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When readers of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake are first introduced to the Children of Crake, we observe their foreign appearance through the eyes of Snowman, to whom their “sound of tooth”, “smooth of skin” and “no body hair” feel deeply uncanny and “leave him chilled”. These Crakers possess, to an extent, the features and proportions of human beings, however their “perfection”, like “retouched fashion photos” or “animated statues”, make them feel like either something less or more than human.
A recurring theme of interest to me during my reading of this text was Atwood’s exploration of how much can be exercised within the alteration department before an organism is no longer the original, or the ‘real’ thing. Snowman reflects time and time again on the ‘realness’, or lack thereof, of the foods he eats: “Real chicken, Jimmy suspected… And real beer. For sure the beer was real.” What is the turning point then, at which these foods become no longer real? Is an apple, say, no longer an apple, just because the fruit has been modified to be larger, more delicious, more resilient? Is it an apple at its best potential, or not an apple at all?
Jimmy asks this question of Crake, in relation to the butterflies with “wings the size of pancakes and shocking pink”; “Are they real or fake?” In response, Crake rationalises that after the genetic alteration happens, “that’s what they look like in real time. The process is no longer important…. These butterflies fly, they mate, they lay eggs, caterpillars come out.” Or in other words, if the butterfly still functions as a butterfly, must we deconstruct and interrogate the process in which it became that way?
By extension of this conundrum, a question I found myself asking was: if the Crakers did not evolve naturally, to what extent are they really human?
Granted, the circumstances of the Crakers are quite different than those of the butterflies, because the Crakers in many ways do not appear, function or behave as their originals – homo sapiens – do. They have skin that is immune to UV damage, they have built-in insect-repellent, their genitals turn blue when it is time for mating – which occurs as purely a reproductive act – and their digestive systems are designed to digest unrefined plant material. Strictly biologically speaking then, the Crakers are not ‘humans’ as we are.
However, to gain a better understanding of whether or not these creatures are human, I believe it is necessary to analyse the Crakers on more than merely a scientific or biological level. Crake, with only his scientific deduction of the world and experiences around him (even Art, he views, serves only a “biological purpose”), is not completely fit to decide what constitutes as a human organism, because ‘human’ is a folk-category, rather than a scientific category. We assign ourselves the subjective, vernacular label of ‘human’ the same way that we place other organisms under the umbrella categories of ‘plants’ and ‘animals’, even though, for example, mushrooms are in fact more closely genetically related to humans than they are to plants, though we would not categorise them as such, and chimpanzees are closer to humans than they are to gorillas, though many of us would be displeased to learn so.
However, even on a non-scientific level, there are undoubtedly indications of the non-humanness of the Crakers. For one, they are ignorant to the human experiences of desire and, as a result, suffering. They have everything they will ever need built-in to their DNA (supposedly) and they carry no incentive towards conflict or violence – “Oh Snowman, please, what is violent?”. Without the capacity for deep desire, they demonstrate a similarity to non-human animals (at least in the way some belittle non-human animals under a human exceptionalist view); we might think of a goldfish, or an ant, to be driven solely by instinct and lacking the ‘human’ capacity for emotional pain or pleasure, for satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Is an ant truly happy? Or merely content? Or neither, because it does not know the opposite, and is just absentmindedly plodding along the tick-tock of its life course?
Despite these limitations, there are also some distinctly human interests retained by the Crakers. While Crake saw best to breed religion, history and art out of his Children, it seems that he was unsuccessful. And given that these are concepts commonly reserved for the human species alone and believed to be the markers which distinguish us from all other animals, the true nature of the Crakers suddenly becomes a little more obscure.
Firstly, what makes us distinctly human, in part, is our inquisitive, reflective, pondering minds; a mind complex to such an extent that it has the capacity and inclination to ask the ‘big questions’, to theorise where we come from? Does God exist? What does this life mean? What is it to be human? The Crakers begins to ponder all these things; they begin to develop what Jimmy called “symbolic thinking”, which Crake feared most of all would bring about their downfall. The Crakers, while in Paradice, wrestle with the question of their origin, asking Oryx “Who made them?” to which she replies “Crake.” Then, gradually, with the help of Snowman, they construct a kind of mythology for themselves, too, within which Oryx and Crake are their Gods. “Crake thought he’d done away with all that… God is a cluster of neurons, he’d maintained… but they’re conversing with the invisible, they’ve developed reverence.” In the narrative of the Bible, the answer to ‘What is a human?’ is that a human is he who was created in the image of God, and who therefore has the capacity for a relationship with God – something which the Crakers start to develop. Snowman’s comment that “take out too much in that area and you’ve got a zombie or a psychopath” lends itself again to the notion that there is something about reverence that gives us humanity, or that humanity and religion are inextricably intertwined.
The Crakers also begin, towards the end of the novel, to make art – as they create a “scarecrow-like effigy” in hopes that it would return Snowman to them safely. Art, music, words, images – it’s these imaginative structures which define human meaning. Even as Snowman himself feels himself spiralling into insanity and feeling more and more separated from the human civilisation he once knew, he urges himself to “Hang on to the words… the odd words, the old words, the rare words” – he holds onto the memory of literature as his only grip on his humanity.
While the Crakers were not created in absolute biological likeness to homo sapiens, their inclinations towards art, history, introspection and faith, characteristics which are distinctly humanistic, suggest that they are more like us than they may seem at first. However, while the novel concluded before these events could unfold, I believe that we would have eventually seen an ugly end to the Crakers at the hands of any remaining humans. Even if Snowman could convince his human counterparts that the Crakers, too, are human – if not in its scientific category, then its folk category – and therefore a non-threat, the question would turn from ‘Are the Crakers human?’ to what it means to recognise humanness in others; to see others as human. We have discovered too often across the span of history and its many atrocities, that members of even our own species have been excluded by others from the category of the human; take, for example, the Jews and the Nazis or the Africans and their North American enslavers. A likely scene of the Crakers and Homo sapiens’ inevitable meeting would be a live-enactment of a ‘Barbarian Stomp’ game, where the Crakers – the barbarians, the uncivilised – meet their gruesome fate.
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