SparkNotes - Oryx and Crake SparkNotes Literature Guide

Snowman is the protagonist of Oryx and Crake. The narrative recounts his life in the postapocalyptic present as well as in the pre-apocalyptic past. Snowman is perhaps the sole human survivor of a pandemic, and he is in charge of a tribe of genetically enhanced humans created by his friend-turned-rival, Crake. Although he takes responsibility for protecting the Crakers, he also feels distant from them due to their childlike nature and superior genetic adaptations. As such, Snowman suffers a profound sense of loneliness, and when not scrounging for the resources he needs to survive, he spends much of his time immersed in memories of his old life. Snowmans early life, when he was called Jimmy, was largely shaped by his mothers abandonment of him, his friendship with the intelligent but unemotional Crake, and a growing fascination with sex. Snowman also felt scarred by his cold relationship with his father, who remained disappointed in Snowmans poor performance in math and science. Snowman did show an early gift for performance and wordplay, which earned him popularity among his high school peers. Even so, in a world increasingly dominated by science and technology, Snowmans affinity for language and the arts marked him as an antiquated and economically unviable throwback.

In the present time of the novel, Snowman journeys back to the Paradice facility at the RejoovenEsense Compound, where Crake developed the plague that obliterated the worlds population. Snowmans main objective is to collect supplies, and throughout the journey he feels haunted by various memories and particularly by his mothers abandonment. Hes also haunted by voices from his past, especially the voice of Oryx, a young woman he first saw on a child pornography website and later fell in love with. Other voices that float through Snowmans mind come from literature and other texts he read at university. More than anything, though, what haunts Snowman are memories of his longtime friendship with Crake. Snowman recalls the entire history of their relationship, from the time they met in high school, all the way through the period when they worked together at RejoovenEsense. Although the reader doesnt know the full extent of what Crake did until the end of the novel, Snowmans recollections throughout the book give a fragmentary account of how Crake came to create his disastrous plague. Snowman also frets about his own culpability, since he failed to see the signs indicating who Crake would become.

Crake was Snowmans best friend, a gifted scientist who eventually developed and released the catastrophic plague that ravaged the earths human population. Crakes view of the world was coldly rational and fiercely atheistic. In addition to rejecting the idea of God, Crake also rejected the idea of capital-N Nature, a quasi-divine notion that he believed encouraged a false distinction between what is natural and what is unnatural. During his undergraduate education at the elite Watson-Crick Institute, Crake developed an interest in and extraordinary gift for transgenic research. In contrast to Snowman, who struggled to see genetically modified creatures as natural or real, Crake insisted that anything that could be imagined or created was real. Crakes strictly scientific approach to the world also linked to his sociopathic personality, which allowed him to pursue his ambitious genetic research without concern for the moral implications of that research. Snowman believes that Crake played an important role in the deaths of his own mother and stepfather, which provides further evidence that Crake may have been a sociopath.

Yet despite Crakes apparent sociopathic personality and his insistence on scientific rationalism, he remains all too human, afflicted by sexual desire, love, and maybe even jealousyall of which he longed to eliminate from his new race of genetically enhanced humans. During his student days at Watson-Crick, Crake arranged sexual encounters through Student Services, and it was through one of these encounters that he met and fell in love with Oryx. His affection for Oryx led him to hire her as a member of the Paradice Project. At Paradice, Oryx started an affair with Snowman, and though Snowman worried that Crake would feel jealous, Oryx insisted that he was too smart for petty jealousy. Even so, Crake ended up slitting Oryxs throat, and Snowman shot Crake in response. Though Snowman cannot be certain about Crakes reasons for killing Oryx, he theorizes that jealousy may have played some role. If Snowmans theory is correct, then Crakes desire to create a new race of humans that doesnt exhibit any sexual competition has a certain tragic irony to it, since it implies that Crake wanted to quash behaviors to which he himself felt susceptible.

Oryx is the mysterious young woman with whom both Snowman and Crake fall in love. Born in a rural village somewhere in south or southeast Asia, Oryx was sold into slavery at a young age and spent much of her early life working in the sex industry. Despite the numerous traumas of her youth, Oryx retained a positive attitude. Snowman and Crake first saw Oryx in a video on a child pornography site when they were teenagers. Later, when he was at college, Crake hired her for sexual services. They became lovers, and he employed her at RejoovenEsense, where she worked as a teacher for the Children of Crake. She seduced Snowman and became his lover as well. Despite their intimacy, Snowman never felt like he fully understood Oryx or her motivations. When he inquired about her past, she resisted discussing anything in detail. Only when pressed did she tell Snowman what she went through, but Snowman remained suspicious that she was just humoring him. Oryx remained a mystery to the end, and she largely functions in the novel as a symbol of the intellectual and, later, sexual rivalry between Snowman and Crake.