Approaching Oryx & Crake: The Name Game Michael Clyde Craddock Jr College

To narrow the scope of literature, the science fiction genre is a type of storytelling contains different messages from novel to novel. Scholars and literary critics have the right to label a novel in any way they prefer, yet readers have the right to disagree and call the novel something else. To narrow the focus of this journal article farther, I will examine a recently published novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The 2003 dystopian novel Oryx and Crake (Book one of the MaddAdam Trilogy) is highly noted and recognized for its discussion of biogenetics and genetic modification. Yet there is not much published about the stylistic approach that Atwood infuses into her novel. This journal article will describe how Oryx and Crake seamlessly incorporates elements of Realism and Naturalism into the four main topics of the novel which include narration, science, social conflict, and environment struggles. It is imperative to acknowledge that these two forms of literature are not one hundred percent representative in Oryx and Crake, yet there is more evidence supporting this notion than contradicting it. While these two literary genres hold distinct characteristics, they also contain some slight overlap. The history and...