Oryx and Crake - Honorable Mentions

 Top Five Honorable Mentions

For my final post, I thought it would be fun to compile a list of my top five favorite and most memorable quotes from Oryx and Crake. Sticky noting quotes in books is one of my favorite things to do, the feelings that can come from a string of words is fascinating to me. 

To kick things off, I think my favorite quote in the entire book is "to stay human is to break a limitation" (301). This gave me goosebumps immediately after reading it. Defining what makes us human has always been intriguing to me because there is no definitive answer, but this quote is definitely eye opening to a new possibility of what makes us human. This quote is very thought provoking and made me stop and think for a little while which is exactly what literature is for. 

This next quote was runner up to my first choice, but not far behind. While Jimmy and Oryx are talking, Oryx says, "there is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you" (144). I wouldn't say inspirational quotes are my thing, but quotes similar are what I enjoy most. I chose this as my second choice because I think the writing is beautiful, but it also reminds me that life is what you make it. You can either look at life through rose colored glasses like Oryx, or you can look at it with a pair of not so colored glasses like Jimmy. Reading this was just a nice little reminder that I'm in control of my life, how I see things is because I'm choosing to see it that way. 

My third favorite is "hang on to the words" [Jimmy] tells himself. The odd words, the old words, the rare ones" (68). I love this quote because I think it says a lot about Jimmy's character. I talked about Jimmy being more of a word person while Crake along with everyone else in society is a number person in my previous post. I also think it highlights the divide of society in a STEM dominated world. 

Another thing I really like about this quote is how it connects to Snowman's relationship with the Crakers. The Crakers were designed to be the perfect humans but lack anything that truly makes them human. Things such as love, religion, art and more have been bred out of the Crakers. Snowman soon becomes an encyclopedia of sorts to the Crakers, they ask him questions like where they came from. With the help of Snowman they eventually create their own little story and see Crake as a superior. 

While we're on the subject of humans and society, I chose "anyway, maybe there weren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long term pain. It was like a giant slug eating its way relentlessly through all the other bio forms on the planet, grinding up life on earth and shitting it out the backside in the form of pieces of manufactured and soon-to-be obsolete plastic junk" as my fourth quote (243). Jimmy comes to this realization after a chat with his girlfriend's roommates, they believe that in order to avoid destruction and pain humanity must change. 

This quote stuck out to me because I feel it currently relates to society. Continent, country, state it doesn't matter we all have a past, and what comes from the past are lessons. We as a society must do better, learn from our mistakes in order to prevent us from making the same mistake or worse. I thought about a lot of mistakes we've made as the human race, about the same mistakes happening more than once. I agree wholeheartedly with this quote, but I wouldn't put it so cynically like Jimmy. 

Thinking back to The Handmaid's Tale, another book written by Atwood, I thought this quote kind of connected to some of her ideas in that book. I wrote an essay about The Handmaid's Tale and in my conclusion I talked about Atwood using her literature as a warning. To remind us that if we're not careful we could end up living in a dystopia, to remind us that we as a race are our own worst enemy. 

We've reached the end of the list, coming in at number five is "nature is to zoos as God is to churches" (127). This is another quote that just stuck with me, it's interesting and made itself home in the back of my mind as I continued reading this book. During this scene Jimmy and Crake are talking about genetically modified animals. Jimmy doesn't like the idea of manmade species while Crake disagrees and believes Jimmy is being ignorant. It was Crake who came up with the analogy in the quote above, believing God is a manmade idea. Crake believes God is what lead to the idea of good and bad being so black and white with no gray in between. This scene contains another favorite quote of mine, but we're only here to talk about top five!

Before I wrap this up, I'd like to thank those who decided to stop by and take the time to read my blog. It's been a wild ride going through the ups and downs in Oryx and Crake and I'm glad everyone stuck around to (somewhat) experience it with me. I hope you all enjoyed!