1. Oryx and Crake are two of the major characters in the book. They are the two people Jimmy truly cares about, and thus their names acting as the title shows. The two combined represent the entire society in the eyes of the protagonist, as Crake describes the inability for their kind to “individualate.. above two hundred [others]… Jimmy would reduce that number to two,” (Atwood 263). The idea that humans only differentiate a certain number of others, typically the amount within their “primal tribe” or society suggests that Oryx and Crake were Jimmy’s entire society, as they are the only ones he can individualize (263). But Crake comes from the name of an extinct animal, as does Oryx. Also the two, who ultimately face death, represent scientific …show more content…
In fact, as the story progresses more and more corporations pop up, each one named after an expectation within society. Most of them are centralized around the idea of escaping age (RejoovenEsense, AnooYoo, NooSkins). The companies feed off of the main ideas the society fabricates: their need for immortality and perfection. Without the ridiculous expectations that society sets, the major corporations within Oryx and Crake would crumble. These corporations have so much money that morals are abandoned, and this occurs in society today as well, not just the dystopian society that Atwood created. One of the scenes that particularly highlights the way major corporations abandon morals when Crake discusses the way that HelthWyzer puts harmful viruses within their vitamins, manufacturing diseases so they profit off of the cure that everyone must now buy (173). What allows HelthWyzer to do this? The societal belief that people are not good enough as they are, and need all these supplements to begin …show more content…
First, there are the people who live within the compounds, which are built by biogenetic companies who have low morals and ethics. These companies represent a more extreme version of the major corporations now, which are willing to abandon morals for profit. Those who live in the compounds work for the companies, constantly creating new drugs and genetically spliced mutations, such as pigoons, which are designed to make profit off of the other portion of the population: those who live in the pleeblands. The pleeblands are crawling with diseases, some of which are manufactured by the compounds to bring in a profit, as the infected population would have to pay for the cure. Those who live in the pleeblands are looked down upon, and are treated as such. Some examples of jobs of ‘pleeblanders’ include sex workers and drug dealers (in the end, though, one could argue the compound companies are simply glorified drug dealers who are no better than those in the Pleeblands). The function of this is once again to relate this dystopian realm, in an extreme manner, to the current one. High end universities and research facilities could be the parallel to Atwood’s compounds, while inner cities where poverty is present could be the parallel of the
As we lose ourselves and our values, worth, and identity as people in the corporate culture, the objectives of monetary profit, status within a company, and machine-like work ethics replace our ethical judgement and our values as people. Perhaps there is nothing we can do about it; after all Skilling and Fastow did not realize what they were doing is immoral and illegal until they were sentenced or even released from their sentence. We are all too absorbed in this capitalistic corporate world we live in. Just like the ancient Chinese philosopher Fu Xuan said, “He who is close to the ink will be stained black,” (Fu, “Prince Shao Fu Xuan”), We have been too used to the immorality and unethical practices of corporate culture that we’re not only numb to the wrongdoings of others within this capitalist society, but we also replace our values as people and our ambitions to do good with objectives of the corporate world. Prebbles posed us the question that after centuries of capitalism’s existence in our society, will our ambitions to do good prevail against our monetary desires and the corporate norm of only profit-driven decisions?
In Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Atwood seems to be offering a forewarning of the troubles that are to arise if our rapacious, self-obsessed society continues at the current rate. Current rate refers to the lack of regard for nature and animal preservation, the increasing intrusiveness of the NSA, the absolute power that large corporations are accumulating, and the severe income disparity. All of which threatens to bring an end to our society. The social issues listed above are a result of a single entity having absolute control over the people; in this case it is the corrupt biotech companies. Corruption is the driving force behind the evils that arise in Oryx and Crake. Mechanisms of control used in Oryx and Crake are similar to those described in Michel Foucault’s “Panopticism”. Panopticism describes that control is effective when enforced through the principles of surveillance, ability to recognize the presence of authority, and isolation. Pharmaceutical companies utilize technology
When the public begins to believe and accept that the poor are less than human, horrible atrocities can be committed against them without anyone taking notice; this allows the government complete control over their livelihoods and enables them to silence anyone who might cause a disruption. In the poverty-stricken areas of Los Angeles and La Joya, the people take on an almost untouchable quality. The homeless of Los Angeles are forced from their encampments and displaced; they are treated like pests that need to be removed. The Mayor takes on the Los Angeles government in various lawsuits, but because he is poor and cannot afford a lawyer to match the city’s high profile defense attorneys, he has no real chance of ever triumphing. As the Mayor also notes, the $297 he receives is only enough to maintain his poverty, not to help bring him out of it. The government, scared of political movements beginning with the poor, seeks to keep them disenfranchised and politically inactive so they cannot pose a threat to the capitalistic system. Meanwhile, the people in La Joya live in squalor and are poisoned by their own government’s dumping of garbage up-river from them. Their babies constantly die and no one, save for their parents, care, however, Elena, within a few hours of reading and poking around discovers the cause of the babies’ deaths. Her attempts to alert the government to the poisoning receives no thanks, but are rather seen as a threat to the government. Elena’s attempts at political activism are silenced before she can really make any difference, meaning that the people of the La Joya slums will continue losing babies and getting ill. They cannot fight for their own rights because they are uneducated and those who try to help them are murdered. This callousness toward the
Many businesses that achieve great success become greedy and want more. Pharmaceutical companies, such as Turing, have been overpricing life-saving drugs since they’ve been discovered. Martin Shkreli, the CEO of the company that raised the price of the H.I.V medicine, was arrested because of wrongdoings involving his former hedge fund and a pharmaceutical company he previously headed. He has been charged with conspiracy to commit security fraud, wire fraud, and using his previous company to cover personal debts. U.S. Attorney Robert Capers says, “As alleged in the indictment, Shkreli essentially ran his companies like a Ponzi scheme, where he used each subsequent company to pay off the defrauded investors in the prior company” (Shkreli).
Atwood creates many ideas in which allude to the thought that an apocalypse was to occur in the future of the novel Oryx and Crake. The presence of separation between a perfect and corrupt society presents many dangerous ideas that lead to the assumption of the ending of human life. In the novel, two different societies are being represented, one being the Pleeblands and the other being the Compound. The Pleeblands have been badly looked upon because p...
Oryx and her mysterious behavior always interests the reader. Not only she is strange as a person, but her background is even stranger. She comes from a family, she knows nothing about. To top it off, she is fully unaware of her native language. The only part she remembers is that she is from a distant foreign place, and her answer, I'm not sure, to every question she is asked makes her personality more intriguing. This might seem like a case of...
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, Oryx and Crake, she constantly places the reader in an uncomfortable environment. The story takes place in a not so distant future where today’s world no longer exists due to an unknown catastrophe. The only human is a man who calls himself the Abominable Snowman or Snowman for short, but in his childhood days his name was Jimmy. If the thought of being all alone in the world is not uneasy enough, Atwood takes this opportunity to point out the flaws of the modern world through Snowman’s reminiscing about Jimmy’s childhood. The truths exposed are events that people do not want to acknowledge: animal abuse for human advancement, elimination of human interaction due to technology, and at the core of the novel is the disturbing imagery that slavery is still present. Modern day servitude is an unsettling topic that has remained undercover for far too long. However, the veracity is exposed in the traumatic story of Oryx. In order to understand the troubled societies of today, Atwood unmasks the dark world of childhood bondage through the character Oryx, but she gives subtle insights on how to change the world for the better before it is too late.
In a world dominated by religion it was thought that the only place where perfection existed was within God. In some cases, for instance the ontological argument, it was the proof to his existence. But in a modern world the concept of perfection has been distorted and comes with an abundance of seemingly negative consequences, ultimately putting into question whether or not perfection is even possible. In Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake the concept of perfection is constantly challenged in a world run by corporations who are trying to package human perfection and profit from it. The desire and attempt towards attaining perfection brings moral instability and corruption. Even though perfection seems as if it is the ultimate and most excellent way to live, it is always accompanied with negative results making true perfection unattainable. As previously mentioned, the society that is most present in the novel is run by large corporations that attempt to provide a perfect life for the people within the Compounds. The corporations are riddled with immoral actions that are projected onto the lives of the people they are trying to provide for. Jimmy, on the other hand, lacks this desire for perfection and is pleased with his mediocrity; this level of being content with himself allows him to feel and exercise more valuable traits like empathy. Finally, through the novel Crake is slowly trying to grasp at, or create perfection and he is slowly losing his moral grounding. What seems to be a positive goal for man to have is actually the opposite, causing men to lose what makes them most different from animals, leaving them cruel and ruthless.
One main belief that defines Dystopian society is the development of a “hierarchical society” (“Dystopia”). A hierarchical society plays a big part in the story that outlines the whole plot. For example, the Capitol is wealthier than all the districts. Some districts are more privileged than others. The Careers, being tributes from districts one to three, were prepared and trained for years before the games.
Dystopian Societies follow a repeated trend in which Information, independent thought, and freedom are restricted. Citizens live in a dehumanized state and are perceived to be under constant surveillance. Severe punishments are enforced when the boundaries of group norms are tested. Throughout Amaryllis, the authorities enforce strict restrictions against the out of control population growth affecting the society. “Thirty- five years ago, my mother ripped out her own implants…She got pregnant… and broke up her household…they were scattered over the region…”.The consequence faced by Marie’s mother highlight the harsh penalties faced by citizens for pushing the boundaries for something that is considered a human right in the current society. Authorities also impose regulations on the amount of produce each family can utilise as it is “the only way to keep the population under control”. The citizens of the underground mining society created by Mastroianni in Jordon’s Waterhammer follow similar disciplinary rules. This is evident in the following eyewitness account by Jordon. “…heard the controller say, Loader Solomon is in violation of quota as required by ordinance 62.1.3. They pressed a particle gun to Solomon’s temple. Solomon dropped dead to the floor.” Just like Marie’s mother, Jordon’s friend Solomon faces deadly consequences for exceeding quota showing the reader the level of strictness of the society. As well as this, the citizen that do abide by the rules, are forced to live in harsh conditions which include “ hearing controls from within the brain” and “sleeping in a closely monitored sarcophagus”. Although strict restrictions are enforced to “keep the society in order”, the citizens face inhuman conditions regardless of whether they break the law or abide by it. This is a major characteristic which has been focused upon in
In Oryx and Crake, greed is the root of every problem encountered within the novel. The technological advancements achieved through the use of science led to the excessive desire of enhancements used to make life more enjoyable and prolonged. The major health corporations such
In a world that has a foreseeable future of climate change, genetically modified humans and animals raise the uncertainty of the future. The unforeseeable future is a reality in Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake. These fears of the future strike an existence in the novel where the main characters Snowman/Jimmy and Crake take on daily challenges. Crake dreams of the world where his version of humanity differs from the others, where there is a world of science rather than art. This affects his version of humanity…….specifically through the world of science. The Protagonist is Snowman who as a child was named Jimmy and was Crake’s friend who is responsible for the state their world is in. Humanity is defined as “the quality or state of
The Novel is set in a dystopian world with a society that lives by the motto “Community, Identity, Stability.” In chapter one, during the visit to the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, the D.H.C. describes a process, the Bokanovsky Process, through which humans are mass produced. “Bokanovsky's Process”, he states, “is one of the major instruments of social stability!" It allows for a stable population where if there is a demand for a specific type of worker, a number of them can be produced to occupy the job. Also through this process, each of the ninety–six humans produced from a single Bokanovsky egg know who and where they are in the community, and that is what the motto “Community, Identity, and Stability” means to all people in this society.
This film has opened up a new perspective to me about the mindset of many of the people that have and are running many of the most noticeable household name brands that we have all come to know since childhood. The film does a very good job of explaining how businesses and corporations have not only grown but evolved over the last 40 plus years. We all know that at the end of the day, a company’s goal is to make money. “The Corporation” gave me a very in-depth look at the extent that major corporations will go to in order to keep their company successful and profitable. With many of the companies that were mentioned in the film, the average person such as myself, would never know that the companies that we support and patronize have taken part in modern day slavery to give use the products that we have come to love. The part of this that was most troubling was the fact that these business practices no matter how unethical we find them are in fact legal and do not
When the problem became serious two main views formed: the “narrow” view and the “broader” view, based on different ideas. The “narrow” view is based on the proposition that corporations have no social responsibility and they have only one main purpose, to make a profit (Friedman, 1970). So corporations should remain socially independent and all conflicts must be solved through the individual responsibility concept. On the contrary the “broader” view states that corporations have social obligations as all existing participants of market, persons and entities are tied together and are mutually dependent. So corporations cannot ignore some serious events or problems, which take place, and must help society, as profit is not their single purpose.