Page Goal 1: Part 2-191

To begin with, Oryx and Crake is still a little confusing at points. At times I wasn’t sure who was talking and it would change subjects so quickly. To summarize there parts that we read, we finally find out who Oryx is and more about Crake. Oryx is a little girl that Crake and Jimmy find on a porn site that they were watching. Throughout the book, there were scenes about Crake’s father supposedly killing himself, Uncle Pete who is now with Crake’s mother (former boss and best friend), what Oryx life was prior to meeting with Jimmy and how she got there, riots in the city to protest Happicuppa around the world and in their city, jumping back and forth between scenes of Jimmy and Snowman and lastly, did Jimmy find an image that his mother could be alive.  Crake was introduced right after Jimmy’s mother’s disappearance. In that passage something that caught my attention was when Jimmy said “Of course Crake wasn’t Crake yet, at the time; his name was Glenn.” (70) I think with his father’s apparent suicide Crake changed his life because of the interrogation, his mother’s new marriage and to forget something. I think his past affected him so much that he needed to change himself to hide something important. Another important part of this reading was finding Oryx and her life story leading up to her conversation with Jimmy. She was from a village and her mother sold her and her brother when they were younger. They found themselves living with Uncle En that used them to sell flowers to tourists and had a daily quota that they needed to reach or else they would be sold to someone else. “Oryx had been given a new name by Uncle Em”. (129) Oryx was so “small and fragile, her features so clear and pure” (129-130) which drew the attention of older men trying to be satisfied by little girls. This lead to Uncle En being killed and Oryx being taken with a man that bought her for “movies” which is actually pornography. While Jimmy and Crake were watching it on Uncle Pete’s laptop, they noticed Oryx, at the time they didn’t know who she was, and Jimmy was watching her. “Oryx paused in her activities. She smiled a hard little smile that made her appear much older, and wiped the whipped cream from her mouth. Then she looked over her shoulder and right into the eyes of the viewer- right into Jimmy’s eyes, into the secret person inside of him.  (90-91) That was their first contact and she knew that Jimmy was the one that could help her.  I think with both Oryx and Crake changing their names, they are both trying to hide their past. Oryx past was terrible from the time she was sold by her own mother, loosing her brother, being a sex figure to older men and being raped at a young age. Jimmy was so in shock that he didn’t know how to react and asked her “Did they rape you?” (144) He kept denying and saying none of it was real but Oryx left him on a back chilling note, “But Jimmy, you should know. All sex is real.” (144) The last part of the reading that stood out to me was the loss of Crakes father. After watching a different video on Uncle Pete’s computer, Jimmy and Crake believed that they saw Jimmy’s mother, which triggered a response from Crake. “My dad was the same” (182) Crake said to Jimmy which confused him at first because he thought that he died. Crake was told that they never said it was suicide instead said “your father’s accident”. (183) His father was one of the top researchers at HelthWyzer West and could have been targeted.

We finally find out who both Oryx and Crake which is a huge relief. Something else that was cleared up was whether or not Crake was a male or female, now I know he is a male. I am still unsure about the Children or Oryx, I believe that it is the children that had to grow up in similar way as Oryx did. Now, there is the “Children of Crake”. (96)

Questions:

1. Who are the Children of Crake?

2. Could Jimmy’s mother actually still be alive?

3. Was Crakes father set up because he was like Jimmy’s mother but he was caught instead?