Chapter 5 is where it is established that Snowman “also known as Jimmy ”is officially the last original Craker. Snowman has all of this power to make rules and regulations that everyone has to follow. The small children’s that lived in his village would always question why he would always talk to himself, he always got annoyed at them and he would tell them to leave him alone and if they didn’t then they would be toast. The metaphor that he used they never would understand because they do not use metaphors in their everyday life. They only interpret words as is with just one meaning to it. They lack so much creativity and art and this why Snowman has such a hard time communicating and relating to them. Jimmy loves language, art and human creativity. He has made them perform rituals. This depicts language will be going through some type of extinction and destruction because it lack linguistic structures and lacked judgments. Snowman despised the way the Crakers lived, but he had no choice but to follow rules that he already made up.
Snowman has responsibilities as a role model because he makes rules and daily routines for the people in his village. Crakers are vegetarians and he has set a ritual for them to feed him as their daily duties. After feeding him one day he decides to draw a picture with mud to depict chaos and how he would get rid of it by making the great emptiness. The Crakers were so confused and thought he was trying to have the perception of God. After, he started to be questioned and wanted to know how was Crake born? He didn’t want to be questioned much about his statement so he tried to think of the simplest answer, which was Crake came from the sky, like thunder. He then tries to get out from the situation and tells them he is too exhausted to talk. But, his response shows some type of God like influence because he said Crake just came from the sky.
Oryx is the girl that Snowman loves and he tries to explain that it isn’t just sexual fantasies. Oryx went through a different life than Snowman and when she explains her story to him he starts to feel rage because of her past. Oryx was sold when she was younger to her Uncle En. Her uncle had a lot of children that he was responsible for and he made them work to make him money. She understood that her mother had sold her because she loved her and didn’t want her to be lonesome. Snowman is so angered by her life and they can’t relate to each other’s life because Snowman lived a grateful life. Because she lacked love from her mother she found that her mother followed her and spoke to her to through nature. The birds whistling would be the noise of her mother comforting her as she walked through the forest. Her uncle had drove them over a border where they were check pointed and he gave them money to let them go. This depicted that her life was basically passed through service of money. Oryx brother and her were put to sell and because of his lack of physical attraction and he would always do terrible at sales. One day he heard that he would be doing prostitution runs and he ended up running away to an unknown world that he didn’t know about. Uncle En arranges her up with men to go to hotels so he could bust into the room and scare the men who ask for sexual services. He makes it seem like he’s saving her, but he does it to frighten the men and they give all the money in their wallet. Uncle En tells her loves her and tells her he wish he could marry her, but he only says that to continue for her to be okay with this situation to make him more money. She later goes on to telling him that she would have secluded sex with Jack and he would teach her English. This infuriated Snowman so much by her acceptance of this life she lived. When she speaks to him she sees how much of a Crake he is, by the way he communicates and reacts to what she says. After he wakes up he debates on leaving Crake, but he doesn’t because he realizes he would be putting his people at risk for endangerment. As he enters back to the site, everyone is doing their day-to-day routine and the men start to urinate around their territory so no predators would come their way.
Andermatt wrote his dissertation “Toxic Discourse” about people going through environment disasters affects us psychologically and when it attacks our personal space and where we live. In relation to Onyx and Crake, there could have been a reason like a natural disaster wiped out the original Crakers and Snowman is the only one left. As for his it affecting him emotionally it has taken a toll on him because of his loneliness and responsibility of keeping them safe. Since, Snowman feels like he has to protect everyone he feels as if he has to take care of the environment they live in. Toxic Discourse talks about us depending on nature, food, water, and shelter and only if it is endangered then we actually care.
Toxic Discourse says, “The real toxicity is established when there is a fear of the unknown. Oryx brother had run away when he heard that he would have to be a prostituted in fear of the unknown.
Questions:
- Are we that selfish to only care when it’s us being affected?
- Do you think you would make rule or rituals for people to serve you food the way Snowman did?
- Why do you think the Crakers didn’t see it morally wrong for serving Snowman as a ritual?
I think we are selfish only care when it us humans being affected. But I also think that that is simply how we are wired. Our instincts and thought process put together allow us to be able to evaluate situations that can kill us or put our lives in danger. I think that that if animals had this power, they too would be selfish and probably slaughter us like we slaughter them. I probably would not make it a ritual for someone to serve me food the way Snowman did. It reminds me of Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.” Robinson forces Friday to do many things for him. In a way, Friday is like Robinson’s slave. I think the Crakers did not see it morally wrong because it was an exchange. Snowman taught them things and so maybe they thought “okay lets feed him, its normal”
For your first question I would like to answer that it is not selfish for us humans to care about the environment when it is us being affected. Of course, when an apocalypse hits and all humanity wipes out of the face of the planet, all the other creatures and plants will have a much easier time being alive. As far as we know however, humans are the only creatures capable of forming morals, appreciate art, feel compassion, cure diseases, build massive skyscrapers, ponder the laws of the universe, go to space, understand and study other living matter, hug/kiss/love one another and so much more. Only us humans will ever understand what these achievements truly mean.
I think it would be selfish to sacrifice the comfort of your own existence just so a couple more birds can have a nest on a tree. I personally don’t even care for the argument of “What if this person was going to cure global warming? And you took away his electricity and books because you wanted to save a few trees and fossils.”. Just the presence of a human being on planet earth gives the essence of life deep and astronomical meaning. It would be incredibly selfish and offensive to try and inhibit pure human joy and comfort, not only to the people but to the whole progress of life.
The world is a large and expansive place. Even in the novel, and how Snowman “Jimmy” maybe the last of his kind, there are new creatures and more unknown in the new world. Trying to find a balance of what Snowman used to know, and to incorporate it in the new post-apocalyptic era is challenging. This is so much to process, for our lone survivor, so I tend to disagree that, we as humans aren’t too selfish to only care when something is affecting us directly. New York City is also a great example of this. Within the 5 boroughs, there are more than 8 million people in an condensed area. So much is going on, that if we try to attend to everything, it would be a stimulus overload to the individual. This is called the urban hypothesis theory. People have to look after themselves first before helping others. If you can’t help yourself, you can’t help others.
I believe I said in a previous class example, Snowman is trying to lead and make rules in the sole aspect of surviving. He is supposedly the last human to exist. The crakers are genetically modified beings that are resistant to UV light exposure. They can exist in this new world. If Snowman’s identity is exposed, and it is known that he is lacking/deficient, the crakers may get rid of him or ignore him.
Jimmy was not physically built to survive in this new climate the way the crakers were. They were a created species not an evolved one so they did not comprehend humanity and the intricate differences but they did understand that they were stronger than he was. I think that to make it as easy as possible for them, with all their immunities to the weather, to help Jimmy survive it was necessary to create rituals. Oryx had told the crakers that Crake created them and Crake and Oryx both had asked Jimmy to make sure that he looked after the crakers if anything happened to either one of them. When he created the rituals, ensuring his survival, he was fulfilling a promise he had made to both Oryx and Crake. Without those rituals Jimmy may not have survived as long as he did.
As for the morality of the crakers it is my understanding that they were created to be void of certain human emotions. Morality is subject to interpretation therefore I would think that Crake would have created the crakers without the idea of morality. He would have ingrained certain behavioral features in them eliminating the need for the individual choices and therefore a decision making mechanism such as morality. As a result the idea that they could question why they were doing something for Jimmy instead of him doing it for himself is not a possibility in these new people.
For some reason your focus on the Crakers in the beginning of this comment made me wonder: We keep asking if the Crakers are human, or how human they might be, but we don’t look at it from a Craker perspective. I wonder where they might place us on their own graph of the “uncanny valley.” They’re one of the few creatures whose interior lives are held back from us as readers — we get the Creature’s perspective, even if mediated through Frankenstein; we get Jekyll and Hyde’s perspectives in their letters; and we get Kathy H.’s unmediated personal narrative — but we never know what the Crakers are thinking. Is this because they are more obviously nonhuman than the other characters? Or is this the reason that they are more obviously nonhuman than the other characters?
I don’t think it is surprising that we care only when we are being affected. If mosquitoes and bed bugs became extinct, we would not be concerned about them as they don’t benefit us at all. If something special to us is being taken away, then we will be concerned and it is a survival instinct.
The idea of having a group of people doing your bidding sounds tempting. Jimmy is living as if he were a king, knowing more than the Crakers who are thirsty for knowledge. It sounds like a good plan to survive in the empty post apocalyptical world, when he is the only original human around with no supermarket to buy food.
The Crakers don’t see it as morally wrong to serve Snowman as a ritual because they don’t know any better. They are like small children and have little knowledge of the actual world. Crakers are artificial human beings engineered to be obedient and not have conflict like previous humans have fought.
The world is a very large place and I think it be impossible to know everything that is going on in the world and to care to the extent that it would affect you and I do not think that makes you selfish. It is a natural thing for humans to care about themselves first then to worry about others. But of course there are many circumstances where we have to think about another person first.
The Crakers do not see an issue with serving food to Snowman because they do not know any better. I had stated in another comment that the Crakers are like children, they are very innocent and do not know any better. They really can only go by Snowman would tell them, and they really have no choice but to believe him.
Besically, human beings are self-centered. From your blog, it is evident that people are always working for the good of themselves only. Snowman the only original craker has elevated himself to a god’s place. This is seen where he sets rules and regulations that should be followed by everyone. He goes ahead to set a ritual for them to feed him as their daily duties. This shows the extent to which people are selfish. On the other hand, uncle en said to have a lot of children he was responsible for and he made them work to make him money . lastly, there is an example shows how people are selfish is where we see men urinating around their territories so that no predators would come their way.
1. I feel like most humans, in general, are quite selfish. So it is fairly normal for people to care only when something is affecting them. However, I personally do not think it is moral for people to be so selfish. There are so many issues in the world and for people to only care when these issues affect them is exactly why these issues still exist.
2. If the rule/ritual was pertinent to my survival, then yes I would. I don’t think Snowman did this to the Crakers for negative or demeaning reasons. He needs the fish to get the right kind of nutrients, and the Crakers are not like normal humans so they don’t have the social skills like Snowman does. In order to survive, he needed to make the Crakers think bringing him fish once a week was a ritual. It may seem twisted, but Snowman did what he did to live.
3. The Crakers don’t understand human concepts and social skills, so they believed serving Snowman in ritual form was normal and what their creator wanted them to do. One could say Snowman “tricked” them, but they don’t know any better, and getting the fish for Snowman wasn’t putting them in any danger.
I’ve always believed that selfishness has always been and is an essential part of the human experience. When humanity is affected, we begin to take action (Not all of us, but a good amount). The interesting part is that we even see these actions among ourselves through race, religion, etc.. We only begin to care about a danger once our own group becomes threaten by it.
Yes, I would do the same thing Snowman did. There’s a point where you have to do these things out of survival, I’ve seen something similar to this in my native country of Honduras. I would see how really poor families would teach their children how to eat small amounts of food, they would use religion to enforce this idea by telling them that the bible clearly states that being selfish is wrong and that everyone had to eat small amounts of food in order for everyone to have food. In reality, the reason they did this was that they didn’t have enough food in the first place, they weren’t able to afford it.
Are we that selfish to only care when it’s us being affected?
I believe a majority of people are very selfish and usually only care when it’s them being affected or if it seems like they aren’t being affected and they genuinely care, a lot of the time, I notice they are affected in some sort of a way. Selfish needs are a driving force behind most of our actions. When you think about animals and people who care about animals, I believe that even though its not apparent on the outside, there is something on the inside, a driving force that pushes them to act. A majority of human behavior and usually almost everything that we do is through selfish reasons. We wake up in the morning, get out of bed, brush our teeth—that’s a selfish act we do to improve ourselves. Every action we make is to feel better and to improve, or because we get something out of it. Some of my classmates mentioned if you care about the environment then that’s not selfish—however when we care about the environment, it’s because we’re worried about not having a good environment that’s inhabitable with fresh water and other necessary resources. When you care about an animal, is that an unselfish love or is it because you feel an emotional connection with the animal and you feel love from it? I do entirely believe that every act is selfish. When someone helps another person, they receive satisfaction or a good feeling. If you did something and you felt terrible, like you really didn’t want to do it, most likely you would try not to do it again. That satisfaction is a selfish act, but that does not imply you are a bad person because your actions consisted of selfish reasons. Even if you are doing a good deed, yes it may be selfish, but despite this, a good act is still a good act.
Are we that selfish to only care when it’s us being affected?
I dont believe that we are selfish to only care when it is us being affected. Obviously if a tragedy happened to us, or happened to someone we care about, we would feel a way and immedietly be affected. But why? Because obviously we care about those people. But when we see something happen to others, we still feel pain and sorrow for them. Of course we wont be as devastated if we did not know them, but we still feel sadness towards them. Just because we are not as affected doesnt mean we do not care.Does that mean we are selfish because were not affected? No. We just dont know those people like that so we are not going to be as affected. Of course I would still feel sad and have emotions, but it doesnt make us careless or selfish. it does not make us less of a human. You stil can care without being affected.
I do believe it’s selfish to only care when its us being affected. I also don’t always think that’s a bad thing. There are always limits to what’s ok but I don’t always think it’s bad to be selfish. There’s a line of “It’s not my problem” to “you should be helping” and it’s different for everyone. It’s too hard to always say when that’s right and wrong. To never do anything for others I personally find wrong, but at the same time I believe I owe myself sometimes as well. But I do believe there’s a median and people so selfless things.
I do think we are all selfish, that’s so true and it’s a mainly humanity that we have, I’m not saying that we are bad but it’s true that we all selfish at the most of time, but I don’t agree with the “we only care when we got affected”, i believe sometime we don’t want to deal with the problem if it is not on us was because we don’t want to put ourselves into a dangerous situation and that’s not mean we are selfish or not want to help.