Department of Western Languages

Faculty of Arts
Karabük University

A Study of Ecocriticism in Margaret Atwood's

The Oryx and Crake

Submitted by Supervised by

MA. Student
Husham Ibraheem Khalaf Al-Susa Assist. Prof. Dr. Kevser Ateş
Karabük University Karabük University
 Preface

The aim of this simplified study is to present Atwood's opinion as a critic and not
only a novelist of modernity and development in societies and the introduction of
technology and its poor use of community management and control of the destinies
of living creatures and the destruction of the environment. And studying the way in
which the novelist represents the characters who plays the destructive role of the
environment and other characters who are opposed to this style and their tendencies
to nature and preserve their lives in which they tend to nature in their food and way
of living. The events of this novel may be the same in our life , but in the novel
there is a result of those developments and may be the same expectations that will
occur in our life in the nearest future .

Starting from the late 1980s, ecocriticism was the latest emerging field in literary
studies that directly relates to who we are as human beings to the environment.
Ecocriticism is the analysis of literary texts in terms of ecology. It is a portmanteau
made of “ecology” and "criticism". Everything comes from a source, so ecocriticism
comes from ecology and, ecology is the study of the effect of the environment on
human behavior in other words, how the environment shapes the human behavior. So
Ecology means the study of the relationships between living organisms and their
interactions with their natural or developed environment.

Ecocriticism, as a trend, is an eclectic group of writers, critics, and theorists who

emphasize place, nature, and the physical world. In literature, it is called “ecocritical
theory” the best definition of which appears in the ecocriticism reader (1995), edited
by Cheryll Glotfelty. She is a professor of literature and the environment at the
University of Nevada, Reno. “Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of the relationship
between literature and the physical environment, just as feminist criticism examines
language and literature from a gender-conscious perspective. It goes by other names:
Green Studies, Eco poetics, and Environmental Literary Criticism.
Interaction is a formal relationship; the relationship could either be one way or two-
way. The two-way relationship is called interaction. Hence, interaction means how
people influence the environment as well as how the environment influences the
people. The influence could be either positive or negative. For example, when it is a
sunny day we feel happy and energetic, so we are positive, while when it is a cloudy,
stormy day, we feel down. On the other hand, how people influence the environment
for example, cutting the trees in order to build cities it is a negative influence.

Estok argues that ecocriticism is more than "simply the study of Nature or natural
things in literature. Rather, it is any theory that is committed to effecting change by
analyzing the function–thematic, artistic, social, historical, ideological, theoretical, or
otherwise, of the natural environment, or aspects of it, represented in documents
literary, or otherwise, that contribute to material practices in the material world.
Nature poets are the poets who write about nature., An ecocritical poem is not a
nature poem because nature poem means any poem about nature whether it shows
interaction or not, but ecocritical poem is a poem that shows the interaction

Through examining texts that highlight the natural environment, ecocritics entreat us
to participate in practices that will change our environment and our material world,
encouraging us to become guardians of our plant not only for ourselves but also for
future generations.

Margaret Atwood was born in November 1939. Atwood was a novelist, essayist and
environmental activist. She has published numerous poetry books, novels, a
collection of short stories, numerous newspaper and fiction publications, as well as a
collection of children's books. Her famous novel Oryx and Crake, which was
published in 2003, is regarded as a cry for modernity that has taken a harmful side to
human, animal and environmental nature. In the novel, Margaret Atwood wants to
criticize modern science that considers saving humanity and the environment from
diseases, but the opposite is happening in the world of modernity in the field of
technology and modern medicine. Epidemics and diseases spread due animal
hybridization and altered its forms, causing an environmental disaster.

Oryx and Crake is simultaneously a Utopian and Dystopian novel. Utopian represents
the development of the world, the development of technology, and medicine, which
results in a dystopian ending of the unfortunate and a society filled with sorrows and
black ideas due to the greed of modern society represented by corporations and
capital. These institutions have the intention to do anything to gain material benefit,
even if the things they do are harmful to the environment and society. As I
mentioned, modernity has a major role in the negative impact on nature, which
foreshadows imminent disaster. This is one of the most important issues that invited
many thinkers, writers and intellectuals to call for criticism of modern society, whose
primary concern is profit-making and bragging about inventions and new discoveries,
even if they have negative results on the environment in general and on people in
particular. Among these writers, thinkers and intellectuals was Margaret Atwood,
who called for fairness in nature and the environment. As Atwood claims:

"Writing, no matter what its subject, is an act of faith, the primary faith being that someone out
there will read the results. I believe it's also an act of hope, the hope that things can be better
than they are". (Margaret Atwood)

This is Atwood's message to the whole world was to seek effective solutions to
improve handling of nature and the environment. This indifference by humans has led
to the collapse of the environment and the disruption of the human and animal system
by creating genetically modified animals.

The protagonist of Oryx and Crake, is a snowman, one of the survivors of the
catastrophe that occurred in the world. Snowman appears in the first book of the
trilogy as he takes care of a group of strange humanoids called Crakes. Snowman
begins to tell the story and describes some experiments on a group of animals,
resulting in hybrid animals. Snowman, once a boy named Jimmy, grew up in a world
dominated by capitalism and miscellany. One of the things Atwood was keen to
mention in her novel was the adherence of technology to humans and its reflection on
their everyday lives. An example of this is when Jimmy meets a smart student named
Gleen. Jimmy begins giving him a name called "Crake", which was taken from an
online game. Atwood wants to show the reader that humans have become closely
linked to the Internet and technology. This has helped humans to move away from
nature and neglect it, but rather to destroy the environment and nature by imitating
clips on the internet and negatively using technology. Atwood demonstrates human
behaviors that are unfair and negative to animals by making genetic modifications to
them to benefit from their discoveries. Atwood also explains the structure of a
degraded, corrupt society in which the language of violence prevails and the
restoration and poor use of natural resources. Atwood also touched on the issue of
making a deadly virus by a group of rebels aiming to heal the land from the hatred
called civilization. Atwood, on the other hand, advanced another group of anxious and
environmentally concerned people who believe in living according to the laws of
nature and reject any industrial thing that humans interfere with in their
manufacturing or creation. Their habits were described through food, clothing, and
their rejection of any modern means such as computers, televisions and other
technological artifacts. They call themselves Gardeners.

Gleen or (Crake) is a very intelligent scientist but eccentric, who has a belief that
humanity is the main reason for destroying the ecosystem, so he created a pandemic
that kills humanity and is replaced by creatures named Crakes which are genetically
improved creatures to replace humans. As I mentioned earlier, Crake has been
concerned about the deterioration of the ecosystem, leading some thinkers and
economists to agree with the need to change some of the bad habits of people he
believes are causing the collapse of the world, and Crake has always referred to the
arrogance and greed of humans as what drives them to manipulate environmental
elements and turn them into whatever they want to gain personal material benefits.
"You can't couple a minimum access to food with an expanding population indefinitely"
(Oryx and Crake, p.142)
One of those habits that Crake attempted to demonstrate is the large increase in the
proportion of the world's population and what causes damage to the ecosystem on
one hand and the lack of human resources that are sufficient to feed them on the
other.

There is a close correlation between the actions that a human performs through
experiments that he performs on animals and genetically modified or copied from
them or manipulates their sizes and that all negatively affect the global environment
in general. The second thing is the effect of the harm that humans do to the human
being itself through mysterious laboratories, where they manufacture diseases and
viruses that kill the lives of many and at the same time make the antidote that cures
them of these diseases in order to get the benefit for many drug companies. The irony
in this topic is that the goal of science, scientists, doctors, and laboratories is
supposed to discover treatments and make studies on discovering any antibiotics for
any emergent disease, except that we see them as those who help discover new
diseases with new names and new symptoms. This all causes a curse on this planet
and changes all features of nature. This changes the features of the environment and
calamity. They could make a pandemic and they couldn't find an antibiotic for it, and
that would be the greatest calamity.

Atwood, on the other hand, provided a character against the incorrect exploitation of
modernity in the medical field, Jimmy or "The Snowman". Although he does not
know much of what is happening in the field of genetic development of animals and
humans, he was not satisfied and worried about these changes made by scientists.
Jimmy represents a simple society that wants to keep pace with developments in all
areas, but is afraid of some of the excesses that scientists have made in that
modernity. But Jimmy did not object because he thought that the disasters that he
fears are just suspicions and ideas that he hopes will not happen. As I mentioned
earlier, Crake's idea is to wipe out existing humanity because they are enemies of the
environment, and whatever they try to think again about nature and the environment,
no, it was better from Crake's point of view to replace humans with Crakers, whom
he considers Friends of the Environment and have the greatest concern for the
.ecosystem and the rights of all living creatures to live on the surface of the globe

The conflict was between the Gardeners who were staunch opponents of the cruel
and material society and a group of extremists who wanted to destroy the world and
wipe out humanity from existence and they were called MaddAddam. The goal was
from the presence of Gardeners, and as Atwood described them as people, loyal,
respectful, and inclined to nature, they represent the people who call for saving the
environment from destruction even if they are few in our societies, is better than their
absence.

On the other hand, Atwood shows her tendency to nature and simplicity in lifestyle
when she said:

"The city was a chaos, filled with people and cars and noise and bad smells and a language that
was hard to understand, rolling them up neatly was the first thing the new children had to learn"
( Oryx and Crake . p, 155)

Here Atwood compares the countryside to modern cities, where people crowd and
the sounds of cars and their speed, which raises the question of how will the people
who used to live in a calm and slow style, live in such cities? Atwood yearns for the
picturesque nature of the countryside and the rejection of modernity in modern
cities, which are thought to have destroyed the manifestations of the pure
environment in the world. And it is a critique of factories and car smoke, describing
them as bad smells, which are considered primarily from the factors of deterioration
and destruction of the environment.

"Noon is the worst, with its glare and humidity" (Oryx and Crake, p.43)
Atwood seems to have detailed knowledge of the causes of environmental pollution
and its obvious consequences, which have a negative impact on our lives. For
example, Atwood touched in this quote from the novel on an important aspect, which
is unusual temperature rises. Because of the ozone layer that was greatly affected by
factories, cars’ smoke, weapons testing, as well as human obedience and love for
wars. All this helped in environmental pollution and hence the rise in temperature. It
is a result of human action and its negative role in life and the environment.

Atwood wants to alert the whole world to a host of current problems that will generate
even greater problems and disasters for us if we don't try to solve them. Atwood
proved to the reader that the so-called environmental pollution, natural disasters,
diseases, and pandemics are things caused by humans. Where the world presented to
us before the spread of the virus, it was a corrupt, unjust, and cruel world, and this
alone predicts a catastrophe that will happen in the future. In addition to the bloody
computer games that have dominated the minds of youth, the sex sites available for
all ages, animal torture clips, executions, and suicide, all of these things greatly help
in changing the person’s personality and increasing his susceptibility to the crime of
committing crimes and the harshness of the heart, which becomes difficult and even
impossible to think of to maintain On the environment, including nature and animals.
I would like to see an important issue, which is the issue of poverty and the
domination of a class of society over all human resources through its control of
financial resources, which has created a very poor class that offers members of its
body for sale in order to live or provide livelihoods for its children. Jimmy's father,
who works as an expert in creating genetically modified animals, has no regrets for
torturing or locking animals, and giving himself the right to modify their genes. On
the other hand, Jimmy’s mother was not satisfied with what her husband did towards
the animals, and she considered his actions and experiments are kinds of torture and
cruelty, and not only that, but he also created a state of imbalance in the environment
by adding a group of animals on the account of other animals. All these things are
aimed at destroying the environment, and this is what Atwood wants to show the
reader about environmental disasters and the reasons in her novel Oryx and Crake.

Work Cited

* Atwood , Margaret ,Oryx and Crake. New York: Anchor Books, 2003. Print.
* Bosco, Mark. “The Apocalyptic Imagination in Oryx and Crake.” In Bouson and Graham,
Margaret Atwood 156–71.
* Clark, Timothy. Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropogenic as a Threshold Concept.
London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Print.
* Cole, Amanda. “In Retrospect: Writing and Reading Oryx and Crake.” Philament 6 (2005).
* Glotfelty, Cheryll & Harold Fromm, eds. The Ecocriticism Reader. Landmarks in Literary
Ecology. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996. Print.