...represents a literary mode that seeks to prevent a certain future by describing it. This mode is often -- but not always -- dystopian. It is distinguished most by a moralistic and apocalyptic state of mind. Let's call it Cassandraism, after the daughter of Troy whose prophecies were not believed. Launched with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Cassandraism remains the most socially acceptable branch on the family tree of science fiction, embracing such respectably literary figures as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Margaret Atwood, who with her 1986 novel The Handmaid's Tale became its foremost contemporary practitioner. In Atwood's new novel Oryx and Crake, digital convergence and genetic engineering are combined and carried to their logical conclusion, a media-filtered apocalypse that the characters (and, one senses, the author) simultaneously yearn for and struggle against. Like the Bible's Book of Revelation, Oryx and Crake should be read not as a prediction of the future, but as a nightmare of the present. It stands in a tradition of novels like Brave New World or 1984 that are vaticinia ex eventu: history disguised as prophecy. If the imaginative success of a Cassandraist novel as a warning must be measured in direct...
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...Daniel Gonzalez E 360S 10/9/2015 Running Out of Fishes and Loaves Have you ever wondered what life on Earth is going to be like in the future, either within or beyond your own lifespan? If you posed this question to a hundred random people, it wouldn’t be surprising to find out people might think about what kind of technology we’ll have in the future or which animal species will be the next to go extinct, but rarely will you find somebody who wonders if there even is a real future for mankind. Of course, if that one person who says that happens to write a best-selling novel about the idea and educate the people of the world, then maybe we’ll have a fighting chance. Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake is a dystopian, fiction novel, but it has an alarming sense of realism once you actually figure out Atwood’s overall message. With this novel, Margaret Atwood is telling us that we are killing our planet, our species, and we don’t even know it. She’s saying that we are growing too fast and our resources cannot keep up with our rapid expansion, and this can lead to only one outcome: the end of humankind as we know it. In this novel, Atwood uses a first-person narrative to tell this story – that of Snowman/Jimmy. Because of this, we get a limited view of what’s happening. If there’s any part of the story we need to read about, we either have to see it through Snowman’s eyes or we have to hear somebody else tell it to him, and this gives us a limited view into this dystopian world...
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...INTRODUCTION My research question for this essay is “How can M.A.’s novel ’Oryx and Crake’ be seen as a critique towards modern society?” I have chosen to use this research question, because I find it interesting how literature can be used as a medium to warn society against what could happen, if we do not take action and just let things evolve. The book ‘1984’ written by George Orwell is similar to the book chosen here, since they both, according to how both novels fall into the post-apocalyptic genre, can be interpreted as a warning to our present society about letting technology take over, and letting technological development be more important than developing human qualities. This essay will investigate how the novel can fall into the...
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...What should be the limits of genetic engineering, and who should decide? Why would anyone want to get sick? Why would anyone want to be born with a low IQ? Why would anyone want to be born with undesirable looks? Genetic modification on the surface seems to be an easy fix to those problems. Everyone can design their own babies and know exactly what they will be good at and what they will look like in 20 years. This is the world of the future. But not the future I want to live in. Although a future with genetic modification might look nice. A future with genetic modification is quite scary due to our lack of knowledge of the long-term effects of genetic modification on humans. Additionally, as per the course of history, genetic modification...
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...“Canada is an unknown territory for the people who live in it, and I’m not talking about the fact that you may not have taken a trip to the Arctic or to Newfoundland, you may not have explored as the travel folders have it – This Great Land of Ours. I’m talking about Canada as a state of mind, as the space you inhabit not just with your body but with your head. It’s that kind of space in which we find ourselves lost. What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mid. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately; we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive.” Margaret Atwood, Survival As Atwood’s statement demonstrates, Canadian literature is concerned with place and displacement, and with the development of an effective identifying relationship between self and environs. Canada’s literature whether written in English or French reflects three main parts of Canadian experience. First, Canadian writers often emphasize the effects of climate and geography on the life and work of their people. Second, frontier’s...
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...Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 i RTNA01 1 13/6/05, 5:28 PM READING THE NOVEL General Editor: Daniel R. Schwarz The aim of this series is to provide practical introductions to reading the novel in both the British and Irish, and the American traditions. Published Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890–1930 Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 Daniel R. Schwarz Brian W. Shaffer Forthcoming Reading the Eighteenth-Century Novel Paula R. Backscheider Reading the Nineteenth-Century Novel Harry E. Shaw and Alison Case Reading the American Novel 1780–1865 Shirley Samuels Reading the American Novel 1865–1914 G. R. Thompson Reading the Twentieth-Century American Novel James Phelan ii RTNA01 2 13/6/05, 5:28 PM Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 Brian W. Shaffer iii RTNA01 3 13/6/05, 5:28 PM © 2006 by Brian W. Shaffer BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Brian W. Shaffer to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and...
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