Friend, Frontman, Foe: Snowman’s Lament in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake

This paper examines Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake in relation to environmental justice. The best-selling first novel in Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy, Oryx and Crake was widely hailed for its nightmarish depiction of a post-apocalyptic, bioengineered future. The major themes of the novel mirror key themes of the environmental justice movement today: the threat that modern-day capitalism poses to the environment; the potential of science, in the hands of imperfect humans, to wreak environmental disaster; the exploitation of the masses in a society of haves and have-nots. In my paper, I argue that, over the course of the novel, Jimmy comes to see Crake as the embodiment of reckless science driven by corporate greed, representative of an ethically bankrupt culture that endangers both humanity and the environment, and Oryx as the embodiment of the exploited, someone who, despite being Crake’s lover, is ultimately bought, used, and disposed of, as are the subjects in Crake’s experiments—as is, ultimately, humankind itself