A
Summary of Oryx and Crake
Oryx and Crake written by Margaret
Atwood begin by explaining the daily routine of a man by the name Snowman.
Snowman lives in outdoors setting near the ocean where he is approached by
creatures he refers to as Crakers. The young ones of the creatures approach him
as they do every other day but don’t get too close. Snowman thinks that it is
because of his smell for not taking a bath for a very long time or they are
afraid of him. They ask him questions to understand him as he is different from
them in many aspects. Snowman exhibits a tremendous amount of anger towards a
man by the name Crake and has encounters with a woman by the name Oryx in his
delusions.
Prior the catastrophic situation Snowman
is in, he led a normal life and was called Jimmy. Snowman, through his memories
we learn that he used to live on a compound that belonged to a company by the
name OrganInc where his parents used to work. In his current situation Snowman
reaches a point of starvation where he does not have any food to eat and
decides to go back to a company that he once worked. He creates a lie to tell
the Crakers as he does not want their company in his journey. In his memory
trail, we learn that Jimmy’s parents worked in the corporation where her mother
quits her job due to the corruption, greed, and experimentation on animals. She
eventually leaves taking Jimmy’s pet with her and leaving Jimmy behind. The pet
was known as Killer, and it was an animal created in the lab with a genetic
combination of a raccoon and a skunk. His father continued working in the
company as a geneticist, and after a while, he had an affair with a coworker
who was a lab technician by the name Ramona. He later invited her to come and
live with her where she stepped in as Jimmy’s mother.
Jimmy’s family then moves to the company
owned by the HelthWyzer Company where his father now works as a genographer. It
is at this institution that Jimmy meets and becomes friends with a science
student by the name Glenn. Jimmy and Glenn spend their childhood playing video
games where Jimmy starts calling Glenn Crake as he refers to himself on
Extinctathon, one of their video games. They also smoke skunkweed, watch
underground videos and child pornography. It is during one of the child
pornography views that Jimmy gets attracted to an Asian girl in the porn. He
believes that the girl grows up to be Oryx, the lady who he talks to in his
delusions as Snowman.
The two friends get separated as Crake
attends a prestigious school for science while Jimmy goes to an old school of
humanities. In the college, Jimmy takes up a study of rhetoric and advertising
strategies. After graduation, Jimmy takes up a writing job with a company
called AnooYoo but gets bored and depressed by this job and starts drinking
heavily and developed a sex addiction. One day as he is drinking, he sees a
story covered in San Francisco where several girls are kept in the garage for
sex by wealthy men, and he identifies Oryx as one of the girls. It's during the
same time that Jimmy learns about the death of his mother following an
execution by Compound Security Force accused of treason. Crake one day appears
and invites him to a bar, but before he leaves, Crake injects him for
protection against a disease in the town they were headed. It is at this point
that Crake tells Jimmy of a job position at a prestigious firm known as
RejoovenEsense Compound where Crake holds a higher-up position. Jimmy accepts
to take up the post. It is this compound that Snowman takes a journey to for
his supplies.
On his Journey back to RejoovenEsense,
Snowman is increasingly disturbed by Oryx’s voice and visions from the past as
he loved her deeply. He is also hunted by Pigoons which are genetically
modified creatures made from pigs and have human organs and brain tissues. He
also hurts his leg on one of the three-day journeys where his leg gets infected
and must nurse it to prevent the growing infection. He finally makes it to the
compound.
Back to his memory when Crake hires
Jimmy, where he introduces him to a coworker, and at once Jimmy recognizes her
as Oryx. Oryx worked for Crake as a prostitute and as a teacher to the Crakers
as Crake himself created them. Jimmy falls in love with Oryx and gets into a
relationship with her behind Crake’s back. Oryx is then killed by Crake who is
immediately shot by Jimmy. The story ends with Snowman back to the seashore
where he is informed of other three humans like him. He is in a dilemma whether
to shot them or befriend him. He looks at his broken watch and makes up his
mind, “it’s time to go.â€
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