formerly confusing writing style. So, in short: It all came together for the ending. Boy it sure was an ending too, a real cliff hanger, not to give anything away. I am a little bit confused with the direction that Atwood plans to go with the way that the book ends. I am unsure if I want to keep reading the series and finish it, but I have no idea what is to come based on the way things were wrapped up.

Basically, the timelines converged. That is to say, as Snowman continued in his trek toward Crake’s dome, the story of Jimmy began to catch up faster than Snowman’s story could run. With this happening, I feel so rewarded for paying attention to all of the cutaways from Snowman’s main plot.

For example, as I mentioned in my last post, Snowman has a flashback to an intimate time he had with Oryx while looking at the skeleton of a woman whose house he was raiding. This flashback makes much more sense now that Snowman explained his erotic relationship with Oryx. He explains that it happens and tells the reader about some of the details, but it is a flashback like this that reveals more to the readers than what Snowman actually tells us. We know from Snowman directly telling us, that Oryx was sexually creative, however without this flashback, we would not have such a specific example of their love live. So this seemingly random flashback ended up giving definition to the story as long as the reader was willing to wait long enough to get the full details.

Get to the Point:

Anyway I just wanted to say how satisfied I am with how attentiveness has payed off. I could honestly write an entire blog post on just this topic, however instead I am going to talk about some of the main themes of the book. Overall I thought the two main themes were: The dangers of genetic engineering and the dangers of blindly following religion. I do not think I have the space to talk about both of these, and to be honest I don’t have the space to even fully develop one.

Dangers of Genetic Engineering:

I think this is definitely the clearest theme of the book. Even from reading the back cover of the book it was foreseeable. With that being said, I don’t think that it is a bad theme or one that is unimportant. Genetic engineering is developing more and more as the days go by, and with this, so is the relevance of this book. Anyway, even from the beginning of the book, the dangers of genetic engineering are made clear. Nearly all of chapter two is spent laying the groundwork for this theme.

For example, the Pigoons, who Jimmy felt bad for as a child, became an merciless adversary for Snowman toward the end of the book. Snowman described the pigoons as “escape artists” and even said “if they’d had fingers they’d have ruled the world.”(Chapter 11). This intelligence nearly caused the downfall of Snowman when the pigoons trapped him and then proceeded to bait him into near death. This clearly showed the audience that although the pigoons were valuable for harvesting organs, when unregulated and let loose, they could use their genetically heightened intelligence to elaborate murder humans.

The same can be said for nearly every other animal that Snowman mentions. The bobkittens, wolvogs, and snats all became loose and were incredibly dangerous for people. The bobkittens, who were originally engineered to hunt the big green rabbits, however ultimately “Small dogs went missing from backyards, babies from prams; short joggers were mauled”(Chapter 7). The wolvogs were originally engineered to be the ultimate form of security, however even after Jimmy asked Crake in Chapter 8 “What if they get out? Go on the rampage? Start breeding, then the population spirals out of control – like those big green rabbits?”, he was assured that they would not escape. But despite mankind’s best intentions, that is again exactly what happened. The snats appeared to be a failed pet idea that became lethal. Apparently they had all been destroyed, which would assume that they had to have done no good to earn themselves that fate.

So what?

So it is pretty clear that the genetic engineering in Oryx and Crake resulted in some pretty awful outcomes. The only genetically created animal that did not have this outcome was the rakunk. Sadly, this pet for Jimmy as a kid was named “Killer”, when in reality it was the only animal that was not actually a killer. Atwood uses these genetic failures to show the danger in playing god with life. None of the animals were made with bad intentions, many were good, however as the saying goes “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Post blog note

Also I should mention, as I am bound to be asked in the comments, I did not talk about the artificially created diseases for special reasons. This blog would be like at least 50% longer if I went into detail about the dangers and ethics of genetically manufactured diseases. I recognize their importance to the novel as a theme, however I would have to write an essay to do all of the themes the justice they deserve.