Content Category
Literary Criticism
Abstract/Description
What if there was no God? Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake infiltrates a faithful reader’s mind to consider her eco-dystopian world with this question in mind. From a perspective of faith in God and in atonement, considering this dystopian world becomes an exercise in placing human identity in the context of self-creation and self-destruction rather than in divine origin. Without a spiritual genesis of animals and the natural environment, their purpose becomes more dictated by the progress of human need and their end becomes less intertwined with the fate of humanity. Characters that act as creators and destroyers who are limited to their own understanding and potential redefine atonement in Oryx & Crake. This paper argues that the protagonist Snowman’s role as an unlikely savior is defined by his ability to empathize through his dissemination of language, and therefore knowledge, to the new species of “human” in this dystopian world.
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Location
B132 JFSB
Start Date
20-3-2015 8:30 AM
End Date
20-3-2015 10:00 AM
Included in
Redefining Atonement in the Eco-Dystopian World of Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake
B132 JFSB
What if there was no God? Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake infiltrates a faithful reader’s mind to consider her eco-dystopian world with this question in mind. From a perspective of faith in God and in atonement, considering this dystopian world becomes an exercise in placing human identity in the context of self-creation and self-destruction rather than in divine origin. Without a spiritual genesis of animals and the natural environment, their purpose becomes more dictated by the progress of human need and their end becomes less intertwined with the fate of humanity. Characters that act as creators and destroyers who are limited to their own understanding and potential redefine atonement in Oryx & Crake. This paper argues that the protagonist Snowman’s role as an unlikely savior is defined by his ability to empathize through his dissemination of language, and therefore knowledge, to the new species of “human” in this dystopian world.