ORYX AND CRAKE

BY:
MARGARET ATWOOD
(2003)

Your paragraph text

 Full Title: Oryx and Crake Genre: Science fiction,
novel
Author: Margaret Atwood

Language: English Date Of First Publication: May 2003

Time And Place Written

Canada, late 1990s and early 2000s

Publisher: McClelland and Stewart (Canada); Bloomsbury

(UK); Doubleday (US)
 Learning Competency

Illustrate elements of the various 21st Century

Literature from across the Globe
ELEMENTS OF A NOVEL
CHARACTERS PLOT
SETTINGS CONFLICT
THEME TONE
POINT OF VIEW STYLE
BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR
Margaret Eleanor Atwood
a Canadian Poet,Novelist,Literary Critic,
Essayist,Teacher,Environmental Activist, and Inventor

November 18 , 1939
She's been a writer scince 1956.

Ottawa, Canada
 AUTHORS BACKGROUND: Oryx and Crake is a science fiction novel
created by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood in 2003. In this work,
Atwood describes a future world when genetic engineering gets out of
control, and the human race dies because of the plague. The story
created by Atwood is a kind of puzzle where the reader should find the
only right way and understand what is happening in the story. Literary
devices in Oryx and Crakeshall be analyzed in this paper. To reproduce
the horror that grips the main character and the results of the
experiment conducted by Crake, the author uses a high number of
imageries.

CHARACTERS
CHARACTERS
JIMMY/ SNOWMAN

ORYX

CRAKE
 CHARACTERS:
Jimmy/ Snowman

The protagonist of the novel. Snowman

is the survivor of a global pandemic,
who has been left in charge of a tribe of
childlike, genetically enhanced humans
that were created by his friend-turned
rival, Crake.

ORYX

The mutual love interest of Snowman and

Crake. Originally from a rural village
somewhere in south or southeast Asia,

Oryx was sold into slavery at a young age

and spent much of her early life working
in the sex industry.
Crake

Snowman’s longtime friend and rival, and architect of the

global pandemic. Crake, whose original name was Glenn,

showed early promise in math and science and grew into a

genius geneticist.
 NARRATOR
The narrator is Snowman (a man once known as Jimmy), self-named
though not self-created

SETTINGS
Near the end of the twenty-first century

The east coast of the United States,

somewhere in the mid-Atlantic
 POINT OF VIEW
OMNISCIENT POV
: Snowman’s point of view dominates Oryx and Crake,
but instead of Snowman speaking for himself, the
narrator speaks about Snowman in the third person.
The narrator has full access to Snowman’s thoughts
and feelings and so describes everything in the world
as Snowman sees it from his subjective perspective.
 THEMES

The Danger of Scientific Advancement

The pre-apocalyptic world of Oryx and Crake was full of science and technology companies
focused on transgenic research.

The Dominance of Corporate Power

The society that Snowman grew up in was organized around corporations that wielded an
unprecedented and dangerous amount of power.

The Devaluation of Art

Oryx and Crake stages a symbolic battle between the sciences and the arts, with Crake
representing the “science” side and Snowman representing the “art” side

PLOT
 INTRODUCTION

Snowman watches children play in the lagoon nearby—a lagoon he refuses to go in

even at night when the sun is down for fear of what might infest its waters. The
children sort through the flotsam and gather some of it into a sack. Snowman sits in
the shade, not having the thicker, ultraviolet-light-resistant skin the children have. The
children come over to see him and show him their collected objects, asking him what
they are. "These are things from before," he tells them, knowing they have no memory
of the hubcap, piano key, or pale-green pop bottle they display. He reassures them the
items are not dangerous, unlike the bottles of chemicals they sometimes find. The
children stare at him and call him Snowman, though they don't know what the word
means.

 RISING ACTION
On his way to Paradice,Snowman remembers how he
came to work at the facility when Crake was in the final
stages of developing his two-part plan,which included
the BlyssPluss and a tribe of genetically enhanced
humans. Both men fell in love with Oryx and had
relationships with her.
 CLIMAX
Once he arrives at Paradice, Snowman remembers when
he first realized that Crake’s BlyssPluss pill caused the
global outbreak of a deadly plague, and that Oryx had
unknowingly helped prepare the way for Crake’s plan.
 FORESHADOWING
Foreshadowing permeates most the narrative, which involves
Snowman remembering the events that led to the post-apocalyptic
conditions of his present situation. Each event brings the reader closer
to an ultimate understanding of the event that wiped out most of the
world’s population and Snowman’s personal role in it. For example,
Snowman recalls Crake’s hypothesis about HelthWyzer using vitamin
pills to distribute newly developed diseases, which in hindsight he now
recognizes as a forerunner to the plague Crake spread via his
BlyssPluss pills.
 FALLING ACTION

Snowman remembers how, in the first hours of the

outbreak, Crake returned to Paradice with Oryx and slit
her throat, prompting Snowman to shoot Crake.

 CONCLUSION
In the first hours of the outbreak, Crake returned to Paradice with Oryx in tow,
and he slit her throat in front of Jimmy. Jimmy then shot Crake. For the first
few weeks after the outbreak, Jimmy remained locked in the Paradice facility
alone, searching for reasons that Crake would kill Oryx. Eventually, he
introduced himself to the Crakers as “Snowman” and led them to a new home
near the ocean, where they still live in the novel’s present time.

The novel ends with Snowman’s present-time journey from Paradice back to
the Crakers. When he arrives, the Crakers inform him that they saw a group of
people like him in the area. Snowman tracks down the other humans and
wonders whether to approach them as friends or foes.

 MAJOR CONFLICT

The major conflict plays out between Crake and

Snowman and the ideals each man stands for: whereas
Crake stands for scientific progress and rational solutions
to the world’s problems, Snowman stands for a more
complex and humanistic view that seeks to understand
rather than solve the world’s problems.

 TONE
Cynical and mournful. Snowman’s narrative recounts the
rise of Crake’s scientific ambitions, which resulted in the
fall of human civilization
 STYLE
They are metaphors, similes, personification, etc. Imagery is
the primary technique used by the author in Oryx and Crake to
help the reader get a clear understanding of how the human
obsession with scientific achievements allows one person to
destroy all humankind in a short period

 STYLE
Oryx and Crake, Atwood exploits some potentials of the
present-tense as the narrative tense to create post-
apocalyptic narrative style.

The novel as speculative fiction and adventure romance,

rather than pure science fiction, because it does not deal
with things "we can't yet do or begin to do",[1] yet goes
beyond the amount of realism she associates with the novel
form
 QUICK GAME

DIRECTION: GUESS THE JUMBLED LETTERS

WITH THE GIVEN SHORT DEFINITION
 SSULPSSYLB

This pill gives its users uninhibited, limitless sexual

desire, masterful sexual prowess, it also cause the
extiction in the story
BLYSSPLUSS
RESCARK

An improved human species,

that was made by crake
CRAKERS
 MIJMY
He is the survivor of the global pandemic,
also known as Snowman
JIMMY
 QUIZ
1.WHAT IS THE TITLE OF THE LITERARY WORK PRESENTED BY
OUR GROUP?
2. WRITE THE GENRE OF THE LITERARY WORK.
3. YEAR OF PUBLICATION.
4.NAME OF THE AUTHOR.
5.COUNTRY AND CONTINENT
THANK YOU FOR YOUR
COOPERATION !!
 Work Cited
Dr. Illiana Celia Quimbaya, author of ClassicNote. Completed on August 01,
2011, copyright held by GradeSaver.
Updated and revised by Bella Wang August 19, 2011. Copyright held by
GradeSaver.
J. Brooks Bouson, ed. Margaret Atwood: The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin,
Oryx and Crake. London: Continuum, 2010.
Coral Ann Howells, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
John Moss and Tobi Kozakewich, eds. Margaret Atwood: the open eye. Ottawa:
The University of Ottawa Press, 2006.
Harold Bloom, ed. Margaret Atwood. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism,
2009.

 Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Great Britain: Virago

press, 2003.
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory An Introduction to
Literary and Cultural Theory. New Delhi: Raj Press,
2012.
Fludernik, Monika. An introduction to narratology . New
York: Routledge, 2009.
Radoš, Ivan. "Postmodern narrative strategies in David
Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas ." thesis. 2014/2015.