Self Discovery in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake

2269 Words5 Pages

How does one go about discovering the veiled mysteries of oneself? First and foremost, what is the self? The self is who we are as an individual. It is the ethics, beliefs, values, opinions, thoughts, actions and everything that one does. Knowing oneself is also knowing what one desires out of life, ones goals and aspirations. External appearances have very little to do with the self. “Oryx and Crake” is a novel by Margaret Atwood that demonstrates how certain intriguing, distinctive characters develop themselves. Her novel demonstrates how there is no simple way of discovering oneself, but rather a combined method. Margaret Atwood’s book Oryx and Crake demonstrates that both the constituted and atomistic methods of self-discovery must be practiced to fully understand oneself. The captivating characters and people in her book Oryx and Crake demonstrate this. The constituted method is when one discovers themselves through others. There is a false way and an effective, true way to discover oneself in a constituted manner. The false way of self-discovery is copying other people’s sense of self. (Their beliefs, opinions, actions… etc.) The other more effective method would be to learn from the experiences of others, and to learn from who they are. It is taking the self-understanding from others and deciding what to accept as one’s own self-understanding. Ultimately, the decision of the ideas to believe or reject must be made by the individual. The Atomistic way of discovering the self is to look into oneself. It is discovering oneself through self-analysis and learning through one’s own experiences. The discoveries and sense of self-developed in this manner are unaffected by the people around the individual. The novel “Oryx a... ... middle of paper ... ...her. They were developed in a constituted manner, but incorrectly. They were influenced greatly by their surroundings, and many people went against natural human instinct that should bellow: this is wrong! Their morals became reflections of the people around them. Loads of people had entirely no sense of self. They ignored their inner self’s morals, and therefore did not develop themselves atomistically. They developed themselves in a false constituted manner. Since they did not truly develop themselves in either a constituted or an atomistic way, they had no sense of who they were. From the people in Atwood’s book, it is concluded that the greater the balance of self-development in both the constituted and atomistic methods, the better one’s understanding of the self. Therefore, both methods must be combined to have the most optimum results in self-understanding.

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