We Understand More Than We Know
In Oryx and Crake authored by Margaret Atwood, the protagonist Oryx, the lover of both Crake and Snowman, is born mysteriously and killed mysteriously. Although less mentioned, her symbols appeared throughout the book: The tension between Crake and Jimmy, the mother of post-apocalyptic creatures, or simply just “a gentle water-conserving East African herbivore (Atwood 311).” She symbolizes the perplexity and uncertainty of Mother Nature that moves Crake and attracts Jimmy, and, in the text as a whole, she amplifies the essence of the humanity of which she provides a particularly bright side, despite being distorted and harmed by the desire for power.
Throughout the novel, Atwood depicts a cruel realm full of plague, exploitation, torture, suffering, and scorn of nature and arts. Oryx is first introduced to such a society by means of sexual slavery, greedily consumed by young Crake and Jimmy, and all the other digital customers. However, to Jimmy, Oryx is more than special. “None of those little girls had ever seemed real to Jimmy – they’d always struck him as digital clones – but for some reason, Oryx was three-dimensional from the start(90).” To be realistic, after an overwhelming amount of “dark-web surfing”, to these young kids, the “Oryx” at that time most likely is just another regular two-dimensional graphic on the flat screen, not even a human being with emotions. What makes the girl more “three-dimensional” on the screen comes from the invisible “3-d glasses” that Jimmy puts on. After all the skimming, witnessing people unwilling to keep themselves grounded in nature in its purest form (suicide, murder, genetic modification), Jimmy has gradually formed a sense of morality. He feels it without knowing what it is exactly.
Fast forward to the post-apocalyptic era when the world is left with Crakers, a new species of human created under Crake’s pure utilitarian ethics, Jimmy has spent as much as he could to learn how to properly judge the legitimacy of the species but fails. He envies that Crake is clever enough to figure everything out by means of logic and reason while he also believes that he owns something so profound that neither Crake nor even himself can understand, which is why when Oryx’s picture or her physical body appears in Crake’s computer or Paradice, he questions “Why had Crake kept it? Stolen it (215).” Jimmy’s main judgment of the Crakers begins with the elimination of the seemingly “flaws” of the original human. Initially, he refuses all artificial interference of nature including Crakers which reminds him of the guilt of watching pornographies. However, as he reflects deeper and further, the girls staring at him in the woods become the one uniformed incarnation of Oryx, and at this moment he has understood that Oryx is just a “legion(307)” of symbols that mentors and guides Snowman not to fall mad because they are “much more powerful(264)” and has a “ruthless wisdom(264).” Oryx is just one of the protagonists in his tragic play, “Because now he’s come to the crux in his head, to the place in the tragic play where it would say: Enter Oryx(307).” The origin of Oryx doesn’t matter, or the origin of the physical Oryx. What matters is the origin of the metaphorical Oryx, a voice which has been planted ever since the little Jimmy watches that website.
As he starts to gain that idea, Jimmy reflects on the legitimacy of the manifestly rationalistic belief of the society, which is the turning point that marks the start of Jimmy’s soul searching journey. Right from the beginning of the journey, when he stares at young Oryx, he feels guilty about the temptation from her. Not knowing why he feels that way, he prints out and keeps the picture as a lasting reminder of such feelings. “...this picture. His own private thing: his own guilt, his own shame, his own desire(215).” In a world where words and arts are devalued, keeping a moment of sense for a long duration of time reminds Jimmy how humanity is forgotten over time when “life is long and art is short” instead of “Ars longa, vita brevis.” In the journey, he himself delves deeper into the history of moments that always brings him the bliss of feeling something more as a human being.
She leaned over him, kissed him with her Nubbin-smeared mouth. Unguent, unctuous, sumptuous, voluptuous, salacious, lubricious, delicious, went the inside of Jimmy’s head. He sank down into the words, into the feelings. (316)
Ever since, he starts to formulate an obsession with lasting art, particularly ancient vocabulary until the very end. Every time he encounters an artful moment he would capture it with those words.
However, as Jimmy turns into Snowman who retrospect to the past from an outsider’s point of view, he starts to understand his feelings, or in other words, to understand his representation of feelings, Oryx: the world seems to always be a beautiful happy place.
“Can I listen to your watch?” said Oryx with her shy smile. Instead of, was what she meant. Instead of marrying you, instead of answering your question, instead of being your real child. And he laughed some more, and he did let her listen to his watch, but she didn’t hear any little voice inside. (133-134)
“Instead of” being another ordinary victim, Oryx has a natural capability to twist the distorted. In her own experience, or more arguably in Snowman’s post-traumatic fantasies, Oryx forgets the traumatic past but derives the love from the circumference. To Jimmy, a pure bud blooming in the dirtiest scenes possible like the little Oryx challenges his view of the world and drives him insane initially, but by imagining the imagery scene when the little Oryx is cared for by the human trafficker Uncle En who treats her like his own child, he was redeemed. The moment when Oryx is sitting on Uncle En’s lap after another successful “rescue mission” from some other bad guys and listening to his watch has also become part of Snowman, who yields positivity and hope for the world. Just as what the physical Oryx has told him, “There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It’s not good for you (146).”
Juxtaposing back to the post-apocalyptic world, as Snowman flashes back to the moment when he first saw Oryx on the video, he comments that “But the body had its own cultural forms. It had its own art. Executions were its tragedies, pornography was its romance(85).” His determined refusal of artificial interference in nature seems to be shaken as his sense of guilt in watching porn becomes a sense of human cultural “romance.” Jimmy later gradually sees the power of humanity exceeding technology as Crakers going against the design of Crake, acquiring knowledge, leadership, and worship to, ironically, Crake himself. Art and religion will come back to humans and Jimmy feels an obligation as a prophet that guides their way. In Oryx’s words, “Oh Jimmy, this is so positive. It makes me happy when you grasp this. Paradice is lost, but you have a Paradice within you, happier far. Then that silvery laugh, right in his ear(308).” In allusion to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which reveals the contradiction in the creation and the creator, the divinity and humanity, the heaven and hell, and etc. Contrary to Crake’s utilitarian morality, the voice “right in his ear” had taught him the deontological obligation that Snowman has as the last man from the destroyed civilization. The voice has also planted the idea in some parts of Crake as he puts a different collection of fridge magnets: “Where God is, Man is not... We understand more than we know. I think, therefore. To stay human is to break a limitation. Dream steals from its lair towards its prey(302),” contrasting to his previous scientific nerd jokes such as “No Brain, No Gain(209).” Crake is reaching the capacity of human knowledge, which prompts him to respect the power of Nature, who he also visualizes as Oryx ever since he puts the picture of Oryx on his computer as the wallpaper to the secret mass extinction group. To Crake, having Oryx eliminate the human race by spreading out the virus and mentor the perfectly engineered new species seems to be the last missing piece to the puzzle of his ambition. Apparently, instead of the last piece, Oryx is the starting point to the new world which initiates curiosity and creativity in Crakers’ minds, who even start crafting and making voices that sound like “Amen,” “We made a picture of you, to help us send out our voices to you(361).”
Atwood hereby implies that moral obligations are essential to our society even as practical science and technology dominating our world and the powers of art can push humanity beyond the value of pure products. Even in Crake’s quest of creating the perfect humanity, he inevitably faces the barriers of moral obligation, which is why he intentionally recruits Jimmy and sets him up to become the last person on earth. Jimmy, on the other hand, fulfills the circulation of the creation and collapse of humanity under the gradual influence of the inherent voice (Oryx as the representation) and trauma he encounters over time, everything starts and ends in the magical realistic interaction between child Oryx and child Jimmy behind the screen. “I see you, that look said. I see you watching. I know you. I know what you want. (90-91).”
Overall, the mystical character of Oryx is the realization of the driving force in Atwood’s own version of Paradise Lost. In reality, Oryx, Crake, or Snowman are just three ordinary people: two dies in a laboratory, the other barely survives from the genetically modified pigs. However, she is only the voice and symbol inside Jimmy and Crake who desperately want to turn into a physical, comprehensible human being. She symbolizes the perplexity of nature which eventually tells Jimmy to go with the heart, not the mind, and follow moral obligations, not utilitarian moralities because after all, “We understand more than we know(302).”
Work Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx And Crake (The Maddaddam Trilogy Book 1) Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Version.
