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Gender and Feminist Criticism in Oryx and Crake

Written by Cathy Jing             Jimmy, throughout his entire life, has not once been in a healthy relationship with a woman. As a child, he tormented his mother just to satisfy his thirst for attention. He never really like Ramona, his step-mother. He loved Oryx dearly, but the relationship clearly was not mutual because she had an affair with Crake as well. The most detrimental relationships, however, are all of the affairs in between that were not with girlfriends, but with lovers—married women who wanted Jimmy on the side. Through these relationships, both men and women are stereotyped, though women are more than men.             Although it seems that men are stereotyped as sex machines, upon closer examination, it seems that women are as well. In this section, Jimmy begins to romp around with married women, instead of dating his classmates or, at least, women of his age. He uses the thrill of the impromptu visits and the secrecy to fulfill his sexual desires. These aff
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An analysis of Margaret Atwood's style and craft

Margaret Atwood certainly knows how to captivate and draw a reader in, especially in Oryx and Crake . From her vivid characterization of Johnny to her stark world-building skills, her style is one that tends to be a bleak, pessimistic, and morbid. In my examination of her style and craft, I was supposed to pick a particular passage to focus on; however, I found that the entirety of the section  Wolvogs  to be an excellent representation of Atwood's style throughout Oryx and Crake . Basically, this chapter serves to show just how distant Jimmy has become from his old lifestyle alongside Crake. It also shows how the environment of the Watson-Crick Institute fosters the apathy that Crake already feels toward nature. At the beginning of the section, Jimmy describes how beautiful the Institute seems compared to Martha Graham, his own college. Jimmy describes the statue at the entranceway as a school mascot with some dignity. He describes it as 'bronzed' and tells the backgro
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A Creative Response to Oryx and Crake

New Religion He gets up intending just to piss. Awoken in the night by the uncomfortable feeling of a full bladder, Jimmy pads to the bathroom and relieves himself. If the night had been going as planned, if his mind felt as tired as his body does, he’d have headed back to bed and fallen asleep without a second glance. As it is, Jimmy picks up a glass and pours himself a drink from the minibar. The cold, clinical light of the fridge illuminates his dark room, casting strange eldritch shadows across piles of laundry and discarded bed sheets. His bed suddenly looks unappealing; vast, empty, uncomfortably warm. Struck by a strange impulse, Jimmy’s feet carry him out of the room, into the hallway beyond. The corridors of Paradice are dark. Jimmy’s sure that somewhere within the complex MaddAddam geniuses are working away on some scientific equation, but here, so close to where Crake himself sleeps, everything is quiet.
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Jimmy and Snowman: How a character can change (or not)

                From the beginning of Oryx and Crake , we are shown that Jimmy and Snowman are different people . From the very first Jimmy-centric chapter, we can tell: "Once upon a time, Snowman wasn't Snowman. Instead he was Jimmy. He'd been a good boy then." The narrator never calls Snowman Jimmy, or vice versa. Jimmy has undergone some vast change in becoming Snowman, just as the world has undergone its own upheaval. So examine the two. How are they different? ... Are they different?                 Jimmy's a lecher. Even as a kid, Jimmy would watch depraved, nasty pornography with Crake, wallowing in stuff like "HotTots." As he grew older, he graduated to real women, and grew no less creepy. He took advantage of them, putting on an act where he was vulnerable and broken, and they felt like they could save him. When he got bored of them, he'd let them down gently, and move on. He didn't deliberately hurt them, but nonetheless he
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Academic Response to Oryx and Crake

Having finished Oryx and Crake and had time to mull over the themes of the novel, I can say that I am impressed with Atwood’s ability to delve in to a topic. In The Handmaid’s Tale she showed her views on the dangers of religion and its interaction with human nature. In Oryx and Crake she chooses the completely opposite end of the spectrum, instead meditating on science’s ethical implications especially when combined with capitalism. Yes, Atwood’s style did feel repetitive at times, but I think this was at least partially a consequence of having read two of her books one after the other. Having said that, I thought it would be interesting to see what experts have said about the Oryx and Crake to deepen my understanding of the topics it addresses. I looked at an essay by Stephen Dunning titled Maragret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake”:The Terror of the Theraputic,  which discussed multiple aspects of the novel. I decided to focus on his analysis of the novel’s addressing of the disadva
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Oryx and Crake: Themes

Written by Dunja Matic After reading and enjoying two of Margaret Atwood’s novels, I feel confident in saying that I will finish Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. Similar to what she did in The Handmaid’s Tale , Atwood has managed to turn Oryx and Crake into a haunting novel that worries its readers about what the future of our world may hold. That is to say that overall, Oryx and Crake was an eye-opening novel that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. Atwood creates a lot of suspense and tension that keeps the reader wondering what will happen next, particularly in terms of when Jimmy will finally reveal what the biological catastrophe that has taken place is. Apart from the suspense she creates, Atwood also explores a huge range of themes throughout the novel. Two theme topics that stood out to me were the division of class and capitalism, both of which I will discuss in today’s post. The division between classes From the very first few chapters of the novel, Atwood presen
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Literary lens: New Historicism

Margaret Atwood began writing Oryx and Crake in 2001 while on a tour to promote her latest book The Blind Assassin . In March of that year, Margaret was in Australia birdwatching when she observed red-necked crakes, partly inspiring her story. Her other main source of inspiration was her time spent thinking about survival scenarios in the company of close relatives who happened to be scientists. Her writing was also influenced by her visit to the Arctic north, where she experienced the effects of global warming firsthand. Although she took a break from writing after the September 11 attacks, she still managed to finish and publish the book by 2003. While this book was being written (2001-2003) people the world over were still fresh to the new millennium and the remarkable advances in science, technology, medicine, and art that had come out of the 20th century. In terms of western society, the future seemed bright and full of promise and achievement, then the September 11 attacks occ
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