Resumo de Oryx And Crake - Margaret Atwood

This compelling novel is not just a science-fiction thriller. It also
portrays the friendship between two young men with psychological
insights.
The story centres on three characters: Snowman is a reluctant prophet
who finds himself abominable. Crake (named after an Australian bird) is
no mad scientist, but a multifaceted person with a vision, but deeply
resentful of the way the world is. Oryx (named after an antilope) is a
young Asian woman with a sad childhood as a sex slave.
The novel features conspiracies, murder, and grotesque experiments
in
defiance of the natural order. The author, whose style is fresh and
pointed, offers us a lot of comic relief. Near the end, the narrative
becomes dizzying like a rollercoaster when we learn what actually
happened..The book also deals with the need for warmth and trust within
human relationships, and Margaret Atwood shows a deep concern for our
environment.

When the story begins, Snowman lives in the open air, completely devoid
of a sense of time and with a gap in his memory. He has to endure a
frightful heat and symptoms of starvation. Because the ozone layer is
gone, he has to hide during the day. On top of that, Snowman is
onesome, missing Oryx and Crake- the only persons in the world he
really cared about. Always on the lookout for genetically altered
predators, his first priority is to find food and weapons.
Like himself, the world is in sorry shape. At several points in the
story, we learn that ecological catastrophes had taken place many years
ago. Snowman lives on the coast and sees the partially submerged
skyscrapers:
A giant wave had destroyed the cities on the East Coast- New York had to be rebuild somewhere else.
A freak compared to the new human species living nearby, Snowman keeps
to himself. Like their creator, the Crakers have green eyes. They are
uniformly beautiful, smell like walking fruit, are resistant to UV-rays
and don´t eat animals- the children of Oryx. The most striking thing is
that they are incapable of violence and jealousy. Although Crake
designed them not to be religious, they worhip him like a god. As they
were created in a lab, they have no past. Ironically, they are named
after historical persons. They see Snoman as their advisor and prophet,
for he is the only one who knows the strange things around them and
seems to communicate with Crake.
Snoman tales the readers on a trip to a time when his name was Jimmy.
He lived with his parents in a hightech compound. His father helped
design a pig that grew organs used for transplants. Interested in
literature and a lover of old words, Jimmy was seen as an
underachiever. His father iignored him, his mother gave him no love.
She used to attack her husband who had sacrificed his initial idealism
in favour of earning money.
Keen on making profits, the companies did not hesitate to squash their competitors with vile means.
Jimmy was much better off than the youths in plebland- run-down urban
areas, where they lived in poverty, turning to drugs and violence.
At highschool he struck up friendship with Glenn- a biology and maths
ace with dark humour. They played interactive computer games, in one of
which Glenn was nicknamed Crake. Wanting to impress him, Jimmy watched
live-executions on the Net with Crake, but later had nightmares. At a
child porn site, they met Oryx who had been sold by her parents.
Many years later, Crake worked as a gene-splicer and asked Jimmy to
come on board, filling him on his secret project: a new human species.
Oryx, his assistant, firmly believed in his vision. However, we realize
that there is only a thin line between idealism and fanaticism. She met
Jimmy and briefly illuminated his life with love.

In order to find weapons, Snowman has to go back to Paradice-
the hightech compound where everything started. In the process, he will
confront his past. On the whole, the situation is rather bleak, but
there is
hope that the Crakers will evolve,
never to repeat humanity´s mistakes.

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