Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction novel that has received much analysis since its publication, in particular around its engagement, or non-engagement of the Anthropocene. By contrasting and combining the “dark pastoral” and “deluge narrative” literary tropes, I offer a new method of reading Oryx and Crake which explores the distorted fantasies at the heart of the novel’s events. This reading is centred around the character of Crake, whose seemingly sociopathic train of thought becomes almost palatable through the viewpoint of Anthropocenic “deep-time”, and whose actions serve to realise humanity’s pastoral dreams in the physical world. By studying together the double-layered ironies of the dark pastoral and the mythological elements that shape most deluge stories, Atwood’s work reveals itself as deeply relevant to the contemporary novel’s ability to engage with the Anthropocene, and as such, also to our own.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-67357 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Collins, Sean |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för konst, kultur och kommunikation (K3) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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