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Nahar 1

 

Promi Nahar

 

ENVS 1800

 

York University

 

4 April 2016

 

Unanticipated Consequences of Technology

 

Dystopian novels are generally considered to be dependent upon their ability to

 

effectively criticize present world through the extension of their consequences. Their

 

consequences are represented within a future world dramatically devoid of morals. Margret

 

Atwood demonstrates this in her novel, Oryx and Crake. It depicts the ruins of a dystopian

 

society once ruled by power hungry corporations. Snowman, also known as Jimmy, is the main

 

character of the novel and apparently the only real human alive. He is left to survive in the

 

contaminated environment his society has created. Through Jimmy?s recollection of the past,

 

Atwood is able to develop the theme that a society no longer governed by morals or ethics.

 

Atwood presents a technoscientific society where genetic engineering itself is not inherently

 

dangerous, but where blatant disregard for questions of morality and ethical concerns, and cause

 

destruction.

 

First, the society in Oryx and Crake is where technology and scientific advancement is

 

wildly praised by several characters, since it is believed that technology enhances life. Most of

 

the technology went into genetic alterations, which gave several dystopian features. For example,

 

there is merge between a goat and a spider to make a gider, which was helpful in making "high

 

tensile spider silk filaments used for bulletproof vests? (Atwood 199). This escaladed to rakunks,

 

a racoon and skunk hybrid; snats, a rat and snake hybrid; wolvogs, a wolf and dog hybrid; and

 

 

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more. Creations such as pigoons, bioengineered pigs, are used to grow and harvest human

 

organs. Furthermore, some of these splices were useful but most were only for making scientists

 

"feel like God"(Atwood 51).

 

Jimmy and Jimmy?s mother demonstrates that they feel uncomfortable about genetic

 

engineering as they thinks it is unnatural and dangerous. Atwood also reveals a subtle connection

 

between the narrator?s identification as a ?words person? and his relatively isolated sense of

 

morality compared to the blatantly immoral and inhumane society in which he live. Jimmy feels

 

empathetic for the animals around him. He thinks, ?Why is it he feels some line has been

 

crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?? (Atwood

 

206). The ChickieNobs, that are headless chicken breast, were made because the corporations are

 

only in it for the money. Instead of valuing food grown naturally and the spread of wealth

 

throughout a population, everyone is concerned with getting cheap stuff in bulk.

 

On the other hand, Jimmy?s father and Crake, say that genetic engineering is simply

 

humanity?s next, natural step in evolution, without which their potential becomes unnecessarily

 

limited Another similar example is the Happicuppa beans, which made the coffee cheaper but

 

took away numerous jobs for workers. Thus, this showed that moral lines were crossed and

 

beginning to disregard nature.

 

The characters in the novel execute ultimate control over nature. Snowman's father, who

 

works for the OrganInc Farm, where human organs were donated and are grown in actual pigs

 

called pigoons. The opportunity to make money off selling these organs is a huge

 

accomplishment for OrganInc Farm. The practice itself is extremely unnatural and many fear the

 

idea of the corporations, who are not under the control of any governing body, passing on these

 

crosses between humans and pigs as pork due to the lack of meat. ?Still as time went on and the

 

 

Nahar 3

 

coastal aquifers turned salty and the vast tundra bubbled with methane and the drought in the

 

mid-continental plains region went on and on and the Asian steppes turned to sand dunes and

 

meat became harder and harder to come by, some people had their doubts?(Atwood 24). This

 

environmental upset that Jimmy describes is caused by society's lack of regard for nature and

 

directly relates to why meat is no longer available. Thus, protecting the environment is no longer

 

a factor in the world of big business.

 

Atwood demonstrates the corporations have a lot of power over on the character?s

 

lives. For instance, Jimmy?s father also shows a lack of emotions and feelings towards Jimmy.

 

When Jimmy was young, Jimmy?s father was trying to explain what a disease. However, Jimmy

 

did not understand it fully and became upset. His mother replied saying, ?Leave Daddy alone

 

[?] Daddy is thinking. That?s what they pay him for. He doesn?t have time for you? (Atwood

 

47). Snowman?s father not having enough time for his own son shows how corporations take

 

over one?s compassionate and time for their family. Jimmy's father is also irresponsible as a

 

parent, since he is always forgetting Jimmy's birthday every year. The corporations in the novel

 

employ science and marketing techniques that make the public powerless consumers.

 

Atwood also reveals a dark world of childhood bondage through the character of Oryx.

 

When Oryx first appears in the novel, she is an eight year old child. Crake and Snowman

 

discover her on an Internet pornography website. Oryx wears a garland of flowers and a pink

 

hair ribbon, and in the movie, she licks whipped cream off a grown man. She turns to the camera

 

and smiles contemptuously at whomever will watch this pornography. Crake downloads and

 

prints out the frozen image of that moment. When Oryx is a teenager, she appears on the news as

 

a foreign girl who has been kept locked in a garage by a San Francisco pharmacist. She claims

 

 

Nahar 4

 

that he saved her from a life of pornography and locked her in his garage to keep her safe. In

 

addition, Atwood shows that there is an elimination of human interaction due to technology.

 

The society in Oryx and Crake consists of large corporations and their workers who live

 

in compounds that serve as cities. The cities itself serve as uncivilized wastelands called the

 

pleeblands. This distinction draws the thick line between the rich and powerful and the average

 

working class. Jimmy lives during a time where there is medication or a vaccine for anything and

 

everything. People also survive off of food that is not even made from real ingredients, rather,

 

from soy or some type of genetically modified product. Thus, this shows that ethics and morals

 

are no longer questioned in the society by characters living in this society.

 

Once the damages were caused by technology, the characters in the novel are greedy

 

enough that they will destroy the environmental to the point where it is unrecognizable. Atwood

 

used her novel to point out the possible dangers of creation if ethical concerns are not addressed.

 

Crake?s ego in his search for god-like capabilities overpowers his humanity. His work stems only

 

from his own greed. Crake?s genetically engineered humans are programmed to worship him as a

 

deity. It also shows that humans have stopped worrying about the ethical issues revolving around

 

genetic engineering. To Crake, "Immortality [?] is a concept. If you take 'mortality' as being,

 

not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then 'immortality' is the absence of such

 

fear? (Atwood 356). Crake explains his alternate interpretation of the concept of immortality.

 

This understanding of immortality drives Crake?s dream for making the Paradice Project.

 

Furthermore, the Crakers? existence is shaped by Crake's quest to achieve a manifestation of his

 

version of immortality.

 

The human-derived Crakers also play a part in demonstrating the lack of communication,

 

as human language holds little context for them. The Crakers show enthusiasm in learning new

 

 

Nahar 5

 

ideas and words, since they do not know what anything is. This is due to feelings such as

 

suspicion, fear, doubt, aggression, and several more, have all been programmed out of them by

 

Crake. The Crakers take Snowman?s explanation for every question very seriously, no matter

 

how ridiculous the explanations actually are. However, Snowman must be careful when

 

answering their questions because usually they simply trigger more questions. For instance,

 

when Snowman tries to explain the meaning of a simple word to them, such as ?toast,? it only

 

raises more questions.

 

The Crakers have no concept of manufactured food, agriculture, or technology. Human

 

civilization does not exist in their frame of reference, so there is no commonality upon which to

 

base understanding. Snowman recognizes that even if he writes a diary, ?he?ll have no future

 

reader,? not only because of the Crakers? inability to read, but also because of their division with

 

his reality which ?any reader he can possibly imagine is in the past? (Atwood 32). The Crakers

 

were created to maximize quality of life and minimize impact on the Earth. Among the traits

 

genetically given to them, an inability to read, a lack of interest in art, a lack of desire to worship

 

a higher being, and an ignorance of death were the most pertinent to achieving Crake's desired

 

immortality.

 

When Crake?s BlyssPluss pill came out, it eliminated many of the non-biological causes

 

of death. It created everlasting youth and immortality. However, after taking the pill, rapidly a

 

deadly virus makes the body disintegrate and shut down. Neither Oryx, Snowman, nor the

 

scientists working for Crake knew what is really in the BlyssPluss pill. When one night the news

 

begins reporting a serious outbreak of an unknown virus occurring simultaneously all over the

 

world, Oryx realizes from the specific locations being reported that she unknowingly assisted

 

Crake?s destruction of the human race.

 

 

Nahar 6

 

Although society?s roles are increasingly central to the functioning of a technoscientific

 

society, technical responsibility, while continuing to be framed in terms of roles, is gradually

 

weakened in the moral sense. According to Jimmy, who was the last human left in the society, he

 

thought that, ?maybe there weren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. It never

 

learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term

 

pain? (Atwood 243). This reflection made by Jimmy is a conversation with his girlfriend?s

 

roommates. Her roommates are forward-thinking, feeling that humanity needs to change its

 

course to avoid destruction. However, society had already been corrupt due to humans not

 

learning from their past mistakes, and would only lead to a greater destruction. Thus, Jimmy

 

thought that it had been too late to solve any problems that society has.

 

Margaret Atwood shows a horrific portrait of genetic engineering gone completely

 

wrong. Scientific freedom was creating as much problems as it seemed to solve. On one hand

 

making a lot of interesting products, however on the other hand, it is causing a lot of. During the

 

last half of the 20th century in contemporary technological societies, professional roles gained

 

such prominence that, together with their associated expectations and codes of conduct, they

 

constitute one of the major foundations of contemporary ethical problems and dilemmas. Given

 

the chance to create scenic images and that one might never be afforded the opportunity to, these

 

authors use their novels as a medium for foreshadowing a world that could be if humans continue

 

at the rate they are going. Now, the only question is if their predictions will ever come true.

 

Works Cited

 

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake: A Novel. New York: Anchor Books, 2004. Print.

 

 



 

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