Oryx and Crake

Theme:

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood explores the theme of human relationships (romantic/familial) and how they are affected by the scientific and cultural shifts.

Summary:

Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved.

Famous Quotes:

“We understand more than we know.”

“friendship was always contingent.”

“expectation isn’t the same as desire”

“Not real can tell us about real.”

“How potent was that word. With.”

“The proper study of Mankind is Everything.”

“The proper study of Mankind is Man.”

“You can’t buy it, but it has a price,” said Oryx. “Everything has a price.”

“[H]aving a money value was no substitute for love.”

“I’ll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I’ll make you me.”

“It made him feel invisible—not that he wanted to feel anything else.”

“Is it real? No, it is not real. What is this not real? Not real can tell us about real.”

“All that wasted time, and he didn’t even know who’d wasted it.”

“She liked to keep only the bright side of herself turned towards him. She liked to shine.”

“When the water’s moving faster than the boat, you can’t control a thing.”

“When the slugs begin to talk there’s no time to lose.”

“Despite the fingerprint identity cards now carried by everyone”

“Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.”

“All he said was that some people needed to change, and to change they needed to be elsewhere.”

“Human society, they claimed, was a sort of monster, its main by-products being corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain.”

“Everything in his life was temporary, ungrounded. Language itself had lost its solidity; it had become thin, contingent, slippery, a viscid film on which he was sliding around like an eyeball on a plate. An eyeball that could still see, however. That was the trouble.”