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Paradice Lost, Paradise Regained: homo faber and the Makings of a New Beginning in Oryx and Crake
Papers on Language and Literature, Spring 2005 by DiMarco, Danette
Harmless products such as the butterflies are often ignored, unless they become a nuisance or threat, while the process of their development becomes an end in its own right. Jimmy remembers thatwhen "products" become dangerous in the Organlnc biolab, they are "destroyed" (51). The "cane toad with a prehensile tale like a chameleon's that might climb in through the bathroom window and blind you while you were brushing your teeth" (51) is one example. Later, when-as Snowman-he faces having to escape human-eating Pigoons, his situation calls attention to the dangers of technological innovation incurred without ethical preponderance. Even when a fabrication is neither necessarily destructive nor incidental, it can still be lowly regarded. Crake himself refers to the Crakers as "floor models"-indicating that they are useable, but also implying some degree of sub-level status in the evolution of their line.
Several instances suggest Crake's acceptance of an instrumental existence that depends upon the violation of nature in the name of science and profit. With regard to the testing of the BlyssPluss pill, he speaks antiseptically about such violence as failed research-not as unethical activity. For example, he highlights that "[a] couple of the test subjects had literally fucked themselves to death, several had assaulted old ladies and household pets, and there had been a few unfortunate cases of priapism and split dicks [. . .]. One subject had grown a big genital wart all over her epidermis" (295). Even his response to the research subjects indicate his acceptance of objectification in the name of research and profit. They are " [f]rom the poorer countries [. . .]. Whorehouses. Prisons. And from the ranks of the desperate, as usual" (296). This matter-of-fact recitation resembles an earlier event in his life when he claims, with respect to the Happicuppa coffee wars, that there have always been "peasants" (179). Even with regard to his own innovations he claims that the BlyssPluss pill "would become a huge money-spinner" (295). He knows and accepts, long before Jimmy, that HelthWyzer had been creating diseases for profit (211). When he and Jimmy visit the Pleeblands he boasts, "this is where our stuff turns to gold" (288), and 'You have no idea how much money changes hands on this one street alone" (289). And duringJimmy's visit to Watson Crick, Crake claims that the inventors of the ChickieNobs will "clean up" especially because "[t]hey can undercut the price of everyone else" (203). Aristotle may have identified technology as a way to provide people with a better life exempt from the hard work of life's necessities, but it is capitalism's promise that people will mostly develop technology to reap fiscal rewards. Crake himself makes the bio-plague, in the form of BlyssPluss, for profit, although he is fairly silent on this fact, making it possible for others like Jimmy to mistakenly interpret his work as "culture" work.8 Not until Jimmy receives a phone call during the actual outbreak does he realize that Crake has serious financial investors.
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