Sandcastles in the Wind

"What is reality?" (83).
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003)

Points for Reflection

Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003), pp. 3-184

1. does Margaret Atwood’s decision to sketch her vision slowly, instead of summing up this future world’s many changes right from the outset, make the novel unnecessarily difficult to process?  P. D. James, for instance, lays out cause and effect quite clearly in the first six pages of her own dystopia, The Children of Men (1992).  Why might Atwood keep us in the dark about the details for so long?
2. does life in the Compounds sound preferable to that in the pleeblands (cities)?
3. which of the environmental transformations prognosticated by Atwood seem most plausible?
4. can you thread together the novel’s various references to religion to compose an overarching theme?
5. does Atwood’s exploration of interspecies splicing suggest such scientific innovation might offer practical solutions for some of the world’s biggest problems?
6. “What is reality,” asks Crake (83).  Does the novel appear to have an answer?
7. does Oryx believe in the existence of selfless, sacrificial love?
8. why does Jimmy call himself “Snowman”?
9. Jimmy recalls “the different, secret person living inside him” whom no one, least of all his parents, knows about (58).  Any ideas as to which attributes or impulses he’s referring?
10. is Jimmy’s relationship with Killer anticipate the sort of relationship he forms with other animals?
11. does Jimmy's guilt motivate change in him, or merely complicate his emotional life?
12. Snowman comments often on his mind’s deterioration.  Does his intelligence remain sharp enough to problem-solve?
13. where do the voices in Jimmy’s head originate?
14. what does Snowman’s fantasizing about Oryx reveal about the nature of their past relationship?
15. what happens to Jimmy’s sexual impulses following the relocation of Wakulla Price?
16. does Jimmy exist outside the flow of time?
17. does Jimmy’s power of recollection appear reliable?
18. Jimmy’s father once made a distinction between “words people” and “numbers people” (25).  Can Jimmy himself be easily classed as one or the other?
19. does the novel implicitly support the conclusion made by “the body” (85) that the Arts constitute little more than a sublimation of sexual impulses?
20. any thoughts as to why the narrator never names Jimmy’s parents, despite the fact that the chapters describing their lives are told in third-person omniscient?
21. what assumptions about gender roles does Jimmy absorb from watching his parents?
22. has the narrative provided enough information to sketch Jimmy’s mother in three dimensions?
23. is Jimmy his father in miniature?
24. what do the companies employing Jimmy’s father each wish to accomplish?
25. what are Ramona’s most salient qualities?
26. is Crake a distillation of all that is best in humanity?
27. is the description of Crake’s parental units (86-87) irrelevant to understanding his character?
28. immediately before recalling his extended exploration of porn and snuff films online, Snowman reflects on when “the body first set out on its own adventures [. . .] having ditched its old travelling companions, the mind and the soul” (85).  How might Crake himself have explained his own use of video porn?
29. do the games played by Jimmy and Crake serve a practical purpose, or do they merely serve as entertainment?
30. does Atwood refrain from either overt or implicit critique of snuff sites and online porn?
31. do the children of Crake inhabit an existence preferable to that familiar to the middle-class, educated reader?
32. what rules did Crake apparently set in place to regulate the Crakers?
33. do the rules Jimmy concocts for the Children of Crake meld with or deviate from those set in place by Crake himself?
34. do you believe, with Jimmy, that Oryx’s narrative about her past is missing key emotional ingredients?  Which of the various ways of explaining this absence seem most plausible, given what little we know about her?
35. does Jimmy’s and Oryx’s relationship sound like a healthy one?
36.  is Oryx more alone in the city than she was in her small village, or does she find community?
37. like any good parental figure, “Uncle En” instructs the kids to never get in a car or enter a hotel with a stranger (129).  What motivates such proscriptions, in this situation?
38. does Oryx differentiate, in emotional terms, between the two “jobs” she worked in the past?

The Tree of Crows (1822)
Caspar David Friedrich

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu