HUBRIS AND ‘PARADICICAL’ DESTRUCTION IN MARGARET ATWOOD’s ORYX AND CRAKE

Year 2016, Volume: 9 Issue: 2, 0 - 0, 07.10.2016

Gillian Mary Elizabeth Alban

https://doi.org/10.18221/bujss.11320

Abstract

Margaret Atwood’s dystopian, speculative novel, Oryx and Crake (2003) shows the devastating effects of the unbridled, scientific power or hubris of humans as they play god in attempting to contravene against devastation of the environment according to their own lights, whether reengineering humanity according to their own design, or taking drastic action to ensure the survival of the ecosystem, both of these in a desperate attempt to counteract the results of corporate greed which has virtually destroyed the ecosystem. Atwood presents the cataclysmic events of this novel through a double time frame. The past shows the ecological, climactic destruction of the globe effected by rapaciously capitalist multinational corporates which spreads a dark pall over Jimmy’s childhood. The present time leaves Snowman/ Jimmy almost the sole inheritor after an apocalyptic mass death has occurred. He remains trapped in a traumatic survival of these devastations, looking back to wonder at his own responsibility for this destruction, even as he remains caught within the consequences. Atwood’s imaginative presentation of the ecological destruction of the world, presented through the psychic traumas of her protagonist, shows us the possible consequences of human actions in disregard for the planet earth, which just might operate in warning us of the results of such destruction of our environment before they are actually upon us and it will be too late.   

Margaret Atwood’un distopik, spekülatif romanı Oryx and Crake (2003) bize dizginlenemeyen bilimin gücünü veya insanların doğayı kendi ışıklarına göre mahfetmelerine engel olmaya çalışırken Tanrı rolünü oynamalarının yarattığı gururun yıkıcı sonuçlarını gösterir. Bu ya insanlığı kendi tasarladıkları yeni bir düzen içinde yeniden yapılandırmakla olur; ya da ekosistemi adeta yokeden bir açgözlülüğü önleme çabasında global düzenin hayatta kalmasını garantiye almak için harekete geçmekle. Atwood bu dehşet verici olayları ikili bir zaman çerçevesinde bize sunar. Geçmiş; Jimmy’nin çocukluğuna gölge düşüren açgözlü, kapitalist, çokuluslu şirketlerin dünyayı mahfetmesini gösterir. Günümüz ise bu kahredici olaylar arasında travmatik bir şekilde hayatta kalarak hapsolmuş hisseden, geçmişine bakarak bunun sonuçlarına yakalandığı için bu yıkımda kendi sorumluluğunu düşünen Snowman/ Jimmy’yi kıyametvari bir toplu ölümden sonra yegane varis olarak bırakır. Atwood’un ruhsal travmalar yaşayan karakteri üzerinden gösterdiği dünyanın ekolojik anlamda mahfolmasıyla ilgili imgesel sunumu bize insanların olası hareketlerinin sonuçlarını gösterir, ki bu da yıkım öncesi bize yıkım sonrasında yaşanacaklar  hakkında bir uyarı niteliği taşıyabilir.

References

• Atwood, Margaret. (2003). Oryx and Crake. London: Virago.
• ___. (2009). “Time Capsule found on the dead planet”.
• Boorstin, D. J. (1965). The Americans: The National Experience. New York: Vintage Books.
• Bouson, J. Brooks. “We’re Using up the Earth. It’s almost gone”: A Return to the Post-Apocalyptic Future in Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood”
• Canavan, Gerry. (2012). “Hope, but not for us: Ecological Science Fiction and the End of the World in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, 23:2, 138-159, DOI: 10.1080/10436928.2012.676914.
• Caruth, Cathy. “Unclaimed Experience”: Trauma, Narrative and History”.
• Derrida, Jacques, Catherine Porter & Philip Lewis. (1984). “No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives)”. Diacritics, Vol. 14. No.2. Nuclear Criticism, pp. 20-31.
• Djerassi, Carl. (2014). “Paul Klee: Angelus Novus, 1920.
• Duncan, Richard C. (1996). “The Olduvai Theory: Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age”.
• Glover, Jayne. Human Nature: Ecological Philosophy in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. English Studies in Africa, 52:2, 50-62, DOI.
• Howells, Coral Ann. (2006). ‘Margaret Atwood’s dystopian visions: The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake’. In Howells, Coral Ann (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 161-175.
• Lukes, Daniel. (2011). Review, Margaret Atwood. In Other Worlds – SF and the Human Imagination. New York: Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday.
• Marder, Elissa. (2006). Trauma and Literary Studies: Some “Enabling” Questions”. Trauma and Literary Studies: Reading On.
• Mosca, Valeria. (2013). “Crossing Human Boundaries: Apocalypse as Posthumanism in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. Altre Modernita/ Other Modernities/ Essays.
• Plumwood, Val. (1991). “Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism”. Hypatia, Vol. 6, No.1, Ecological Feminism, pp. 3-27.
• Pordzik, Ralph. (2012). “The Posthuman Future of Man: Anthropocentrism and the Other of Technology in Anglo-American Science Fiction”. Utopian Studies, Vol. 23, No.1, pp. 142-161.
• Rao, Eleanora. (2006). ‘Home and nation in Margaret Atwood’s later fiction’. In Howells, Coral Ann (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 100-113.
• Snyder, Katherine V. (2011). “Time to Go”: the Post-Apocalyptic and the Post-Traumatic in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake”. Studies in the Novel, Vol. 43, No.4, pp. 470-489.