Oryx and Crake (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Margaret Atwood
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The mid-twenty-first century
- Setting: New York State
- Principal Characters: Snowman, Crake, Oryx, Jimmy’s mother, Jimmy’s father, The Children of Crake
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction, Dystopian fiction, Near future and distant future fiction
- Subjects: Freedom, Language or languages, New York, Future, Science or scientists, Twenty-first century, Prostitution or prostitutes, Friendship, Genius, Child abuse, Ethics, Bioengineering or biotechnology, Genetics, Information science or systems, Computers, Internet, Happiness, Bioethics
- Locales: New York
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood’s second view of dystopia, reveals a bug-ridden creature near a newly formed American seashore after the icecaps have melted. He calls himself Snowman, after the Abominable Snowman, “a white illusion of a man . . . existing and not existing.” His name used to be Jimmy, he used to love words, and he is trying to stay alive. Scraps of sentences, random phrases, surface in his brain. He savors rare old words that are disappearing inside his head. When he forgets them, they will vanish forever from the world.
In his “authentic-replica”...
[The entire page is 1799 words long]
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