There are many religious and Christian metaphors in both "The Year of the Flood" and "Oryx and Crake". What's most interesting to consider, though, is the idea of Snowman as the sole human being, as a survivor, & most significantly as a representation of the biblical `serpent'. Snowman locates himself recreating the Genesis report from the perspective of his current predicament: Crake and Oryx will be the gods who have created them, he says, and sacrificed themselves so that their children might live. There are also metaphors for YOUR GARDEN of Eden. The Crakers-nude, innocent, and sculpted-might be seen as leaving your garden of Eden, however in being nude and innocent, refers to Adam and Eve and being delivered without original sin. Also, in these books, Jimmy can be set alongside the serpent and the fruits from the storyline of Adam and Eve; leading the Crakers away from Paradice, which actually saved them in the end. Atwood is wanting to stress that the serpent in your garden of Eden kept us instead of led to our downfall.
Atwood's primary goal is not only to describe the global horror of your devastated environment and its implications for mankind. Using current environmental and medical experimentation as her starting factors, she extrapolates into apocalyptic illusion, creating an eerie world which is still recognizably near our own. Alternating between the unnamed disaster where Snowman sees himself first of the novel and his flashbacks to his children and early on adulthood with Crake, she brings a dismal future-world alive, saving the reason of the catastrophe which wrought this devastation till the end.
It is at these representations of Snowman that I really believe Atwood is making a definitive assertion concerning whether God created man or whether man creates God. Certainly Atwood is suggesting that man inevitably, despite of himself, creates God, with or without outside the house assistance. It seems that throughout the book there is an extended metaphor of Snowman as various figures from the Religious bible. The first amount that Snowman can be thought to signify is that of Adam, the first man, though the similarities between your two personas do not follow the same chronology. In the same way Adam is given the pets as companions to look over, similarly Crake has made certain that the Crakers and Jimmy are both kept in the recently re-created world as companions.
Another strong resemblance and play on words can be viewed in the Religious account of original sin and Crake's mass damage of humanity. In Genesis, God places aside one fruit tree and codes Adam never to touch or eat from it, as a result of Adam's betrayal, God casts him out of paradise, and forces hardship on him for the others of his days and nights. Likewise, Jimmy is completely cognizant the very first time he matches Oryx that she is off boundaries to him, yet his betrayal of Crake ultimately leads to his going out of Paradice and forces various hardships on him. Finally, in the Snowman-as-Adam device, there's a realization that the companions which were assigned by an increased power are inadequate, and the following desperate dependence on companions that are closer on the evolutionary string. For Adam, this friend was Eve. Throughout Atwood's book Snowman is absolutely in need of some companion, someone more understanding than the Crakers, or better than his own deteriorating brain to keep him company. And though Snowman eventually does find people of his own varieties, he cannot make a decision whether to associated risk their friendship.
Atwood's portrayal of Snowman as the last survivor of Homosapiens, compelled by his promise to take care of the Paradice task in Crake's lack, has significant similarities to the Religious myth of Noah and the Ark. The catalyst of occurrences in the Christian misconception is man's injustice to fellow man and god, and likewise in Oryx and Crake the catalyst is Jimmy's betrayal to Crake, which broken down, shows both man's transgression against man and god. Among the elite, elegant heads of population, Crake absolutely has godlike characteristics. Through the technological advances created by him and his peers, Crake can control and alter creation, . ". . to create totally chosen infants that would incorporate any feature, physical or mental or religious, that the customer might wish to choose. " (Atwood, 304) This godlike framework parallels not only man's (Jimmy's) transgression against god (Crake) but also god's command line that man ensure the continuance of creation. Just as Noah marched all the pets or animals in twos in to the ark, so Snowman leads the Crakers, . ". . the women and children, with a data file of men to either aspect" to the seashore (350).
Perhaps the most easily seen similarity between Snowman and the patriarch Noah is that every has been specially determined by an increased power to endure the devastation that practices: Noah tucked carefully in the ark, and Snowman completely immune to the JUVE computer virus because of the vaccine he had been taking all the while. Lastly, the ending of the novel reaffirms the outcome of the Great Flood misconception, that through the devastation of 1 world, and selecting a survivor to guarantee the continuance of some portion of creation, a fresh world is created.
Lastly & most essentially is the convincing metaphor of Snowman playing the area of the biblical serpent. Throughout the book Crake has repeatedly mentioned, and not unintentionally, that any form of symbolic thinking will ultimately lead to the downfall of the Crakers. In Crake's version of paradise there is absolutely no room for art, religion, organized administration, or sexual aggravation. It seems that no sooner does Snowman makes original contact with the Crakers that he's already introducing ideas which Crake would find questionable, ideas that your Crakers may in time come to question, even as we question spiritual dogma today. He begins by hiding the reality of what really occurred and why the Crakers must leave Paradice. Additionally it is very interesting to note in this context that Snowman is leading the Crakers out of Paradice and into a global which really is a wasteland. He deifies both Oryx and Crake, and in the meantime has placed his lays congruent. But exactly what will happen when he inevitably travels over his own lies and the Crakers get started to question him as a false prophet?
As I recently stated I think that Atwood is recommending that man undoubtedly creates God with or without external assistance. Even after Crake has basically wiped the slate clean of mankind and its ideas, Snowman still manages to destroy Crake's vision swiftly, sowing the seed products of religion between the Crakers. Yet this leads to a fairly interesting controversy: set up Crakers could have eventually created faith or at the very least art themselves, irrespective of Snowman's interference.
I think that Atwood is commenting on the actual fact that it is man's dynamics to be existential, to ponder where he originated from, and who created creation, and that it's natural to invent possible answers to these questions when nothing are evident. For example, as Snowman comes back after his foray back into the Mixture he sees that the Crakers have created an idol of him and are chanting his name in ways which sounds like 'Amen', "next they'd be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin. . . "(361). Either way you look at Snowman, as a religious patriarch or a representation of the biblical serpent, he is still corrupting the Crakers along with his fake dogma.
