Oryx and Crake: Option A

Throughout the entire novel Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, there is a heavy presence of the character of Oryx, all without her actually showing up until the very end. She influences Jimmy/Snowman through his mind, whispered words that dictate his actions all without her personally being there. In this paper, I argue that the character of Oryx, an East Asian woman with no true identity, is meant to display the misogynistic objectification of woman, all stemming from how Jimmy/Snowman feels about Oryx, ending with how her murder is simply a tool used by Crake to start his Paradice Project.

Preliminary Bibliography:

Barzilai, Shuli. “Tell My Story”: Remembrance And Revenge In Atwood’s Oryx And Crake And Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” Critique 50.1 (2008): 87-110. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.

Elliot, Jane. “The Return of the Referent in Recent North American Fiction: Neoliberalism and Narratives of Extreme Oppression”. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 42.2 (2009): 349–354. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.

Laflen, Angela. “”there’s a Shock in This Seeing”: The Problem of the Image in “the Handmaid’s Tale” and “oryx and Crake””. Amerikastudien / American Studies 54.1 (2009): 99–120. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.

Snyder, Katherine V. “”TIME TO GO”: THE POST-APOCALYPTIC AND THE POST-TRAUMATIC IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S “ORYX AND CRAKE””. Studies in the Novel 43.4 (2011): 470–489. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.

Squier, Susan M. “A Tale Meant to Inform, Not to Amuse”. Science 302.5648 (2003): 1154–1155. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.