Research Question: How does Oryx and Crake rework the Gothic novel, Frankenstein, to reflect a more modern crisis of scientific ethics and ecological responsibility?

From my simple bibliography, I ended up changing two of my sources as they were more related to science than literature. I was influenced by some of my classmates’ bibliographies as they pertained to my argument. 

• Gibert, Teresa. ‘The Monster in the Mirror: Margaret Atwood’s Retelling of the Frankenstein Myth.’ Frankenstein Revisited: The Legacy of Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece. Ed. Miriam Borham. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2018. 

This piece speaks on Mary Shelley’s influence in Atwood’s writing. Gibert mentions some of Atwood’s novels from the MaddAddam trilogy mentioning the children of crake being dubbed “Frankenpeople”, which directly links “Frankenstein” to “Oryx and Crake”. She continues to cite Shelley’s influence by reiterating ideas from Atwood’s book “In Other Worlds” where Atwood explores her relationship with science fiction and attributing a certain recurring theme in the genre to Mary Shelley’s literature. She continues to mention the differences in the two novels such as Victor Frankenstein’s “reanimation of dead flesh” occurring only once “whereas Crake has resorted to complete genetic engineering”. 

• Massuno, Tatiana. “The Wish to Stop Time: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Journal of Big History, vol. 4, no. 1, Mar. 2020, pp. 13–20, https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4170.

This text speaks on the modernity that takes place in Oryx and Crake. She mentions Krishan Kumar and his ideas on modernity as a whole. “For progress and growth, mankind had to pay a price, that is, moral and spiritual decadence”. She also quotes Atwood, “The tide of human desire, the desire for more and better, would overwhelm them. It would take control and drive events, as it had in every large change throughout history”(Oryx and Crake). This article would help in strengthening my argument for Oryx and Crake having a focus on a more modern crisis of scientific ethics and ecological responsibility. 

• Banerjee, Suparna. Science, Gender and History : The Fantastic in Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood [1 Ed.] 9781443873932, 9781443862202 – DOKUMEN.PUB, 2014

This article is going to aid in my main argument, differentiating the two novels yet comparing their similarities. To quote directly from the article, “ In Atwood, moreover, the limit between neo-imperial commerce and technoscience has been detected and dramatized- a nexus which was not yet apparent in Shelley’s time when science was purer in its motives”. The modernization brought into Oryx and Crake is the re-worked aspect. The difference in Oryx and Crake is its capitalistic nature of wanting to engineer a completely new “perfect” species. The motivation for the creation of a monster has changed. 

• Schmeink, Lars. “The Anthropocene, the Posthuman, and the Animal.” Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction, Liverpool University Press, 2016, pp. 71-118. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ps33cv.6.

Lars speaks on hypercapitalism and the acceleration of global change within the Anthropocene. He states, “Consumption becomes the only and all-encompassing urge that drives society”. His argument is that hypercapitalism has brought a commodification of any and all life on earth. When comparing Victor and Crake, it can be said that Victor is simply driven by selfish desire. He acts on his personal rapacity, heavily influenced by society and wanting to be seen as successful, with no further thought or purpose for the creation itself, which is why he ultimately rejects the monster. In contrast, Crake embraces his creations and looks forward to their contribution, or what he thinks are contributions, to society, looking at them through a lens of modernization and aiding in the progression of the human race, influenced by a culture of hypercapitalism.

• Steendam, Tom Van.‘Paratextuality and Parody in a Post-cataclysmic Wasteland: Margaret Atwood‘s Oryx and Crake.’ Exlibrisgroup, Ghent University Library, 2010.

Another piece that I feel supports my argument. Steendam believes that Atwood transgresses Shelley’s material and “puts it in a completely new context, drawing on Hutcheon’s notion of ironic inversion. This is in reference to Linda Hutcheon’s concept of ironic inversion in which the irony is not used as “mockery” but rather as acknowledging the target text’s ongoing cultural validity. Steendam observes the appreciation of Shelley’s work in Oryx and Crake but also further analyzes the differences. “No longer is the mad scientist an overreacher… who is cast out of society, but socially accepted…”. I will use these ideas and further expand on them in my argument 

Research Question: How does Oryx and Crake rework the Gothic novel, Frankenstein, to reflect a more modern crisis of scientific ethics and ecological responsibility?

Bourret, R., Martinez, E., Vialla, F. et al. Human–animal chimeras: ethical issues about farming chimeric animals bearing human organs. Stem Cell Res Ther 7, 87 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13287-016-0345-9

Cooper, Isabella D et al. “Bio-Hacking Better Health-Leveraging Metabolic Biochemistry to Maximise Healthspan.” Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) vol. 12,9 1749. 11 Sep. 2023, doi:10.3390/antiox12091749

Massuno, Tatiana. “The Wish to Stop Time: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Journal of Big History, vol. 4, no. 1, Mar. 2020, pp. 13–20, https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4170.

Gibert, Teresa. ‘The Monster in the Mirror: Margaret Atwood’s Retelling of the Frankenstein Myth.’ Frankenstein Revisited: The Legacy of Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece. Ed. Miriam Borham. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2018. pp. 33-49 

Steendam, Tom Van.‘Paratextuality and Parody in a Post-cataclysmic Wasteland: Margaret Atwood‘s Oryx and Crake.’ Exlibrisgroup, Ghent University Library, 2010.

I enjoyed beginning the research process for this final project. I would say it was a bit difficult to narrow down what I wanted to focus on when answering this question. I found only two sources which directly related to my research question. They both analyzed the influence of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, one only briefly comparing them. Being that Frankenstein is widely considered to be the first science fiction novel, it is fitting to say that it would have some sort of influence towards the more recent novel, however it is something that has not been expanded upon. For my research I focused on the modern ethics and responsibility part of my question. I think it was important to first become familiar with what exactly are the concerns in the modern scientific field, especially what was a concern when Oryx and Crake was written. I have much more experience when searching for scientific articles so it was hard for me not to go down that rabbit hole, but the PubMed database on the National Library of Medicine website is one of my go-to sites for biomedical literature, which I took my other two sources from. My fifth source is one from the list of already provided sources, but I found it could work well to begin to answer my question. I am still not sure how to bring everything together but beginning this research has made me a little more confident on comparing the two novels and on finding similarities.

In chapter 2 of Weather, Offill continues to shape Lizzie’s existential outlook by showing how deeply her anxieties shape her perception of the world. Lizzie’s pessimism could be viewed as exaggerated, especially when comparing her to other characters around her such as her nonchalant husband, but it reflects the difficulty of living with constant awareness of environmental and social instability. When she thinks, “There are fewer and fewer birds these days. This is the hole I tumbled down an hour ago” (95), it reveals how quickly she turns an ordinary observation into a chain of worrying thoughts. The everyday becomes a place where fear quietly accumulates. Offil also relies on irony to reveal Lizzie’s coping mechanisms. Lizzie often jokes or comments using dry humor not because she dismisses the problems around her, but because humor is the strategy she uses to manage them. Her responsibilities, her recovering brother, her young son, her religious mother, and her own unstable, maybe even nonexistent, relationship with faith, are not presented as dramatic events, instead, they appear through her internal commentary, making them feel like ongoing pressures rather than isolated burdens. Lizzie feels responsible for holding many parts of her world together, even as that world seems harder to manage. 

Offill’s use of double entendre is the main thing that stood out to me in chapter 2. These small moments give the text its unsettling tone.  The moment with Catherine, when Lizzie offers possible baby names and Catherine replies, “You’re getting warm”, works on multiple levels. On the surface, it is a playful exchange, but the phrase can also be taken as a warning, as if Offil is signaling the reader that there is danger approaching. The line feels almost cinematic, the kind of moment in a horror film when a character subtly alerts both the protagonist and the audience that something is off. Offill uses several moments like this, simple exchanges that carry an eerie undertone. These choices in language and tone contribute to the novel’s larger purpose, showing what it feels like to live with awareness of the Anthropocene. Offill blends psychological tension, dark humor, and subtle hints of danger to illustrate how environmental crisis seeps into everyday life. Lizzie’s awareness of global issues is not separate from her personal worries, instead, they both merge into a single emotional atmosphere. Through Lizzie’s perspective, we see how awareness of the Anthropocene can shape daily life, creating a constant sense of unease beneath the surface of routine.

I’m not sure if this is the type of question needed for the final project, but a very recent movie adaptation influenced the question: How does Oryx and Crake rework the gothic novel, Frankenstein, to reflect a more modern crisis of scientific ethics and ecological responsibility? Both science fiction stories reflect on morality in the scientific world, however it could be said that Atwood’s novel is a modernized criticism of this, through a similar genre. 

However I was also interested in the exploitation in Oryx and Crake through the treatment of Oryx, the lab animals, and the Crakers which can be linked to a history of  slavery and the ability to “own” something that is not meant to be owned which I think could be asked through the following question: How does Oryx and Crake portray the human body as a historical record of capitalist exploitation?

The first part of Offhill’s novel Weather seems to start out by not following a clear plot. The short, journal-like paragraphs made me feel both intrigued and disoriented. As I kept reading, I realized that the stillness and discontinuity are exactly the point. Offill captures what it feels like to live in a time of quiet panic. The narrator, Lizzie, lives an ordinary life working at a library, raising her son, and caring for her brother, yet her thoughts are always racing. She says, “My #1 fear is the acceleration of days. No such thing supposedly, but I swear I can feel it”. This line captures the feeling of life moving too fast to keep up, a mix of humor, exhaustion, and fear that can feel relatable to the reader. Lizzie’s mind jumps constantly between the personal and the global. One minute she’s worrying about her family, and the next she’s thinking about “end-timers” and environmental collapse. “Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters? Old person worry: What if everything I do does?”. Offill’s writing makes these shifts feel natural, almost like living through our own thoughts in real time. It shows how easily our attention changes from our immediate lives to the overwhelming problems of the world and back again. What I think Offill is trying to show is how easy it is to forget the larger world, especially the natural world, when we are consumed by our own. Lizzie’s life is full of responsibilities and noise like her son, her husband, her brother, her job. These are the things that are important to her, and because of that, they take up all the space in her mind. The first part of Weather doesn’t build tension through action, but through awareness. It asks what it means to live in an age when disaster feels both distant and inevitable, when we can feel impending doom but still worry more about dinner or deadlines. Lizzie’s thoughts mirror our own broken attention spans, reminding us how hard it is to hold the “weight of the world” in our minds while still surviving everyday life. The book isn’t about what happens, it’s about what it feels like to live in the present, distracted, anxious, caring, and overwhelmed. Offill tries to portray the anthropocene through the subconscious thoughts of the narrator. It’s a dark presence looming in the background, until it presents itself in our everyday lives.