Science of Oryx and Crake

Having now finished reading the book, i come to realize that the rate at which scientific progression happen was the downfall of the society. Scientists are always happy to advance in whatever way they can, and put no limits on this advance. While on it's own, this is not a problem, the issue lies in using these advances before we have developed the mentality to be able to. Morals are always behind, as morals cannot possibly be created ahead or even at the same rate as scientific advance. we don't develop morals around things we cannot do, simply because we don't need to. Morals cannot even be parallel in development, because the idea for something always is thought of before the implications of it.

In Oryx and Crake, the major scientific revelation is genetic modification. The people of the story have learned how to modify almost any creature, in to anything that they need. This ability sparks great innovation, but at the cost of becoming an unstoppable rolling stone. The people go from making pigoons, which are simply pigs that grow extra organs, to making genetically modified chickens that no longer even have a brain, and are simply meat that grows.

This ultimately leads to the downfall of the human race, when Crake decides that humans should be replaced with his enhanced version of humanity, The Crakers. Because of genetic modification, Crake is not only able to make people, but kill the current ones.

All of this was able to happen because of the lack of moral ability. Human morals had not yet caught up with the ideas behind genetic modification, and so, science could keep stretching things farther and farther.



A blue strawberry. While this may seem benign, what harm is a blue strawberry? The people of the book probably asked themselves the same question. What harm is a pigoon? and on and on from there.

Character Devolpment

All of the three primary characters, Snowman or Jimmy, Crake, and Oryx are quite different in the way that they are developed in the book.

The character development of Snowman is rather typical. As “Oryx and Crake” is told from an almost first-person view (with the character being referred to in a third person perspective, but having the characteristics of a first person perspective), either by flashbacks to Snowman's former life, or by a direct story of his current life. The development is a complete story of Snowman's life, with no parts left to mystery. Also, there is complete knowledge of Snowman's thoughts throughout the novel. This method means that we feel as if we are snowman, we see the world as snowman does (or did). Snowman hides nothing from us, and therefore, we feel as if we know him.

Crake is developed differently. The only knowledge of Crake is that which Snowman knows, and is learned from Snowman's perspective. We do, however, learn a lot about Crake, from his habits to his opinions on how society and life should be. We also learn of how Crake changed things about the world that affect the current time. This also, is from Snowman’s memory. The way that the character of Crake is developed leads us to know about him, but not to see from his perspective. He becomes a known person with unknown thoughts and motives, which makes him a mystery, but only on an internal scale.

Oryx is completely different. We learn snippets of her past, as remembered by Snowman, but other than that, we know nothing of her, other than offhand comments made by Snowman about her. We also learn about Oryx through Snowman’s fantasies of her, in which she talks. Because of this, Oryx remains a mystery character to be speculated upon. We know nothing of her, and she has never appeared in any of the flashbacks.



The Picture I have is of Donald Rumsfeld. While this may seem slightly odd, I chose this image because of a quote of his:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

All of the characters if into one of these areas: Jimmy is a known known, we know everything about him that we need to. Crake is an unknown unknown, as the things we don't know about him, we don't know that we don't know. Oryx however, falls into the other section, she it a known unknown, we don't know much about her, but we know there are things about her we don't know.