SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

What do you think of the three main characters?

Fully fleshed out? Two dimensional? Believable or not?

Dark, light or all kinds of gray?

Guess I'll go first...


Snowman/Jimmy: Annoying git. I disliked him from start to finish. I actually wanted him to suffer death by pigoon.

Oryx: Tragic childhood which seemed gratuitous...then nothing else. The rest of her character consisted of eating with her hands, looking good naked, and saying "Oh, Jimmy" a lot. Seemed like an attempt at mystery or mystique that never quite worked for me.

Crake: The one guy I wanted to know more about. More of his story. His reasons. His whats and whys and wherefors. But nope. Suicide by best friend. Meh.

Snowman/Jimmy - the most realistic of the three.

Oryx - male fantasy, sexy "victim"

Crake - not really fleshed out, too many unknowns.

Snowman/Jimmy - seemed like an attempt at an average, relatable everyman. Somebody called him a "follower" in another thread, and that seems accurate.

Oryx - surprisingly two-dimensional. I wanted to know why she was so beloved, but it never really happened.

Crake - the most fascinating of the three. A spin on the tortured genius archetype. I read that he was actually modeled after a Canadian chess player with Asperger's, which I found interesting.

Valerie wrote: "...Oryx - surprisingly two-dimensional. I wanted to know why she was so beloved, but it never really happened. ..."

You have 2 adolescent best friends who see this fascinating girl in action on a child porno site and meet one you think is her as adults. I can see why Jimmy & Glenn would be attracted to her—a fixation come true. But I think the reasons for their attraction are much different.

I think Oryx's purpose was not to be a complete character, rather to serve as a means to differentiate and help flesh out Jimmy and Crake.

I'm wondering why they book was titled Oryx and Crake rather than Thickney and Crake?

Ala, I agree with you

I found Jimmy to be the most fully realized character, which makes sense given that we see the world through his eyes. That fact also explains why Oryx & Crake are written less fully. Jimmy is hardly the most insightful guy ever and seems extremely self-centered. How could we gain a complete view of these other people with whom he was obsessed without it being colored by that fact. He clearly never saw Oryx as a full person, rather was fascinated by her both because of what he saw in the video of her as a child, if that was indeed her, and because of her beauty and what, to him at least, seemed to be some very unique characteristics. As for Crake, again, we are seeing what was obviously an extremely complex person through the eyes of someone who is less intelligent and constantly shifting between various types and degrees of love and hate.

Still a git

But a git with full characterization.

Oryx is weak female victim, which can fight against evil but she doesn´t it. She was helpless victim, yes, but she could become strong and brave - and she didn´t and doesn´t. She is archetype of woman by Atwood - weak, helpless victim. She seems innocent, but she is not - all is her guilt, too. Because she wants to be weak victim, sweet helpless beauty. I hate (but still pitty) Oryx.
Jimmy is a little similar as Oryx, pitiful helpless victim, only male gender. "Simple man." I don´t like him. :o)
Crake has Asperger´s syndrom, so is genius, but without feeling and compassion. He saw his world as very bad and it IS very bad. He wants to repare it, to change it for better. He is good hero, no evil deeds. But he is totally crazy, too. Genius without compassion must be the only mad genius. Crake has no guilt for what he did, he really believe that it is the best for the world - and for the humanity, too, because Crakers are "better humankind". But it is still very bad, he is mass murder. Jimmy, Oryx and others people should stop Crake and they didn´t, as happy, sweet helpless innocent victims of bad world. We all (readers, people) are Oryxes and Jimmys, such happy sweet victims. If we will act similar in future, it will be look similar, too... This is the warning by Atwood,I mean.

I don't think Oryx is helpless. I also don't think she is really weak. She is certainly passive, from what we can tell, but that is not the same. She seems to either be incapable of or refuses to recognize evil perpetuated by man that isn't direct killing. She is softhearted towards animals, but from Jimmy's point of view, decidedly inflexible in her dealings with humans. Passive rather than helpless.

I don't remember it being said that Crake has Asberger's, but again, it's been a while, and regardless of that your definition doesn't fit the syndrome. I do agree far more with your vision of him, however. He does see the world as wrong and sees himself as having found a better way, but shows no regard whatsoever for the millions who must die to make his dream at all possible. He is so focused on the end state he feels must be achieved that he employs all available means.

As for the idea that Oryx or Jimmy or someone else should have stopped Crake; how? Neither of them seem to have been remotely intelligent to connect the dots. What should they have done differently to prevent him from carrying out his plan?

I wonder if the contemporary iteration of Oryx is genetically engineered by Crake, based on the girl from the internet porn. If so, he could have specialized her for the docility trait, as was mentioned in the book.

How and when would he have done that?

While at Paradice. He seemed to have complete autonomy, and we already know he can produce genetically engineered "human" offspring that age rapidly.

But, alone? It just seems unlikely that no one would have said anything, not to mention that Oryx does tell bits of her backstory and does seem to have a normal sense of time.

Sure, it's just an idea. But under the threat of being thrown off a bridge the team might keep it a secret, if they even know. They all seemed very isolated from the rest of the compound. Oryx is also very vague and evasive about her past whenever Jimmy questions her. Maybe because she doesn't have those memories, or was only given some sort of programmed backstory via Crake... again, just theorizing.

It is easy to say that Jimmy was the most fleshed out character just because he is the one we associate with the narration. He is virtually in every episode of the book (there are some flashbacks of Oryx's childhood),so we basically observe how the story unfolds using Jimmie's perspective.
Otherwise the characters are somewhat two-dimensional, but I believe it is totally intentional because the focus was on the social and scientific environment and the repercussions of this plague. The message is quite sinister, though. Sorry for an off-topic final observation.

Denae wrote: "But a git with full characterization."
Exactly.

Oryx was a stock male fantasy character. I found her 2-dimensionality irritating. I would have like to know why she was so good with Crake's new humans.
Crake was the classic sociopathic-genius villain: Killing us all for our own good. Although his character was more fully fleshed out I still felt his character was unoriginal.
And Jimmy was a git.

The third dimension of the porn-site Oryx is an illusion of the 2D screen. The masturbatory “fantasy” isn’t a fantasy at all; it’s the static reduction of an archetype. Oryx-from-the-porn-site is one-dimensional (“can’t tell the difference turn ‘em upside down”). Atwood is telling us that when you reduce a woman to a masturbatory fantasy, what you get is inevitably unsatisfying. Oryx is unsatisfying because she is incomplete. She is incomplete because that is in the nature of her creation. This was a theme Atwood looked at in Bodily Harm (1981, the only other book of hers that I’ve read). Is it a common theme for her?

David wrote: "This was a theme Atwood looked at in Bodily Harm (1981, the only other book of hers that I’ve read). Is it a common theme for her? "

It certainly shows up in a lot of her books. The Edible Woman (her first novel) is probably the most obvious example. It reads a little dated/obvious these days, but back when it was released I suspect it was a lot more of an eye opener.

I read MaddAdam this summer and this thread still shows an accurate depiction of Jimmy, Oryx and Crake. Won't post more since it is a different book and therefore, spoliers.