Oryx & Crake Summary Essay

Xenotransplantation is the transplantation of living cells, tissues or variety meat from adept species to another such as from pigs to gentleman ( Medical grafting). Such cells, tissues or pipe organs are called xenografts or xenotransplants. The term allotransplantation refers to a same-species transplant. Human xenotransplantation offers a potential treatment for end-stage organ failure, a significant health problem in parts of the industrialized world and worldwide paucity of organs for clinical implantation. It also raises many refreshful medical, legal and ethical issues. A continuing reverence is that pigs have different lifespans than humans and their tissues age at a different rate. Disease transmission (xenozoonosis) and unending alteration to the transmissible code of physicals are a cause for concern. Genetic engineering, recombinant desoxyribonucleic acid technology, contagious passing/ manipulation (GM) and gene splicing are terms that are applied to the manip ulation of genes. It involves the isolation, manipulation and reintroduction of DNA into cells or model organisms, usually express a protein to reach desired effects. Cloning is the process of creating an uniform copy of something. Genetic recombination is the process by which a strand of DNA is broken and then conjugate to the end of a different DNA molecule. A genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using the genetic engineering techniques generally known as recombinant DNA technology. wherefore Oryx and Crake Was WrittenEvery novel begins with a what if and then sets forth its axiom. The what if of Oryx and Crake is simply What if we keep back down the road were already on? How slippery is the slope? What is our saving graces? Whos got the provide to stop us? Margaret A dickensodSettings in Oryx and CrakePre-Catastrophic gild Games With Virtual Reality And Virtual Violence Society Fixated on Physical Perfection and Longevit y, Virtual Elimination Of The Middle Class (produced a gap amidst rich and poor), Disappearance Of Safe Public Space, People Live In Either Tightly Controlled Compounds Of The Elites Or Dangerous Pleebands, Almost Everything Is For Sale, Medical Advancements, Life Is In The Hands Of Large Corporations, Private SecurityForces, scientific Advancements Genetic Engineering & Xenotransplant, Technologically Driven, Extreme commercialization and commodification of life and the commodification of human life and sexuality in prostitution and online child pornography. jemmy and Crake spend a lot of their free time playing online estimator games such as Kwiktime Osama (a indite to Osama bin Laden) and Blood and Roses, or watching live executions, Noodie News, frog squashing, vivid surgery and child pornography.Post-Catastrophic Society Naturalistic societyScience vs. Anti-SciencePlease dont cultivate the mistake of thinking that Oryx and Crake is anti-science. Science is a way of knowin g, and a tool. Like all ship canal of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, its neutral. The driving force in the world today is the human feel that is, human emotions. (Yeats, Blake every poet, come to think of it has always told us that.) Our tools have start out very powerful. Hate, not bombs, destroys cities. Desire, not bricks, rebuilds them. Margaret AtwoodPlot Summary of Oryx and CrakeThe protagonist of Oryx and Crake is Snowman, clad nevertheless in a bed sheet and a Red Sox cap, who appears to be the last human being on Earth. Hes not entirely alone, however strange hybrid beasts such as wolvogs, pigoons and rakunks are roaming freely. As well, a group of what he calls Crakersstrange human-like creatureslives nearby. They bring Snowman food and consult him on matters that surpass their cause thus, Snowman comes across as a post-apocalyptic hermit guru. As the sto ry develops, these assorted lifeforms are revealed to be the products of genetic engineering. In flashbacks, we learn that Snowman was once a young boy chance ond esteem, who grew up in the early twenty-first century. His world was dominated by multinational corporations which kept their employees families in privileged compounds separated from a spherical lower moiety of pleeblands. Shortly after Jimmys family moved to the HelthWyzer corporate compound (where his aim worked as a genographer) Jimmy met and befriended Glenn (later known as Crake), abrilliant science student. Atwoods satirical take on current society is presented most pointedly in the jaded activities of these two youths. Jimmy and Crake spend a lot of their free time playing online computer games such as Kwiktime Osama (a reference to Osama bin Laden) and Blood and Roses, or watching live executions, Noodie News, frog squashing, graphic surgery and child pornography. wizard of Glenns favourite pastimes is an onl ine game called Extinctathon, a trivia game which requires immense knowledge of extinct animal and plant species. Using the codenames Thickney (Jimmy) and Crake (Glenn), they both play as teenagers. It is not until they are both in university that Jimmy discovers that Crake has worked his way up to become a Grandmaster. On another trip through the dark underbody of the Web, they come across an Asian child pornography site, where Jimmy is struck and haunted by the eye of a young girl. Unknown to Jimmy, Crake is similarly affected by the sight of this young girl. Crake eventually finds this girl (or a woman who could be her) and hires her, as both a prostitute and a teacher of the Crakers. Her name is Oryx. Jimmy identifies the haunting memory of the young girl with Oryx, though it is never made clear as to whether or not the two are the same person. Oryx eventually becomes intimately involved in the lives of Jimmy and Crake, and both fall in love with her. Oryx, however, views their relationship as strictly professional and only admires Crake as a scientist and great man. For fun and affection she turns to Jimmy, though her feelings for him are not as clear. The two hide their relationship from Crake, and Jimmy is often plagued with the thought of Crake finding out about his betrayal. Crake uses his turgid position at a biotech corporation to launch a project to stool the Crakers. His goal is to create a peaceful society that will live harmoniously with each other and nature. These genetically engineered humans are leaf-eating herbivores and they only have sexual intercourse during limited breeding seasons when they are polyandrous. Thus, many of the unpatterned conflicts in human culture are replaced with a mockery of intelligent design.At the same time, Crake creates a virulent genetic pandemic that, apparently, killed off all humans except for Jimmy. Jimmy was unknowingly immunise with the intention of acting as a guardian for the Crakers. Thus, Crake r epresents a mad scientist he is maddened by the troubled society that he lives in. His rationale is that he is heroically saving intelligent life from an of necessity dying society. In the storys climax, Crakes perfected hot bioform, present in one of his companys products, is activated and spreads throughout the world. When called to account for his actions by Jimmy, Crake kills Oryx by slitting her throat. In delirium and panic, Jimmy shoots Crake, resulting in his being left to obsess over his vanished world and unanswered questions. Jimmy contemplates abandoning the Crakers only when is constantly haunted by the voice of Oryx, and reminded of his promise to her to watch over them. Though Crake opposed and pocket-size human religion, Snowman instills the Crakers with his own invented religion revolving most Crake and Oryx. Oryx becomes the guardian of the animals and Crake the creator god. Crake suffers from unremembered night terrors. During visits, Jimmy hears Crake emit i n his sleep. Crake claims to not remember them. This forms one of the books most profound ironies. Crake is a leader in the most advanced (and corrupt) health care system in human history, and Jimmy is inefficient to save humanity by simply getting Crakes head examined. At the same time, however, Crake attends a university referred to as Aspergers U, referring to the universitys high population of incredibly intelligent, socially awkward people, which might put forward that his idea was not the product of insanity or something wrong with him, but rather the knowledge that everything else around him was wrong. During Snowmans journey to scavenge supplies, he is uncomfortable wearing shoes now that his feet have become toughened without them. He cuts his foot on a tiny sliver of glass. Infected by who-knows-what descendent of transgenic experiments, his body cannot fight back, and his leg becomes inflamed.Returning to the Crakers, he learns that three ragged true humans have camped nearby. He follows the smoke from the fire and watches as they cook a rakunk. Uncertain of how he should approach them (Blast them to bits to protect the Crakers? apostrophize with open arms?) he checks his now unworking watch and thinks, Time to go, leaving the reader to speculate as to what his actions and future will be. Literay WorksCoral Ann Howells argues that Oryx and Crake is in some ways a prolongation to Atwoods The Handmaids Tale in that it carries the national catastrophe in the earlier novel to global level5. A major reference seems to be to the Last Man topos in science fiction, which was inaugurated by Mary ShelleysThe Last Man, also a post-apocalyptic novel, whose main character is the only survivor of a plague that has killed off all other humans. George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) had a working surname that relates it to Shelleys book The Last Man in Europe6. Other references, of course, include Shelleys Frankenstein (1818/1831) as well as Jonathan Swif ts Gullivers Travels7 (1626/1635). Gullivers Travels is also the source of one of the two epigraphs and puts emphasis on the claim that the speculation about the near future in Oryx and Crake serves to line a point about the present state of the world. Swifts speaker as quoted by Atwood says my principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you (Oryx and Crake, Epigraph). The second quotation from Virginia Woolfs To the Lighthouse (1927) refers to the absence of safety in the word, pointing to Snowmans existence in the world after Crakes catastrophe.