Chapter 8 in Oryx and Crake goes back in to Jimmy’s memories. It starts out by Jimmy having a difficult time accepting the fact that his father is going to marry someone else. Jimmy sees that something he has to deal with and Crake comforts him throughout these years. They both start to graduate from high school and going on to their respective schools. Throughout Jimmy going to Martha Graham Academy and Crake going to Watson-Crick institute they were separated. While Jimmy attended Martha Graham he started to date women and help them with any problems they had and would build many relationships with many different women. Eventually he would tell them his stories about his troubled life and they would comfort him. They were well aware of the story about his mother, which became a repetitive story for him to share with the girls and serve as pity in him. The girl who had not fallen in to this tap was Oryx. She didn’t because of the way she was brought up and disturbed past. Jimmy goes to visit Crake at Watson-Crick institute and learns much about science and was amazed how the school treated their students. During the visit Jimmy finds out that Crake was part of a group called Madd Addam, which is a radical group that uses science against pharmaceutical companies through various attacks. Jimmy became very uncomfortable and concerned about Crake’s affiliation with the group. Snowman remembers that Crake’s reoccurring nightmares and Crake stated that he could not remember anything in the morning. Jimmy suspects that he is living in Crake’s nightmare.
Snowman now is on his hike and discovers shops that are completely empty; plants growing through the cracks of the buildings, and all visible traces of human habitation are gone. He contemplates the possibility that he is not the only human alive. Snowman spends most of his time remembering the hints that Crake gave him. He remembers an argument he had with Crake, which Crake had asked Jimmy to imagine the world if civilization was destroyed. He feels responsible for not having knowing or seeing the pieces of information in time to have prevented what happened so he blames himself. Snowman’s guilt is mixed with the physical remains of death and destruction that he has to walk through in order to reach RejoovenEsense. The loss of hope that he sees in rotting corpses and abandoned houses is a reminder of what he did not suffer. As he keeps walking he looks and sees in front of him large houses, shopping malls, and clinics for his primarily in search for food. He chooses a random home and enters in a broken window. He finds the remains of a man in the bathroom and a woman lying in the king sized bed. He stops to look at himself in the mirror and he sees a complete stranger looking back at him. The woman in the bed reminds Snowman of Oryx because Oryx had a wig like that and she liked to dress up and changer her appearance to pretend to be different women. He leaps out of a broken window and sees directly across from him a quintuplet of pigoons rooting around in a small heap of trash. His relationship with these animals has changed overtime. His father used to work on a pigoon project at OrganInc farms. When young Jimmy used to go visit them he felt pity for them now he has to run for his life away from them. The pigoons, Crakers, and rakunk all symbolize parts of Snowman’s past. The pigoons were a part of his childhood in relation to his father’s relationship. The Crakers was the beliefs of Snowman’s once best friend. The rakunk, Killer, represent Jimmy’s pet from when he was younger. These creations are a reminder of a past that he can’t escape and his ongoing recollection of the past is portrayed as he lives in a world of his memories.
Jimmy graduates from Martha Graham and I unsuccessful in finding a job in his field. He moves in with his girlfriend, Amanda Payne, he is attracted to her because of her difficult background and is desired to save her from her problems. The death of his mother left Jimmy hurt and never found a resolution. Also with the CorpSeCorps questioning about his mothers whereabouts also kept him even more emotional. He gets a job at AnooYoo and doesn’t really like it but he sticks with it. Once he is given a promotion things start to change for Jimmy and starts to look for women once again. He becomes intimate with married and committed women and he finds this to sooth him because it required no emotional feelings on his part towards these women. Oryx enters his life once again while watching tv about a girl that was trapped in a garage and see Oryx as the girl. Oryx serves in Jimmy’s life during critical points in his life. After not hearing from the CorpSeCoprs for five years they show up at his door and show him a video, which was about his mothers execution. Her last words in the video were, “Goodbye. Remember Killer. I love you. Don’t let me down.” No question that was Jimmy’s mother. He pretended he didn’t know who the woman in the video was when they asked but after a little while he told them about Killer who was his pet rakunk. Later he questioned himself if the execution was even real and if she was still alive. The next couple of days were bad for Jimmy between anger and sadness. He coped with these feelings with sex and alcohol but it didn’t work for him. Once again he would have nightmares of the image of Oryx as a child.
In chapter 11 Snowman is trying to escape from the pigoons. He is trying to outsmart a creature that thinks more like a human and less like a pig. During this time both Snowman and the pigoons have physical restraints because Snowman has injured his foot and the pigoons have short legs are unable to climb to the watchtower. Snowman has success against the pigoons and outsmarts them. While using a radio Snowman hears a voice and now it changes Snowman’s world. Snowman sees from afar a smoke coming from the Crakers encampment. He thinks that it is mist but figures it is smoke. The Crakers always had a fire going but not such a large one before. He thinks they had disobeyed his orders and now have come looking for him and built a signal fire to guide him home.
These chapters I believe shows a pivotal part throughout the story by many things happening. One many memories of him and Crake together of him missing these subliminal messages Crake were portraying. Another of Snowman realizing all the destruction that he hasn’t encounter while walking to RejoovenEsense. Also when the pigoons looking for fresh meat to eat become hunters instead of animals is very eye opening because of his history with these animals. The showing of his mother being murdered becomes a significant stamp through his life. Because of this he starts to imagine Oryx again and again. The most vital part is when Snowman hears someone on the radio and finds out that he may not be the only human alive and which encourages him even more.
Timothy Morton, “Dark Ecology,” relates to Oryx and Crake in a couple of ways. Morton starts to explain what Dark ecology is which is, ecological awareness, dark-depressing but yet ecological awareness is also dark-uncanny. He also goes on to say Ecognosis is something like coexisting. Also is like becoming accustomed to something strange that doesn’t become less strange. This relates to Snowman’s current being in which he is trying to become accustomed to something strange, which is in the state where he is living in. He compares the word, weird, to the Old Norse urth, meaning twisted in a loop. He says that the term weird is a turn or a twist or loop, a turn of events. This also relates to Snowman’s position he is currently in. Morton infers to a term called weird weirdness. He states that ecological awareness is weird. He says that ecological awareness is a loop because human interference has a loop form. He explains that loop from of beings means we live in a universe of finitude and fragility and a world surrounded by mysterious and hermeneutical clouds of unknowing. In the ecologoical paradigm we need to embrace a reality that exists as strange loops. This means that reality is multi-dimensional and Morton also talks about Object-oriented ontology, or OOO. He says that ontology doesn’t tell you what exists but how things exist. OOO is a view of reality and that all of reality is made up of object things and the things that make up reality are shifting. Morton also He uses the story of Jekyll and Hyde and James Lovelock’s analogy of “species equivalent” of the characters.
Questions:
1) Is there a future coexistence?
2) What is the dark ecology in Oryx and Crake?
3) How would the novel change if narrated by Oryx?
