Category: Class Discussion

Ren and Jimmy’s mirrored love lives.

In Oryx and Crake Jimmy has an infatuation with Oryx and a love for her that he was incapable of achieving with any other female in his life.  Even the brief sightings of her before he really knew her became significant to him.  The image of her as a young girl in the porn video became engrained in his mind.  This is very different from how Jimmy saw Ren.  In O&C Ren seems to be an afterthought.

When Jimmy realizes that Crake has formed a relationship, of whatever form of a relationship he is capable of, with Oryx we see a shift in his friendship with Crake.  Even though Crake is his best friend and that is the only friend he can truly confide in, jealousy and anger brews within Jimmy.  And this can be seen in the scene where Jimmy kills Crake.  All the negative feelings about Crake stemmed from his love for Oryx and whatever delusional relationship they seemed to have.  When Oryx tells Jimmy that what she and Crake have is not as important and not as special, we see Jimmy feel better about himself and his relationship with Oryx.  This shows an unspoken tension between Crake and Jimmy.

In The Year of the Flood we learn more about Ren’s background and how her and Jimmy’s lives crossed paths.  After leaving the Gardeners, Ren goes to high school in HelthWyzer and meets Jimmy.  Their friendship grows into a more physical connection and Ren quickly falls in love with him.  Her mind is almost consumed by Jimmy and her love for him.  She is also convinced that she loves him back and that they have this bond up until she realizes that he is incapable of commitment.

Ren’s love for Jimmy, mirrors his love for Oryx.  What started as a mere infatuation grew into a powerful and influential love.  Just like how Jimmy’s love for Oryx affected his friendship with Crake, Ren’s love for Jimmy affected her friendship with Amanda.  When she finds out that Jimmy is Amanda’s new boyfriend, she quickly becomes distant.  What was meant to be a joyous reunion, turned into a quick and abrupt goodbye.  After that, Ren feels jealousy and resentment toward Amanda who is her best friend.  However her love for Jimmy has blinded her into distancing herself from her best friend.  Similar to how Jimmy felt joy when he thought Crake’s relationship with Oryx was insignificant, Ren feels joy when she learns that Amanda and Jimmy are not longer together.  This too, shows the unspoken tension between Ren and Amanda.

This makes me wonder how the book will end and if Ren’s relationship with Amanda will end on a sour note like Crake and Jimmy’s.

 

Politics and Power of Physicians

Atwood explores the troubling extent to which physicians are involved in people’s lives. Although doctors are supposed to inform their patients in various options they can take in a neutral manner, they often contaminate it with their own personal opinions, or extend ones from the state or larger power. 

One example where we see physician-patient relations failing is with Toby’s mother. She “came down with a  strange illness”, despite leading a healthy, careful lifestyle. When she tries to address this problem, “no doctor could give her a diagnosis, though many tests were done by the HelthWyzer Corp clinics” (22). Immediately, the reader suspects the HelthWyzer Corp (HWC) of sabotaging Toby’s mother. We are not surprised by this because Crake reveals the past evils that HWC has carried out. Even if we didn’t know about these activities, the fact that she left her health in the hands of one clinic, of one entity is problematic. Leaving decisions about major health issues to one doctor is dangerous. This issue is supported by, Gina Kolata, a medical journalist who wrote “Smart Patient” through The New York Times. In it, she explains how to minimize risk to your health. One significant way is to seek a second opinion concerning a major medical issue or decision. Often, physicians will provide different diagnosis’ and remedies. She examines a case study to support this disparity; in it, there were professionals who examined a blood sample, and 80% of the opinions provided were in disagreement. (You can buy her ebook here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Smart-Patient-Mistakes-Health-ebook/dp/B00MI19CIA) So seeing only one physician really isn’t wise (get it? HelthWyzer). Although seeking a second, even third opinion would be best, it is not easy for many people to do, as it can be costly and time consuming.

Another issue is that some physicians may advocate certain courses of action as the better choice for a patient, even though a patient may feel so otherwise. Roberts focuses on how counselors and doctors disapprove when women/couples decide against selective abortion. They use arguments such as giving better chance of survival to other fertilized eggs, or to not allowing “defective” ones to suffer a life from some disability. Although these are choices that are for a woman to decide on, these procedures are recommend/pushed onto them. Toby’s mother continued getting sick despite taking HelthWyzer supplements- yet the way that Toby described it makes it seem as if her mother was suspicious of the treatment as well. 

The physicians are also forced to provide genetic screening, and this pressure is placed onto women as well to be a responsible parent (Roberts). This is an extension of the state looking down on ‘defective’ individuals, and avoiding focusing on social problems. One way we can see this is how everyone in the compounds are worried about getting sick or appearing like a pleeb, although they really have no information about them. Compounders speak about pleebs like they are pariahs- there is nothing actually wrong with them. The disconnect and injustice is just not addressed.

One way the state and physicians impose beliefs onto parents is when sex is assigned to a baby. For many intersex youth, a sex must be given to them within the first day, even though the parents are unsure. Even if it’s not required in that time period, parents are often pressured to assign one to conform to social expectation. Germany recently allowed third gender to appear on birth certificates- this allows time for parents (but mainly the child) to decide what sex they are (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/11/01/242366812/germany-offers-third-gender-option-on-birth-certificates). Australia allows for people to have a gender “X” on passports. These societal expectations are often enforced under the guise of medical science (which Somerville examines).

Amanda Payne’s Vulture Sculptures: Art as Social Commentary

The Year of the Flood returns to a character from Oryx and Crake, or rather, introduces her appropriately for the first time. Echoing our discussion last week on the influence of Jimmy’s narration, we meet Amanda in Oryx and Crake as Jimmy’s artist girlfriend. Both she and her art are belittled. The way she sees in images is described as a “tribute to [Jimmy’s] talents” (244). Jimmy sexualizes her body and “tries to sound interested” in her mind (247). However, in The Year of the Flood, we get a very different characterization of Amanda. We learn more about her past, her family, and her art. We begin to understand her more fully and how she contributes to the God’s Gardeners.

Amanda’s art projects take on a number of names, including the Vulture Sculptures and The Living Word. The idea consists of creating letters and words out of cow bones, fish guts, toxic-spill-killed birds, toilets from building demolition sites—essentially, dead objects, killed by humans in some way, either micro or macro. Amanda then invites these parts to be either eaten by vultures or covered in insects as this process is filmed from above. In her eyes, this process brings these objects back to life. She is highlighting the ability of the natural world and natural processes of life to make use of decaying, dead, or seemingly useless and unwanted materials. In a way, it does not matter what word she chooses to write out with the materials. The vultures and insects will always tear it apart or cover it up just the same. If we take language to be a marker of civilization and civilized society, a system of signifiers, what does this say about the hierarchy between the natural and constructed world? These pieces are great examples of ecofeminist art.

What also fascinates Amanda about these projects is the way things are able to move and grow and then disappear. We learn that this fascination is tied to her identity as a, likely illegal, refugee from Texas. Beyond her art providing a way for her to feel both visible and invisible, I think there is also a connection to migrant and refugee bodies. Migration is often a risky and dangerous process in which people die. Bodies are found on the border, in bodies of water, and perhaps there is something comforting about returning to the earth and to the world through vulturizing. I hope we can share our thoughts on what Atwood is trying to say either about Amanda or about nature/civilization, ecofeminism, migration, or beyond through these art pieces.

The Imperfect Narrator

“The Crake they’re praising is his fabrication.” – Oryx & Crake, part 5, “Fish”

Despite being told in a third-person perspective, Oryx & Crake nonetheless takes on Snowman as its narrator. He is the one who imparts the story across its intersecting timelines: from his childhood, when his name was Jimmy and Crake was merely his classmate and best friend; then ahead into the post-apocalyptic future, a world destroyed by Crake himself; and, in more limited bursts, Snowman’s relationship with Oryx, almost in a world and timeframe of their own, floating adrift from the main events of the story. Snowman’s role as a storyteller is not limited to the novel’s narrative, however. He is a prophet among the Crakers, the only one who can communicate with their revered deities Oryx and Crake, the only one who has seen them and can tell their stories. The quote above describes how Snowman’s storytelling has distorted the truth in-universe – despite his own muddled opinion of Crake, he allows for the man’s deification. He claims it’s out of defiance, but what matters is the end result. Crake died to ascend to godhood in the ruins of the world.

This begs the question: can we, the readers, trust Snowman’s narrative? Can we take him at his word? Is he a reliable narrator as a literary device, despite the fact that he’s demonstrated himself to be an unreliable narrator within the context of the story?

For my part, I didn’t find any reason to distrust Snowman’s version of events while reading the novel. Only upon reconsideration did I wonder about the relative truth of the text, and even now, I’m reluctant to label Snowman as unreliable. For one, if we can’t trust Snowman, Oryx & Crake is left without a narrator. But more importantly, the novel and its narration present Snowman to us as trustworthy. His narration lacks ornate prose and wordy descriptions; the novel’s opening lines are plain and to-the-point. Snowman carries a distinct sense of self-depreciation that removes the fear of embellishment; he looks down upon himself and seems aware of his own failings and willing to admit them. Furthermore, he is by leaps and bounds the most empathetic character in the text, aside from perhaps Oryx, in her all-too-brief moments present in the text. But even when counting Oryx, Snowman easily matches her in empathy, and lacks any amount of complicity in Crake’s eventual destructive plans, a distinction that sets him apart from Oryx – even if we never know just how much Oryx knew about the impending end of the world.

That lack of knowledge and clear absence of omnipotence is one of the strongest reasons I trust Snowman as a narrator. There is so much he does not know, so much left ambiguous. Snowman never fully understands Crake’s motivations or Oryx’s psyche, and that fact is painfully reflected in the narrative. Both characters feel distant from Snowman and the reader alike, and Snowman readily admits there is much he doesn’t understand. It feels genuine, the lack of answers the text offers when its timelines finally converge. We the readers are left overwhelmed by the end of the world, just the same as everyone else. Oryx remains a specter, like how Snowman imagines her, only bits and pieces of her story known. Crake remains a reclusive mad genius, behaving in ways that only make sense to the man himself. And Snowman, from the first page to the last, is the only man who can piece together their intertwined stories: imperfectly, but as best as he can.

-Maggie Wrobleski

The Fallacy of “Food to Freedom”

“What if they get out? Go on the rampage? Start breeding, then the population spirals out of control – like those big green rabbits?”

“That would be a problem,” said Crake. “But they won’t get out. Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.”

“Meaning what?” said Jimmy. He wasn’t paying close attention, he was worrying about the ChickieNobs and the wolvogs. Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?

“Those walls and bars are there for a reason,” said Crake. “Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases.”

“Them?”

“Nature and God.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in God,” said Jimmy.

“I don’t believe in Nature either,” said Crake. “Or not with a capital N.”

Ecology is a special science. Among the natural sciences, it is unique in its inherent connection to human-centered values. Ecology’s relationship with transgenic biotechnology – i.e. the biotechnology used to make genetically-modified organisms – is therefore an inherently complex one. This can be seen by the myriad of ways in which biotechnology companies are often demonized – with false accusations that sound great for rousing the public, as well as with accurate information about the harms created by their work – and in the way that the technology is often criticized as inherently unsafe, a practice to be avoided like Frankenstein’s monster.

During the time I have spent working on environmental issues, the utility and morality of biotechnology has come up in discussion many times: questions about safety, questions about “how much is too much” when tampering with nature, questions about interest groups and decision-making processes, questions about the actual benefits and harms to using genetically-modified organisms to feed people.

There were two particularly influential experiences for me in forming my views about biotechnology.

The first was visiting the New York Botanical Garden with my Ethnobotany course at Lehman College, where lab technicians and scientists who were working with potential transgenic genes spoke of their successes, of the ways in which lives were positively transformed by golden rice and similar GM crops developed to aid the fight against hunger and malnutrition in less industrialized parts of the world. This gave me an appreciation for the intent and the potential benefits of the technology. It was following this that I learned that GMOs actually take less pesticide to create than conventional crops, and similar bits of scientific knowledge that made me question anti-GMO activists’ claims.

The second occurred one day in Patagonia, AZ, while I was volunteering with the local native seed library, cleaning and sorting bags of seed collected to help with restoration ecology projects in Southern Arizona. A political economist by the name Carol Thompson (this is her Northern Arizona University faculty profile) was also volunteering that day, and she started telling me about her work on the political economy of GMOs in US food aid to Africa. This was the scientific and political counter-argument I had been waiting to hear: that GM seeds are created in large batches without nearly enough genetic diversity; that they often squelch local seed varieties and spread their genetic material far outside their intended reach; that these seed varieties are usually fine for the first year, but are often maladapted to the large annual fluctuations in growing conditions that are common in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Thompson’s most important point, to me, was that agency is being stripped from the countries and from the people receiving food aid. The United States has refused to pay for GM corn seeds to be milled before sent as food aid, a large problem for countries with strict anti-GMO sentiment, rampant hunger, and little money in the budget to pay the US to mill the food that we are supposedly donating out of goodwill.

I am optimistic that we will learn how to make more smaller batches of seed and integrate local adaptations, but I am skeptical about whether the choice will be given to people receiving food aid to abstain from eating genetically modified foods if they so desire, and whether American citizens will have the right to know what genetic modifications have been made to the foods we eat. (Anti-GMO-labeling legislation is already being churned out in America.)

Technology is unfortunately not an implicit harbinger of justice and positivity into the world. As stated by Peter Sunde, founder of The Pirate Bay, in a recent interview with Motherboard about why he has given up the fight for net neutrality:

“The reason that the real world is the big target for me is because the internet is emulating the real world. We are trying to recreate this capitalistic society we have on top of the internet. So the Internet has been mostly fuel on the capitalistic fire, by kind of pretending to be something which will connect the whole world, but actually having a capitalistic agenda.

Look at all the biggest companies in the world, they are all based on the Internet. Look at what they are selling: nothing. Facebook has no product. Airbnb, the biggest hotel chain in the world, has no hotels. Uber, the biggest taxi company in the world, has no taxis whatsoever.

The amount of employees in these companies are smaller than ever before and the profits are, in turn, larger. Apple and Google are passing oil companies by far. Minecraft got sold for $2.6 billion and WhatsApp for like $19 billion. These are insane amounts of money for nothing. That is why the Internet and capitalism are so in love with each other.

… I think the focus needs to be that the Internet is exactly the same as society. People might realize that it’s not a really good idea to have all of our data and files on Google, Facebook and company servers. All of these things need to be communicated al the way to the political top, of course. But stop treating Internet like it’s a different thing and start focusing on what you actually want your society to look like. We have to fix society, before we can fix the Internet. That’s the only thing.”

Like the Internet, GM technology is currently masquerading as a force for justice and sustenance, but I don’t believe that Monsanto making smaller batches of seeds will, on its own, make nearly enough difference to solve the issues with GMOs. Scientific advancement is not the same as political and economic change. I posit that we cannot fix transgenic biotechnology and solve the problems with its application simply by refining the science. We must engage with the political, social, and economic forces controlling GM technology if we are to create substantial social change.

~ Ari Himber

Though I have not mentioned feminism by name in this post, there are obviously a heap of feminist issues and perspectives that this post touches on. Another topic alluded to in the title is the misdirection of initiatives that center hunger as a separate issue from poverty, environmental justice, and social inequality. This is where I will be steering the class conversation on Tuesday.