Week 13: Oryx and Crake (6)

 

I studied a lot of dystopian novels in middle and high school, and as a young adult, dystopian novels were generally a literary trend. However, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake was the first  dystopian novel to actually make me feel scared. The alarming thing is not the actual events that take place during the course of the novel, but perhaps how closely they mirror the current state of the world. Indeed, when I read the novel, I was alarmed at the prophetic nature of Oryx and Crake. Oryx and Crake came out the same year I was born, and since then, the world has only resembled the world of the novel more. The earth, while perhaps not commercialized to the extent of branded living camps, is certainly beginning to lean in that direction. More violent and exploitative content can be accessed now than ever, and the nature of the internet is that parents are less and less able to regulate how quickly their children get exposed to those things. Seventeen years after the publication of Oryx and Crake, a generation of young men is growing up afraid of minorities and women “replacing them” or emasculating them because of the media that social media can expose them to. A global pandemic is ravaging the earth and killing millions of people. 

I, in general, am a pretty optimistic person, and I can only do my best to make things change before they get quite as bad as they are in this novel. Still, things haven’t quite changed enough yet for things to me to feel safe.