Margaret Atwood refers to Oryx and Crake as a work of "speculative fiction." This first installment of the MadAddam Trilogy launches us into a futuristic dystopia where humans have genetically engineered solutions to every real or imagined problem. The novel opens with "Snowman" alone in a ghastly post-apocalyptic urban wilderness. The landscape contains remnants of human life, yet Snowman is likely last of his species. He is lives alone, scavenging on the outskirts of a "humanoid" colony - a people he calls the "Crakers." He stands in stark difference to the Crakers, avoiding the suns rays and clothing his body in a thin sheet. His nickname represents how poorly adjusted he is, unable to withstand the elements, frail and sickly, compared to this new species which epitomizes the results of unnatural selection. These beings have been altered to eradicate all of the complicating facets of human life. They are intelligent, yet innocent; they are vegetarians who live at harmony with their environment, and they have efficient mating rituals to ensure optimal levels of procreation. Their skin is designed to absorb the suns rays without harm, they see no need for clothing and are perplexed by Snowman's garment. They are animalistic, yet advanced - a paradox in their very essence.
Snowman relays the story of humanity's downfall through a series of engrossing flashbacks. Snowman, once Jimmy, grew up as the child of scientists, living comfortably on biotech company compounds. These scientific microcosms contained homes, schools, shopping centers, bullet trains, genetically enhanced food and genetically engineered pets called Rakunks (a mixture of a raccoon and a skunk). Only rarely did the inhabitants have to venture out into the "pleebands" where human life seemed chaotic, messy, and yet secretly alluring. Jimmy befriends young Crake, a somewhat demented genius. Soon after, Jimmy is first exposed to Oryx while watching internet porn in Crake's bedroom. He is captivated by her face, a face that represents human suffering amidst innocence and beauty. Upon graduation from high school Crake is recruited by the nation's premier scientific university, while Jimmy finds himself on a lower rung of the academic ladder. It is not until they graduate from college that the paths of Oryx, Crake and Jimmy intertwine. By this time Crake has completed his crowning achievement: a perfected race of humans.
Atwood's bleak depiction of humanity's future is not altogether unrecognizable. I'm confronted by this every time I buy the unnaturally large and juicy chicken breasts from my local grocery store. I can't help by recall Atwood's "ChickieNobs" derived from genetically engineered "chickens":
""Those are chickens," said Crake. "Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They've got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit.
"But there aren't any heads..."
"That's the head in the middle," said the woman. "There's a mouth opening at the top, they dump nutrients in there. No eyes or beak or anything, they don't need those."
Is this where we're headed? I ponder this as I take chicken breast out of its individually wrapped packet. It is the size of my whole hand. Atwood's work is a cautionary tale written in 2003 (the sequels have been released in recent years). I'm hopeful that in my lifetime that the burgeoning slow-food movement will effectively resist uncontrolled genetic engineering. It's really only been in the last 75 years that scientifically altered food has become a staple of the American diet. In the old days food was grown and often consumed seasonally. In the spring and summer people ate berries, in the fall there were peaches and apples. Sometimes women would can or preserve fruits and vegetables at home. The children would be sent out to pick the apples and they would assist in the peeling and coring process, watching as they were ground down into applesauce and perhaps savoring the smells of apple butter cooking over a fire pit. In the winter when mom opened that mason jar of applesauce, the children knew exactly where it came from and all the work that went into creating that nourishment. Similarly, meat came fresh from the butcher, or it was raised, slaughtered and preserved in one's backyard.
Fast-forward to WWII. The Industrial Revolution had only begun to change food production. The Great Depression was over and factories were producing in high gear. While some industries produce weapons and enriched uranium, others are canning applesauce and Spam. Additives and preservatives kept the food flavorful and prevented spoilage. It kept our men and women alive and nourished to fight the Nazis. However, when the war ended factories faced a dilemma. How would they sustain profits now that all the troops are home? The answer was easy. Food production companies marketed their wartime foodstuffs to the new American housewife. The baby boom was under way, women were back in the kitchen, but who said they needed to be a slave to a hot canner? Soon we got ads like this one:
This was just the beginning. Boxed cookies and cake mixes came next. They took a little longer to catch on because women felt like they were cheating the system if they could bake without cracking an egg. The mixtures were modified to take out the powdered egg product, allowing women to crack an egg and thus feel like they were fulfilling their role. As America launched itself into the Cold War, we began to take pride in our neatly packaged T.V. dinners, our Kraft Mac and Cheese and our Hamburger Helper. And it if all else fails there's always MacDonalds.
By the late '60s and '70s the women's rights movement was in full force. Betty Friedan wrote A Feminine Mystique, encouraging women to realize their full potential in the workplace, and Margaret Sanger and other feminists were gaining strides in the fight for birth control. I'm not knocking any of this. I love it! But working women also don't have time to can their own peaches or bake cakes from scratch. It became commonplace, even trendy to eat out of a box or a can. By the closure of the century agribusiness and biotech firms were getting involved in the growth of our produce and meats. Now even the fresh stuff is comprised of questionable genetic and chemical elements. Is it harmful? The jury is still out. According to all the mommy blogs and yoga pundits we're all going to get cancer or autism - or both. Actual science is far less conclusive on the potential health effects of bovine antibiotics or GMO strawberries (though conspiracy theorists like to point out that science gets kickbacks from Monsanto). Whatever the verdict, I believe that buying tennis-ball-sized strawberries in January is harmful to my soul.
I grew up eating "slow food" before it was a "thing." In fact, I thought it was normal. (I also thought mommies who bought their children cookies from a box were bad people.) I grew up shopping at our local farmer's market, even playing in the fields with the owners' daughter. Long before farmers' markets became the hip and somewhat pretentious Saturday morning ritual among professional suburbanites, we frequented our local one for fresh-picked corn on the cob and heaping bushels of peaches and apples. This would commence canning season. Those cans of peaches and applesauce were stocked on our basement shelves and enjoyed throughout winter. I knew where they came from. I knew that peaches did not naturally occur in January. The sweet juicy peaches were the product of long hours of labor on a hot August day.
Many children grow up with no knowledge of each season's produce. I'm thankful that I've grown up playing in the dirt and harvesting its gifts. I've known for as long as I can remember that strawberries grow in the spring, while blueberries show up in July-August. Blueberry picking is as much a summer ritual for me as fireworks on the Fourth of July. I also remember many a summer afternoon when I would pick beans from the backyard garden and Mom would cook them up for dinner. A few weeks later, on the first day of school we always had warm chocolate chip cookies made from scratch, baked fresh in time for our arrival home. Once winter came there would be blueberry pie and homemade blueberry muffins, baked with those same berries we'd picked and frozen so many months earlier. It would almost make that blustery January evening feel warmer, as if the berries contained some remnant of the summer sun.
Recently, I heard a story about a kid who was arguing with a farmer about where food came from. The child said that the fruits and vegetables he ate came from the grocery store. It is sad that so many children today do not understand how their food gets to their table. Why is this important? Well, like it or not, eating is fundamental to our lives. For millennia people's entire days were centered around acquiring food. Though we no longer have to work so hard for our food, eating is still the one thing we do several times a day (that and excreting it). It is an activity that brings family and friends together, that allows for the exchange of cultureand the transfer of ideas. Food also represents heritage; our food traditions reach back centuries. Some foods represent elements of our faith (i.e. Jewish matzo bread) or family traditions that bind generations of family who've never met (i.e. my Great-Grandma's sugar cookies). Food also represents labor. In a society where most of our day-to-day labor is disconnected from our actual survival, there is just something so wholesome about actually growing, picking,and preparing one's own food.
I know there are many other arguments in favor of the slow food movement. All of which have their merits. I do not profess to be a paragon of clean or slow eating. My freezer is stocked with the aforesaid GMO chicken breasts (they're cheap and convenient). I do enjoy bananas and pineapple far too much for any moral arguments over conserving fossil fuels to prevail upon me. However, for me, the slow food initiative is really about a daily quest to live intentionally. Since a significant percentage of my household budget goes toward food, I strive to support ethical companies and empower local farmers who are good stewards of the land. If I can get eggs from well-loved chickens, I'm happy to pay a little bit more. But perhaps even beyond that, I don't want to lose those traditions of my childhood and the lessons that sowing and reaping provide. In no other area of life does the value of hard work prove true in such tangible ways. The work we do in the spring will pay off at harvest. The work we do at harvest will pay off as we're enjoying warm blueberry muffins on cold winter nights. Labor and food are two elements fundamental to our existence, to our humanity. God created humans to labor in a garden. We have since reinvented and often perversely repackaged the gifts and responsibilities He's given us. Slow food means slowing down, reconnecting with the Earth, with the seasons, and with our Creator. If we miss out on where our food comes from, we take one of God's most fundamental blessings for granted. If we don't know how to sow, reap, and prepare our food, we don't have a chance to reflect on the bounty and the diversity of the Earth, and the sheer creativity of its Designer.
Which brings me full circle. Reading Oryx and Crake reminded me that while humans are capable of amazing feats, none of us can recapture the perfection and beauty of the world that God created. Though sin has perverted much of it, human efforts at "fixing" nature's flaws often leave us worse off than we were before. And most importantly, we'll never be able to genetically select the perfect human. Only God can do that. In fact - He already did.
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