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Oryx And Crake Meaning

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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” …show more content…

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

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In an excerpt from The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, many rhetorical devices are used to fully represent the process of a scientist. Some of the most commonly used devices are metaphors, anaphoras, and imagery, these three devices help the reader understand the main ideas of the story. The metaphors allow the reader to perceive the process of a scientist in more simplistic ideas such as science being an undiscovered wilderness. The anaphora used in the beginning of the passage emphasises that the world of science is full of uncertainty and is constantly changing, this drives the idea into the mind of the reader. The imagery is used alongside the metaphors to assist the reader in grasping the foreign ideas.

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Throughout the book, Dehumanization was displayed when the prisoners were assigned numbers, humiliated, and treated like animals. One way dehumanization was shown was they were assigned numbers instead of names. “The three ‘veteran’ prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.”

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508 Words | 3 Pages

Some think of science as advantageous, while others believe it can be immoral. Acts of science can lead to manipulation of the natural world and cause those performing the experiments to “play God.” Nathaniel Hawthorne 's short stories “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” and “The Birthmark” each incorporate characters that attempt to alter a natural aspect of life and in turn are met with failure. It is through his short stories that Nathaniel Hawthorne reveals opinion of science: Men should not engage in scientific studies that require them to act as God.

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426 Words | 2 Pages

“Certainty creates strength. Uncertainty creates weakness.” This contrast between the word certain and uncertain, leaves the reader to ponder what the author is about to talk about. He continue with “To be a scientist,...courage. It is the courage to accept --indeed to embrace -- uncertainty.”

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455 Words | 2 Pages

Despite the idea of working towards a brighter future in order to reach an end goal, doing so is not always as it seems. For once the public is completely blinded to how those wish to achieve the said objective, certain hidden means come into play such as mass destruction. In Oryx and Crake, the concept is displayed from the very beginning with Snowman’s (Jimmy) detailed descriptions of his past childhood and adolescent experiences. Through the lifestyle and existence of these corporations, it becomes rather familiar due to his parents work within them and Crake’s (friend) later employment too.

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613 Words | 3 Pages

The passage from John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza explores the significance of certainty and uncertainty to scientific experimentation and research. The author’s employment of metaphor, repetition, and semantic inversion helps to reinforce the claim that, “to be a scientist requires not only intelligence and curiosity, but passion, patience, creativity, self-sufficiency, and courage”. Barry opens the passage with two back-to-back examples of anaphora; these examples of repetition lay a direct emphasis on the strengths that certainty creates, along with the weaknesses that uncertainty creates. According to the author, “certainty gives one something upon which to lean” and “uncertainty makes one tentative if not fearful, and tentative steps, even when in the right direction, may not overcome significant obstacles”.

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465 Words | 2 Pages

Oryx and Crake Debate In Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, the character Crake is the hero of the story due to his action to rehabilitate humanity. Hero according to dictionary.com is a person noted for being courageous. Courageous being a person standing up against the evil. Crake stands up against the evils of society that is corrupted by corporations and the state of nature of humanity. Crake’s ideas parallels with Hobbes's idea of the state of nature of humans which states that humans are inherently malevolent.

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1001 Words | 5 Pages

Sciences and technologies have improved many aspects of human lives. But as technologies are developing to be more and more advanced, science can be a deadly subject to us as well. Some writers have taken this idea and expanded on this theme of how science is deadly. In this essay I will discuss how this theme is explored in the texts: the novel Unwind written by Neal Shusterman, the film Gattaca directed by Andrew Niccol, following the short texts There Will Come Soft Rains and The Veldt written by Ray Bradbury. Science is supposed to help humans to understand more about the world and improve people’s lives.

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452 Words | 2 Pages

In the novel, “Oryx and Crake” by Margaret Atwood, Atwood depicts technology as a way for people to take advantage of other people/animals for their own benefit. Atwood first shows this on page 22 when Jimmy was explaining his father’s job and what his father does. Jimmy says, “The goal of the pigoon project was to grow an assortment of foolproof human-tissue organs in a transgenic knockout pig host – organs that would transplant smoothly and avoid rejection, but would also be able to fend off attacks by opportunistic microbes and viruses, of which there were more strains every year”(Atwood 22). Atwood describes the process of how technology is used to create human organs from the pigoons. The pigoons are being taken advantage of by the humans.

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1056 Words | 5 Pages

Ever since the creation of life on earth, humans have tried to achieve one thing and one thing only: perfection. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “The condition, state, or quality of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects.” In a modern world, the concept of perfection has been distorted and generates an abundance of seemingly negative consequences, ultimately putting into question whether or not perfection is even possible. This striving for perfection is seen in Oryx and Crake, a novel written by Margaret Atwood. Crake’s idealistic personality and intelligence capabilities ultimately led him to replace the human population with a modified version that is free from all the negative aspects of humans.

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1081 Words | 5 Pages

Move you lazy good-for-nothings!” (chapter 1). This shows that the Jews were treated very poorly because of their race. Race shapes who a person is because if they are getting treated badly, then they will think badly of themselves and will be like that for the rest of their lives. In To Kill A Mockingbird and Night,

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1806 Words | 8 Pages

Psychologists and Pseudo-Scientists have long sought to explain the inborn human desire for self destruction. Selfishness against one’s own benefit, the urge to harm or take on harm for the sake of one’s own security, drinking, smoking, these clearly injurious thoughts and actions seduce individuals by an instinct Freud coins the “Death Drive” (Beyond the Pleasure Principle 30). Moreover, as advances in genetic engineering tear the veil between science fiction and fact, modern critics have questioned how this suicidal drive may push into uncharted frontiers. Such concerns have fostered a fear of unadulterated scientific progress captured within the works of Margaret Atwood. Oryx and Crake, especially, utilizes almost hyperbolic predictions of scientific innovation as evidence of a deeper self-destructive nature, and as justification for fear.

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426 Words | 2 Pages

By the end of the novel, it becomes evident that Oryx and Crake is entwined with significant social issues that help enrich and broaden the reader's understanding as they view the novel through the lens of the issue. Environmental issues is of great importance to the novel. Atwood’s overall argument about environmental issue present in Oryx and Crake has to do with human manipulation of nature. This is seen through genetic modification of animals to better suit our needs. ChickieNobs which were “Chicken parts” with “No eyes or beak or anything” (Atwood 78) is an example of humans using animals to benefit themselves.

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642 Words | 3 Pages

“Sonnet to Science,” is a sonnet by Edgar Allan Poe about science and I believe that he is criticizing it. He says that it alters things with “thy peering eyes” which could be a metaphor for how through the scientist’s eyes, scientists are changing the world for the worse. If we go into detail, then we notice that this sonnet was written around the time of the Enlightenment (18th century) which is better known as the Age of Reason. During this time period, there was a huge revolution in science where it progressed dramatically. After the Enlightenment, people would only believe in things that were proven to be true with science.

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486 Words | 2 Pages

In the first stanza, we can already see how this poem can relate to the world today and how we feel about certain things. We as humans don't like change. Sometimes, we want something to happen so bad, that we don't consider how our life might change if this wish, this hope of something, actually happened. We sometimes may want something so bad, but fear what the consequences might be if something goes

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