Oryx and Crake

Oryx and Crake is a novel that details the life of a young man named Snowman and his ability to overcome life in a rather post-apocolyptic world. As a young boy, Jimmy, also known as Snowman, befriends a boy named Glenn. Glenn and Jimmy involve themselves in many adventurous acts, such as watching child pornography, smoking skunkweed, and playing outrageous video games. Throughout the story, Glenn is also referred to as Crake. After high school, Crake invents a species called the Crakers. He creates Oryx, a small, asian, Craker girl, who serves as a sort of sex slave or prostitute to him, and is a leader to the Crakers.

While at work, Crake develops a disease that becomes a global pandemic. As it turns out, only a few people are immune to this disease. Soon, only the Crakers and Snowman survive. Although I was not able to track the book extremely well, it appeared as if there was no true conclusion. The human race was modified, and then pushed to extinction. Perhaps this serves as an example of what will happen if our species does not attempt to combat climate change immediately. With rapidly decreasing resources comes a severe increase in competition amongst individuals, which drives people to take actions such as the ones in this book. Although I cannot see life on Earth going as it does in Oryx and Crake, there are some very powerful messages behind some of the events.

Oryx and Crake was by far my least favorite read of this entire class. Although I did not think I could bare to finish the book to conclusion, I did finally commit to reading it last night. Overall, I was very disturbed by some of the discussions in this book. All of the challenges that the main character Snowman faces stem from the implementation of genetically modified organisms in society. Although there will no doubt be problems that result if GMOs dominate society, I find it hard to believe that the events that occurred in this book could ever happen as they were presented in Oryx and Crake. For example,  the humans eat their own feces, there are specific breeding seasons, human organs are grown inside pigoons, or pig-like creatures, and there are many elements of child pornography that are discussed. I personally would not recommend this book to anyone, but there many be individuals looking for a disturbing, post-apocolyptic read.