’s Oryx and Crake: Canadian Post-9/11 Worries

Sharon Sutherland and Sarah Swan

In this article, we read Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake as a post-9/11 text. We consider how Atwood uses the genre and devices of dystopic fiction in order to present a uniquely Canadian perspective on the American response to 9/11.

In March 2001, Canadian author Margaret Atwood began writing a dystopic about an individual act of terrorism that almost destroyed the entire human race. On the morning of September 11, 2001, she had completed ap- proximately half of the novel and was seated in the Toronto airport, contem- plating the rest of the book, when she learned that she would not be flying that day. Despite the “deeply unsettling” coincidence of writing about a “fic- tional catastrophe” when a “real one happens,” Atwood resumed her story after a few weeks and ultimately published Oryx and Crake1 in 2003.2 Inevi- tably, perhaps, 9/11 heavily influenced the finished Oryx and Crake and in- fused it with themes like the problematic nature of predicting perceived and real terrorist threats, the difficulties in balancing individual rights and na- tional security in the face of such threats, and the troubling nature of the emerging discourse in government, law, and the military focusing on the “greater good.” While scholars have focused much critical analysis on the issues of and bioethics in Oryx and Crake, in this paper we offer a reading of Oryx and Crake as a post 9/11 text, rife with fears of bioterrorism, increased government information-collection and surveillance, and a loss of individual freedoms in the face of global threats. Also, we con- sider the ways in which the novel offers a uniquely Canadian perspective on the aftermath of the attacks. Just as Atwood was a close observer of the 9/11 terrors, Canada, with its heavy geographic, trade, and cultural links to the US, was uniquely situated to observe America’s responses to the terrorist attacks. In fact, many of the measures America adopted in the wake of 9/11 directly affected Canada. In- creased border control and security, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and heightened immigration restrictions all impacted Canadians. The close prox- imity to the United States, and the traditional alliances between the two coun- tries sensitized Canada to the issues America faced, and the loss of civil liber-

1 Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (New York: Random House, 2003). 2 Margaret Atwood, ‘Writing Oryx and Crake’, in : Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983-2005 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005), pp. 284-286. 220 Sharon Sutherland and Sarah Swan ties in America, cloaked under the argument that it is necessary for Ameri- cans to surrender those rights in order to achieve national security, alarmed Canadians.3 It is not surprising, then, that concerns about America and the consequences of 9/11 would appear in Canadian literary works. As Atwood has stated (in agreement with novelist Alistair MacLeod), “writers write about what worries them,” and “the world of Oryx and Crake is what worries [her] right now.”4 Atwood expresses her concerns specifically through the lens of a dystopic novel, and we argue that this lens is particularly apt for the expression of Canadian worries: the form allows Atwood to speak through a whose position in relation to the other characters parallels the position of Canada in relation to the US—an intimate outsider directly af- fected by the political choices being made, yet largely powerless to impact the decisions. The resulting novel is a truly Canadian comment on an exag- gerated and dystopic America, showing the worst excesses of Canadian fears regarding the American response to 9/11. In Oryx and Crake, individual rights have succumbed to corporate and state domination, dissenters are exe- cuted, and the argument that heinous acts may be committed in the name of the greater good is taken to its extreme.

Oryx and Crake: The Plot

Like many , Oryx and Crake essentially begins at the end: an apoca- lypse has occurred, and as the story unfolds, we gradually discover how and why. One remaining human being, a man who used to be called Jimmy but who now refers to himself as Snowman, provides the narration. Jimmy de- scribes how he grew up in one of many corporate-owned Compounds, where the families of high-level workers lived in tightly controlled and brutally se- cured environments. His father, a gene researcher at OrganInc Farms, grew human organs for transplant inside of specially bred pigs. Jimmy’s mother, a former microbiologist at that same corporation, eventually became so dis- turbed by the world she inhabited that she ran away, possibly to join a resis- tance movement, and left Jimmy behind with his father. Years after her de- sertion, Compound guards showed Jimmy a video of his mother’s execution for acts of terrorism.

3 For a detailed account of the impact of 9/11 on Canadians, see Kent Roach, September 11: Consequences for Canada (Quebec: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2003). 4 Atwood, ‘Writing Oryx and Crake’, p. 286.