The Doctrine of Unintended Consequences

"They were made by dreams, and now that no one is dreaming
them any longer they are crumbling away (222).
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003)

Points for Reflection

Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003), pp. 185-261

1. does Jimmy/Snowman appear as obsessed with his physical appearance as others in his culture?
2. in what ways has the natural environment become hostile?
3. can we extrapolate likely environmental changes from the list of rare foods?
4. do those who create new animal admixtures through genetic splicing appear driven by pragmatism?
5. do the novel’s scattered references to God’s Gardeners provide enough detail for us to sketch this group’s agenda?
6. why does the advent of the Happicuppa bean, developed by a HelthWyzer subsidiary, trigger so much violence?
7. does the world now inhabited by Snowman resemble life in the Pleeblands more than life in the Compounds?
8. does the world now inhabited by Snowman resemble pre-catastrophe life in the Pleeblands more than pre-catastrophe life in the Compounds?
9. why might Atwood have named the area outside the compounds “pleeblands”?
10. what experiences do the privileged few living in compounds miss out on?
11. does Crake consider reality infinitely malleable?
12. do most of the scientific innovations into which future folk put time and money seem more absurd than practical?
13. do HelthWyzer’s secret machinations seem plausible?
14. what might Jimmy’s mother have meant by the message, “Don’t let me down” (258-59)?
15. what drives Jimmy’s fascination with and collection of obscure books and old words?
16. what do the stand-up routines demanded of Jimmy, by his friends at Martha Graham Academy, signal about the ways the world has changed?
17. has the guilt Jimmy felt as a child dissipated as an adult?
18. do the voices in Jimmy’s head comfort more than they confuse him?
19. is it possible to draw a connection between Jimmy’s and Crake’s teenage familiarity with porn and their later sex lives?
20. confronted by Crake with the picture of Oryx that had so struck Jimmy when he was fourteen years old, Jimmy tells himself he did nothing wrong—he only looked.  Does this novel implicitly support his quite attestations of innocence?
21. are we to assume that Jimmy’s sexual impulses and chosen modes of expression are normal, or idiosyncratic, in the world he inhabits?
22. does Atwood’s presentation of sex trafficking normalize it?
23. does Crake present as asexual?
24. does this novel answer Jimmy’s question of whether Crake is neurotypical (194)?
25. what core principles shape Crake’s worldview?
26. which of MaddAddam’s ideas does Crake internalize?
27. do Crake’s children lack any important human traits?
28. does sex among the Crakers sound preferable to what currently exists?
29. why does Crake dismiss the Arts so completely?
30. do Martha Graham University and Watson-Crick Academy share any important features?
31. what literary dystopias does Atwood draw upon in creating this novel?

The Tree of Crows (1822)
Caspar David Friedrich

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu