Genetic Engineering In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake

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Isaac Asimov once said “The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.” Margaret Atwood’s novel, Oryx and Crake, is extremely packed with adventure and romance. In the book, genetic engineering is a highly used method that is consistent throughout the novel and is responsible for the plague that destroys ninety-nine percent of the human race. Modifying the building blocks of life leads to the imbalance of the human society and eventually their own downfall. It can be proven by the book Oryx and Crake where almost all of the human race got wiped due to gene modifications. The plague caused a complication in the human survival which led to Marxism. Moreover, an imbalance in the hierarchy of nature and species further questioned human survival.
The concept of genetic …show more content…
This method causes serious consequences in today’s world and indefinitely relates to Jimmy’s world. In the novel, similar outcomes were listed of pursuing this method “…like a giant slug eating…through all the other bio forms on the planet, grinding up life on earth” (Atwood, 227). The diction used in this quote to represent human actions in Jimmy’s world is very powerful as it depicts the nature’s response to those actions. The novel has been constantly presenting the aftermath of human’s intake in nature.
Between the pages 205 and 206, Jimmy and Crake are having a chat about the destroyed civilization and the effects of how destroying one species will effect biodiversity. They do not realize what Crake is doing will eventually lead to a destroyed civilization. Even though the protagonists were given many hints towards the results of altering the building blocks of life, they weren’t able to envision how heavy the outcome may
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