The Reality of Sex Slavery in the Present Day

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.

Snowman lives in a world of isolation and hopelessness; be that as it may, the world Jimmy lived it was not similar to Snowman’s. Before a catastrophic epidemic broke out and annihilated the entire human race, the world was similar to the United States of America in 2014: children attended school, educators pushed students to understand math and sciences, and parents were wrapped up in their own desires. Obviously, the book is science-fiction, and not set in the present day, in fact that the citizens live in high security research compounds or in the...

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...ave money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also, there were many who had neither love nor money value, and having one of these things was better than having nothing. (Atwood 126)

It was better to be held in bondage and seen as an object of pleasure than to have nothing. Human trafficking is not a something that needs to continue. It will take time and effort to stop, but if all individuals put a fraction more into the prevention and extinction of sex slavery, never again would a child have to be alone in the world and have to continue to believe in a love that was never obtainable.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake: A Novel. New York: Anchor, 2003. Print.

"Human Trafficking Facts & Stats." Force 4 Compassion. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.