race/gender/science fiction

So, this is a embarrassing revealing of my lack of knowledge on the workings of the military, but does our military use "sir" to address women in command? Or is that a convention invented for the show?

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.

For my Oryx and Crake presentation, I focused on how I saw Oryx and Crake to be like an updated version of The Handmaid’s Tale, and I wanted to go further in depth on this topic for my reader response. Some of this is kind of rehashing what I said earlier, so I apologize for that.

So this response has nothing to do with pigoon platoons (although that bit where they trapped Snowman in the guardhouse was a bit unnerving) it just seemed catchy.

The author of an article I read for my term paper writes that SF and myths operate similarly. Both are a reflection of man's thirst for knowledge about his origins and his fate; SF is considered a more self-conscious form of myth-making. This is especially prevalent in Oryx & Crake, during those instances when the Children of Crake ask Snowman to tell them creation stories. Oryx and Crake are likened to Godlike beings: "Crake made the bones of the Children of Crake out of the coral on the beach, and then he made their flesh out of a mango.

While Snowman, as many people have pointed out, has a very grim life ahead of him, I found James Cole's life in 12 Monkeys considerably more disturbing. He experiences just about everything that could go wrong in a dystopian future: his life is manipulated by far more powerful people, he loses his grip on what is real and believes himself to be insane, and ultimately becomes a witness to his own death. As with many time-travelers, he is ultimately helpless in the past even though he has such extensive knowledge of it; Cole's story employs the Cassandra myth to find tragedy.

What ended up sticking out to me most while reading Oryx and Crake was how little good was attributed to the human race (“homo sapiens sapiens” [Atwood 99]). It was rather strange that despite hearing the story from a human’s point of view, from Snowman’s reflections on the past, the reader is presented with quite a terrible view of humanity.

It seems to me that Crake believes that in order for the human race to survive, it has to become essentially non-human. He is doing what he believes is necessary to save what he considers to be the best parts of humanity. Barring the methods by which he achieves it, I think that it is interesting to examine this motivation as it stands, outside of the context. Personally, I do not agree with what Crake considers to be the best parts of humanity, just as I don’t agree with Butler’s argument that the “hierarchical impulse” is entirely bad.

I think Crake is an extremely interesting character in the novel, even more so after the discussion we had in class about him being a mad scientist/super genius. Personally, I think he is a mad scientist, because he took the route that, in his view, promotes ‘the greater good’, with the end justifying the means. But past this, I think what he did is something that anyone is capable of doing, given the circumstances. He is extremely intelligent, and gets the best education; he has the drive to see his projects through, and develops the ego necessary to completely believe in his vision.