Snowman and the Crakers...plus maybe 3 more people. What will he choose to do? At the end of the novel, is Snowman a phoenix rising from the ashes and is there a hope for rebirth? Can he "Imagine"?
Margaret Atwood was in the process of writing Oryx and Crake, had mapped out the novel and reached the end of Part 7 by September 11, 2001. She recalls, "It's deeply unsettling when you're writing about a fictional catastrophe and then a real one happens."
She classifies Oryx and Crake as "speculative fiction" rather than "science fiction," since it "invents nothing we haven't already invented or started to invent....It's not a question of our inventions - all human inventions are merely tools --but of what might be done with them; for no matter how high the tech, homo sapiens sapiens remains at heart what he's been for tens of thousands of years - the same emotions, the same preoccupations."
Ultimately, "We are betrayed by what is false within."
The novel ends with Chapter 15. Post in your response what you think Snowman will do and what will happen in the next chapters.
Welcome to our online discussion forum. This blog is our chance to discuss in depth the ideas that we mentioned in class. You can also post hyper links, images, and other resources to extend and enrich our discussion. Enter and enjoy!
Connie Mietlicki, Ph.D.
Research Director, Center of Excellence for Learning Sciences
Tennessee State University
Nashville, Tennessee
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15 comments:
The other three people are *obviously* the three he locked out when the catastrophe hit. I think that he will come to realize this. The questions remains of whether Snowman will accept the three back (if they are willing to forgive him for locking them out) or will he want to remain the only terminal between the Crakers and "Crake" himself.
Part of me says that he will realize who they are and embrace them. He spoke throughout the novel on numerous occasions of wishing he has someone to talk to during the day. He knows he cannot form relationships with the Crakers, mostly because their intelligence level is different from his own and they are a different kind of homo sapiens. Also, he had showed some irritation with having to deal with the Crakers at all. He only likes to tell so much of a story because he is trying to stay loyal to his best friends by taking care of their “offspring.” Plus, he would have more help in developing his own housing and shelter. He could also use them to go on journeys or errands looking for others, like themselves, who may be left.
The other part of me, however, says he has been the alpha homo sapiens for too long and is not going to be willing to risk involving other people. By allowing them into the “circle” and introducing them to the Crakers, he has to explain both sides of the stories (Crake’s and the Crakers’). In addition, he runs the risk of them betraying him, and somehow endangering the Crakers. If they don’t endanger them, they could turn them into “normal” people and cause any other number of conflicts. The colony currently lives in peace with little change from what Crake originally wanted. Adding three more people with their own agendas could alter that state.
To be honest, I think Snowman is going to realize who they are, they are going to realize who he is, and I think there will be a fight. Then, I think that he will try to reckon with them in order to gain some benefits, like food. I think that they will want to be in charge and in so doing they will wipe out the only chance of further humanization of the world.
I think this because this has been proven over and over again throughout the histories of every nation. England did it in Africa and America. Other European countries have done it to smaller countries. Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Serbia—and that’s all just in the last 200 years. Before England was England, before Italy was Italy, before Russia was Russia, a few people managed to destroy, or almost destroy, entire cultures. I think Snowman could have been a phoenix rising from the ashes, but I really think that the others will plot against him and he will be overturned, like the many kings and emperors before him.
Being that Snowman is now the elite since Crake is gone, I think that he will use it to his benefit.
I believe that in his loyalty to Oryx and Crake he will do whatever it takes to protect the Crakers. Though he feels that everything that the Crakers say and do is annoying, he relishes in the fact that he can say and do no wrong in their eyes.
Snowman will continue to be devious,as Atwood put it, and create increasingly ridiculous stories about Crake.
As far as the other three people are concerned, I think that Snowman will put up with them until they pose a threat to himself or the Crakers. They do pose a threat since they are armed but so is Snowman. I find it hard to believe that Snowman would hesitate to shoot down those people as quickly as he did his previous victims.
If Snowman wanted to rid himself of the Crakers he would have left them at the compound to suffocate to death.
Being that Snowman is now the elite since Crake is gone, I think that he will use it to his benefit.
I believe that in his loyalty to Oryx and Crake he will do whatever it takes to protect the Crakers. Though he feels that everything that the Crakers say and do is annoying, he relishes in the fact that he can say and do no wrong in their eyes.
Snowman will continue to be devious,as Atwood put it, and create increasingly ridiculous stories about Crake.
As far as the other three people are concerned, I think that Snowman will put up with them until they pose a threat to himself or the Crakers. They do pose a threat since they are armed but so is Snowman. I find it hard to believe that Snowman would hesitate to shoot down those people as quickly as he did his previous victims.
If Snowman wanted to rid himself of the Crakers he would have left them at the compound to suffocate to death.
AS I was mentioning in class, I do believe there is reason to hope at the end of the book. I do see Snowman/Jimmy as the phoenix rising from the ashes. He has seen and lived through the worst, and I believe there was a specific reason for this. He is a "word" person and he can imagine!!
He notices changes in the Crakers when he returns from his trek back to Paradice - emotions that they did not express before. (Joy and excitement at his return and concern about his injured foot.) They are becoming less robotic, less perfect. His relationship with them will improve as their communication skills grow.
The future will not be betrayed by Snowman/Jimmy. He has respect for art and books, as evidenced when he lost his summer job at Martha
Graham Academy. He was to discard books deemed to be of no further importance. He failed at the job because he could not bring himself to throw any of the books away. Hooray for him!! He will be a teacher and guide for the Crakers.
His respect for words, books, and art is something that is true within him, not false. He will not betray the new world about to be created by the Crakers and himself.
I have not forgotten about the three other survivors. There is no doubt that the new world will not be perfect. It is likely that the three may begin a society apart from Snowman/Jimmy and the Crakers, and there may be some conflict. On the other hand, if Snowman/Jimmy becomes the leader I think he can be, the three survivors will by happily welcomed into the group, and all will learn from each other.
Anyone want to borrow my rose-colored glasses?
AS I was mentioning in class, I do believe there is reason to hope at the end of the book. I do see Snowman/Jimmy as the phoenix rising from the ashes. He has seen and lived through the worst, and I believe there was a specific reason for this. He is a "word" person and he can imagine!!
He notices changes in the Crakers when he returns from his trek back to Paradice - emotions that they did not express before. (Joy and excitement at his return and concern about his injured foot.) They are becoming less robotic, less perfect. His relationship with them will improve as their communication skills grow.
The future will not be betrayed by Snowman/Jimmy. He has respect for art and books, as evidenced when he lost his summer job at Martha
Graham Academy. He was to discard books deemed to be of no further importance. He failed at the job because he could not bring himself to throw any of the books away. Hooray for him!! He will be a teacher and guide for the Crakers.
His respect for words, books, and art is something that is true within him, not false. He will not betray the new world about to be created by the Crakers and himself.
I have not forgotten about the three other survivors. There is no doubt that the new world will not be perfect. It is likely that the three may begin a society apart from Snowman/Jimmy and the Crakers, and there may be some conflict. On the other hand, if Snowman/Jimmy becomes the leader I think he can be, the three survivors will by happily welcomed into the group, and all will learn from each other.
Anyone want to borrow my rose-colored glasses?
I think Snowman will make the decision to interact with the three. It is human nature to want our world to go on existing. I also think that Snowman will be very cautious with the other three as he has learned that the relationship he had with Crake was an illusion. I say illusion because to me Snowman saw what he wanted to see in Crake, not what in reality was really there. At the end of the book we see the Crakers developing their own civilization, in making a Snowman out of a mop and other things, and basically praying over it. The Crakers were not taught how to worship anything yet they have the cognitive functions just as humans do and they obviously must be equipped with the same kind of emotions to worry about Snowman. So, even though Crake intended to take those attributes out of his human race they developed in spite of his intentions. Therefore, Snowman will survive despite the obstacles he faces and in order to do so he will have to include the three. Mankind is instinctively built to survive and Snowman’s ability to survive so far on his own is proof of that fact. Crake must have seen some unique qualities in Jimmy to have placed the welfare of the Crakers and ultimately the last of mankind into his capable hands. Jimmy despite his flaws, is more ethical than Crake ever was, maybe in part because of his mother and her moral stand about the compounds or maybe because he was a neurotypical. Snowman and the three along with the Crakers will forge ahead and mankind will persevere, although it will be different from anything man has ever known.
I believe in this final moment of decision Snowman plans to live up to his promise to Oryx and protect the Crakers. He has seen that they are learning to live on their own, and even developing the characteristics homo sapiens sapiens had before their extinction. This means that they are the dominant race now and that they are adaptable. They are ultimately capable of succeeding as a species by themselves without his help, as long as no one with further technology intervenes. Over time I believe Snowman has come to believe in the Crakers as Oryx and Crake did, and he now sees his time and the time of other humans as being over.
Considering all this, I think that Snowman intends to kill the other humans, and possibly even himself. He approaches them with his gun drawn as though he is aggressive in nature. If he intended on attempting to make peace and join the other humans he most likely would have approached them in a less aggressive way. It is easy to see that the Craker’s minds will grow and therefore their race will grow and thrive. Snowman seeks to perpetuate their existence by ridding them of intervention and outside influence
Its Brad again,
I enjoy Linda’s positive outlook within both her responses in class and on this blog. I would have to say though, in concurrence with Rambo 5, Snowman kills EVERYBODY!!!. Just kidding. What I really wish to delve into is the idea that many of the responses in class and many criticisms I read were about perfection. This idea of a perfect society and perfect individuals is IMPOSSIBLE. Think about it logically. There are republicans, democrats, atheists, religious extremists, and every other member of some sort of organization whose idea of perfection is much different than our very own. To find a utopia where everyone is happy is impossible.
With this in mind, what would Atwood’s sixteenth chapter turn out to be. I think it is a viable thought that Snowman would kill the people to protect his flock and uphold his promise to Crake and Oryx. He has killed before and I see no reason, especially with his deteriorating state of mind, that he wouldn’t kill again.
That would be the easy way out though, and that never is the fun way. Snowman has a dilemma he now has to deal with. His society is changing. There are other survivors in the world. One day the Crakers will inevitably make contact with them. He can choose to prepare them, or risk them learning on their own what has happened. The crakers are changing. They already have begun to wonder about cloths (p.361), organized religion (the dummy they make of snowman), and leadership roles (Abraham). It seems that Crake did not realize before he annihilated most of society that a living society changes. It would be nice if everything was fantastic almost all the time, like childhood, but eventually people grow up.
I feel that eventually Snowman does not kill everyone but he also cannot go on with this pretending and make up as you go dogma. All society take work and with that work comes both positive and negative results. What Snowman must now do is try and incorporate everyone world’s at once. A tough task.
I do not believe that Snowman will kill the three people. It was traumatizing enough for him to deal with the death of Oryx and the betrayal from Crake. I do not think that Snowman could deal with the emotional burden of even more murder, especially since the people appear to be functioning normally. I also feel that he doubts his capabilities of successfully murdering the three people. After all, his foot is injured and he was not exactly that strong to begin with. Furthermore, I think that curiosity alone would prevent Snowman from killing them. How were they able to resist catching the disease? Are they diseased? Snowman seems to think that one of the women might have been a nurse based on the uniform that she was wearing. They are clearly street smart as they have somehow survived and are roasting meat to eat. Snowman badly craves food. I think that Snowman will approach the people while he is secretly armed. I think that in the back of Jimmy’s head he feels that his foot might be really infected and that he could possibly die because of it. This is where the three strangers come in: 1) If that woman really was a nurse, she could try to help Jimmy with his injury. 2) If Jimmy does die, there will be three people who could continue to take care of the Crakers. The Crakers are starting to feel more emotion specifically when they are talking to Snowman about dreams. They feel sad that Crake supposedly dreams on their behalf. Also, there is mention that Empress Josephine looks worried, and that “a small frown has appeared between her eyes” (365). Because Snowman realizes that the Crakers feel emotions, he believes that they will be able to handle more people. The Crakers have also started symbolically thinking (“We made a picture of you, to help up send out our voices to you” (361). The three other people and their interactions with Snowman would model what normal relationships are like, possibly leading the Crakers to become more aware of the reality that Snowman is living in.
I was mildly disappointed at the open ending of the novel on first reading. Like most good literature the novel resonated in my mind for days after and made me think of what Snowman do would after meeting the other survivors. I still go with my first thought that he would kill the other survivors on the beach to protect the Crakers. I believe he would do this because of his promise to Oryx to take care of Crakers and that he would not trust any outsiders with them. The debate that he has with himself about whether he can leave them alone and let them wander away or that they will eventually see the smoke and break-up his little world. I believe that Snowman is basically a loner in that he doesn’t want long term relationships with people and that is part of the reason he can’t keep a decent relationship with a woman. I believe that his main reason to dispose of the outsiders would be to save the Crakers from dealing with and learning from the outsiders. This could complicate his problem of trying to keep his reasons of the world simple to the Crakers and mess up his mini-religion of Oryx and Crake. I would like to think that Snowman would let the outsiders wander away and hopefully not come back to the Crakers beach, but Atwood made the character quirky enough that he might put his loyalty of the Crakers and Oryx above that of other humans.
I believe that Snowman would keep on taking care of the Crakers and rummaging the land and compounds for food and supplies. An accident would finally happen to Snowman where he can’t survive anymore and teaches the Crakers to break their habits and try to live and survive on their own and start their own society.
It is difficult to say exactly the actions that snowman is willing to take for the Crakers. In order to protect the Crakers, Snowman would have to kill the three humans because of the repetition that humans continue to create. There may be another alternative, however, because of the changing status of the Crakers. When Snowman returns to the site and sees that art is something the Crakers are doing, this shows that they are acting more as humans. Another issue is that they are learning about Oryx and Crake as a religion.
Snowman has encouraged the Crakers to believe Crake is an ultimate power because he did create them. Crake believes that as soon as art and religion becomes a part of the Craker world then it will be the end of the innocence. The Crakers were not supposed to have feelings but they made a shrine for Snowman to help him return. As soon as this was seen by Snowman, he should realize it would be only a little time before they started created inventions. I think it would be difficult for Snowman to kill the last three humans because of the contact he has been missing since the end of civilization.
Snowman loves the Crakers and would want to protect them but he is struggling without human contact. No matter how much the Crakers get to know him, he will never be apart of their world fully because he does not live in the same way. I believe the Crakers have a possibility to live the way older civilizations have and there will be another set of the same mistakes the generation before created. Snowman has a choice to be selfish or the hero for the Crakers at the end of the novel. By letting the three humans live, he would be betraying his friend, who betrayed him, and he would be betraying the Crakers. The Crakers are a race meant to live in harmony and with other human contact that world may change. Snowman’s decision is difficult but I believe he will let them live because of his lack of human contact. I do not believe he wants to betray the Crakers but the pain from the lack of human contact is taking over his better judgment.
At the end of Oryx and Crake Snowman is torn. He doesn’t know whether to keep his loyalty to Crake and the crackers, or save mother earth. Before Jimmy was Snowman, he always tried to fix the girls he dated. If a girl had a deformity or a mole that is where Jimmy would send his love. Every relationship he was in he was trying to fix his partner. We see it when he gets so angry about Oryx’s past, and wishes he could do something, but he can’t and he becomes more frustrated. I feel that this is important to notice because if Snowman is at all like Jimmy he is going to try to fix mother earth. The three strangers at the end of the book can help him fix the world that Snowman was unable to fix by himself, but now with the help from the strangers Jimmy might be able to fix the planet.
I think, however, Snowman will kill the strangers. Jimmy has always put people before himself, whether it was Oryx or Crake or any other girls he was with. He made a promise to Oryx and Crake to look after the Crakers; if Snowman goes with the other three people he his turning his back on both Oryx and Crake who did put him in this situation, but have been with him the entire time. Jimmy cannot betray Crake and the Crakers like that, he is too invested with them, and he knows that bringing the three strangers in will change the Crakers into something Crake didn’t want. I feel that Snowman just doesn’t want to betray Crake, but also I feel he doesn’t know how to communicate with humans anymore. Being in seclusion as long as Snowman has, it changes your personality; Snowman has only talked to the Crakers and the imaginary voices in his head. I feel there has been too much damage to Jimmy’s personality, to even begin to communicate with normal humans. The group of three had each other, and even if they just meet each other, they where not communicating with the Crakers since the apocalypse. I feel that Jimmy will kill the strangers to stay true to Crake, the Crakers, and himself. The pain he would feel betraying Crake once again would be too much for him to deal with, not to mention his damaged social skills would not allow him to communicate with the strangers in a way that could help him or the Crackers.
At the end of the novel Snowman battles for his loyalties. His loyalties lie with Oryx as he promises her that he will take care and guard the Crakers. Crake's insanity pushed Jimmy to kill him, but even with Crake's death, Jimmy shows his loyalty to his memory by making him the 'creator god' for the religion of the Crakers.
Snowman is lonely after losing both Oryx and Crake. He could easily befriend the three humans and possibly create relationships that will help him get through life. But his loyalties would not allow him to do such a thing. As Jimmy shows himself to be a loyal person to both Oryx and Crake, I think he will destroy the human beings, not out of hatred but to protect the Crakers.
"What do you want me to do?"
"It's hard to know."
"Oh Jimmy...don't let me down."
"Zero Hour...Time to go"
After reading through the entire novel, and arriving at the above four quotes at the conclusion, it is quite obvious to me that Snowman will exterminate the other three humans. At this point, Jimmmy has assumed responsibility for taking care of Crake's masterpiece--the Crakers. He has matured from a stage where he felt burdened by the Crakers, to a level where he almost cultivates caring for them. You could almost see Jimmy at a point of revelation thinking: "Wow. Crake handed the keys to his entire life's work to me. I can't let him down." As noted above, Jimmy would choose to "exterminate " rather than "murder" his fellow humans. Murder is unprovoked killing. Jimmy has a duty to fulfill, and thus he is simply carrying out the responsibilities that go along with Crake's master plan. One might think of these extermination simply as collateral damage (casualties of "Paradise?") So, what would Jimmy do after he secured the world around him?
Inevitably, he would continue on much in the same way he had been with the Crakers. Crake's utopia would progressively thrive, right? Wrong. Despite Crake's genius plan, and the efforts of Jimmy to maintain this utopia, there is one problem with the equation--Crake was human, and thus imperfect. By tinkering God's perfect system (Earth and the human race), Crake set himself up for eventual failure. Though the epidemic he unleashed on the human race had a devastating effect and almost wiped out the human race completely, a few thousand people--much like the three humans exterminated by Jimmy--remained alive and uninfected by the epidemic.
immy would then stumble upon more and more humans, exterminating as many as he can. Ultimately, Jimmy would meet his end at the hands of a group of humans, too numerous to be vanquished at the hands of one man. Then, terrified by the oddity of the Crakers, the remaining humans would kill them off, finally putting an end to Crake's masterful, bizarre dream. The human race would be then undergo a long but steady restoration.
I think that Snowman will continue to take care of the Crakers, as he has done all along. It will be much harder than before, but he can manage. I am sure the Crakers will be more curious than ever, and Snowman seems as though he will be able to handle all the questions that will come his way.
I do not think that Snowman will have any trouble with other people that he may come across. He will be able to survive and manage to not make his situation worse by creating enemies. If he wants to survive, he has to learn how to work with other people, but somehow be able to lead everyone so that he gets to stay in control. I do not think he will come across any other people that are in charge of a whole group like the Crakers. Snowman will be fine and I think he will eventually end up creating a world of his own, and pehaps end up being a king of some sorts.
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