Isolation & Pathos: An O&C Close Reading

Written by Cathy Jing

From the very first chapter, Margaret Atwood immediately dives into the desolate world in Oryx and Crake, giving glimpses of what the world has become. This is a place where “nobody nowhere knows what time it is” (6), where the land is littered with piano keys and tins of motor oil, where there are no signs of civilization. In this bleak setting, our main character Snowman survives alone. At the end of the first chapter, his loneliness is perfectly captured, creating both pathos and suspense that encourages readers to continue reading. In today’s blog post, I will explore the literary devices found at the end of chapter one.

Or worse, some girl he knows, or knew, will come walking towards him through the trees, and she’ll be happy to see him but she’ll be make of air. He’d welcome even that, for the company. 

He scans the horizon, using his one sunglassed eye: nothing. The sea is hot metal, the sky a bleached blue, except for the hole burnt in it by the sun. Everything is so empty. Water, sand, sky, trees, fragments of past time. Nobody to hear him. 

“Crake!” he yells. “Asshole! Shit-for-brains!” 

He listens. The salt water is running down his face again. He never knows when that will happen and he can never stop it. His breath is coming in gasps, as if a giant hand is clenching around his chest—clench, release, clench. Senseless panic.

“You did this!” he screams at the ocean. 

No answer, which isn’t surprising. Only the waves, wish-wash, wish-wash. He wipes his fist across his face, across the grime and tears and snow and the derelict’s whiskers and sticky mango juice. “Snowman, Snowman,” he says, “Get a life.”

As with The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood strategically uses different sentence structures to convey isolation or depression. In this case, her sentence fragments create a bleak and empty feeling that reflect Snowman’s own emotions. The fragment, “water, sand, sky, trees, fragments of past time”, is effective because its structure relates to how Snowman feels: both are incomplete. "Nobody to hear him" follows it, which emphasizes the idea that there is no one else, no other human, but him in this world. The auditory effect of the “wish-wash, wish-wash” of the waves adds to a silent and empty place, since only the waves can be heard. 

           

Because of Snowman’s isolation, we as readers feel empathetic towards him. Although this pathos is created through the literary devices stated, other uses of imagery, diction, and polysyndeton further this mood. Most of the empathy is created when Snowman breaks down after cursing at Crake. The comparison of his rattled breathing to a “giant hand is clenching around his chest” allows the reader to feel Snowman’s pain. The diction immediately following it, “clench, release, clench, release”, also adds to the pathos, where the reader feels the repetition of suffocation. The final hit of pathos comes from the use of polysyndeton: "he wipes his fist across his face, across the grime and tears and snow and the derelict’s whiskers and sticky mango juice". The repetition of "and" lengthens the list of adjectives that describe Snowman's horrific appearance. In this case, readers feel more pity than empathy since Snowman is unsanitary, something we are used to in our world.

Many of these literary devices can be found in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and for the same empathetic moods as well. For example, she used fragmented and short sentences (e.g. "to feel that empty, again, again") to convey a tone of despair when Offred is reminded of her infertility. Atwood also used polysyndeton to emphasize long lists of descriptors, as she does in this passage.

Despite the effective uses of literary devices, however, much of the emotion I felt stems from Snowman’s outburst of “'Crake!' he yells. 'Asshole! Shit-for-brains!'” and “'You did this!' he screams at the ocean.” In just these two lines, I felt Snowman’s rage at Crake even if I didn’t know what horrific crime Crake had committed. I felt Snowman’s helplessness not only towards his own isolation but that he has no power against Crake’s power. These two lines of dialogue, in addition to the imagery from the rest of the passage, painted both a bleak setting and Snowman’s pain. In my opinion, this passage is a wonderful way end to chapter one because it creates enough suspense for the reader to wonder who this mysterious Crake is, what he did, and how it shaped the modern world to what it now is. 



Other things to note or even comment on:

The almost superficial description of the setting: "The sea is hot metal, the sky a bleached blue, except for the hole burnt in it by the sun". 

• It is very odd that the sea is "hot metal". The negative connotation of "the hole burnt in it" also gives an inorganic feel to the setting. Immediately, the reader can identify that this is not a place in the modern world.

The use of "salt water" rather than "tears" -- why is this effective?



Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Toronto: Seal Books, 2004. Print