Crake constructs a new genetically engineered human race to live more “in harmony” with the earth and each other by removing the human propensity for violence, meat-eating, religion, etc. etc. Unfortunately, a lot of those are a more intrinsic to the human makeup than Crake originally guessed. The Crakers are alone, in a world they can no longer understand now that Crake has taken science away from them. The only connection they have with the old world is Snowman, so naturally they go to him for answers. Snowman becomes their guru, their demigod, who in turn raises Oryx and Crake to the status of gods.

Oryx and Crake, through Snowman, provide a greater truth and reason for the Crakers than they can access with their own senses. The three members of the old human race can answer questions for the new ones. It is a natural, essential part of any conscious being, this need to find these answers. I remember reading a Newsweek cover story when I was in high school – which was apparently a long time ago, because I can’t find the article anywhere on the Internet – on the theory that the need for religion is hard-wired into our genes. We can’t help but want to believe in a greater power, though in the modern age that “greater power” can be science, as well as a god/dess.

Actually, I suppose that the above claim is a hard one to prove, given that the only (proven) conscious beings we know about are us, and having a sample size of one is not a particularly accurate way of drawing conclusions. However, a being that does not want to find answers to the unknowable world around it cannot possess curiosity, and a being without curiosity will not learn and will not have any new thoughts, and a being that does not think and learn can hardly be conscious. So, as someone said in class yesterday, the only way Crake could have defeated the need for religion would have been to replace humans with a new race of monkeys. So, conscious beings need answers. Since the Crakers do not have hard science to provide these answers for them, they have to start back where the ancients did – with creation stories, fables, and myths, a primitive religion constructed around father and mother deities, Crake and Oryx.

Unfortunately, religion comes along with a whole bundle of less savory things, as history has proven time and time again. The Crakers will become more passionate about their deities. As the religion becomes more and more complex, discrepancies will arise (look at how simple the original difference between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites was), which will lead to argument, which because of the passion behind it will lead to hate, which will lead to war, with which comes the need to construct a hierarchy (someone has to win, which means that a whole bunch of someones will be better than a whole bunch of other someones). And, we’re back where we started, basically, except now there are a whole bunch of little herbivores running around destroying each other, and the world with it.

Jimmy’s life pre-apocalypse serves as a way to remind us of how difficult, how impossible, it is to live without some kind of higher power to look up to. For a child, their parents are the end-all, be-all – I know when I was a kid, at least, whatever my father said was absolute truth, and anyone who said otherwise could go suck it. (I don’t think I would have phrased it in exactly that way when I was seven, however.) Jimmy’s parents are too transparently flawed for Jimmy to be able to look up to them, to be comforted in the knowledge that they are looking out for him and protecting him always. The accounts of his early childhood are saturated with pervasive feeling of loneliness, reminding the reader of how natural that need is, and how desolate it feels to be without it. When the childlike Crakers ask Snowman for answers, therefore, it is all the more understandable for the reader. It’s nice to feel like there’s some sort of reason and plan behind all this nonsense.

PS I hope that grace days count for the blog, too, because I totally used mine for this post.