Oryx And Crake Meaning

This poem has five stanzas and the overall message it is sending is that science is important and life changing but it is dangerous in the sense that it has no moral limits. The first stanza covers how science has brought the world many accomplishments ranging from antibiotics to plastic. The second stanza begins to explain how it is dangerous. It states how with the evolution of science, bad things have come from it such as global pollution, the concentration camps during the Holocaust and the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. This stanza isn’t stating that such catastrophic events occurred because of science, but instead, it is saying that it would not have been able to happen if science wasn’t a thing. The third stanza explains how science is in a sense never going to end. It will continue its endeavors without limits. The fourth stanza explains how science in itself has no “ethical safeguards”

This is similar to Oryx and Crake in the sense that Crake was able to create a version of genetically modified people but by doing it cost the lives of all those who were just regular human beings. Crake did what he did for scientific purposes without any normal human regard but kept in mind the possibilities of what the genetically modified people could do. Many of the people in the world he lives in have no morals which are what allows such scientific advancements to occur. Also due to these lack of morals, genetic modifications that occur in the story, whether it be on people or animals, are not seen as “playing god” but instead as an advancement to a better world. The poem also discusses how thing such as love and poetry are separated from science. This is also the same in the story. Those who were “words” people would be treated as less than and separated from those who were “numbers” people because they were thought to not be able to contribute to the