Oryx and Crake - Allusions/references To Other Works

Allusions/references To Other Works

Oryx and Crake includes two epigraphs; the first is from Gulliver's Travels and puts emphasis on the claim that the speculation about the near future in Oryx and Crake serves to make a point about the present state of the world. Swift's speaker, as quoted by Atwood, says, "my principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you" (Oryx and Crake, Epigraph). The second quotation, from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, refers to the absence of safety and guides in the world, pointing to Snowman's existence in the world after Crake's catastrophe. Additionally, the novel references Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five,when the Americans arrive at the work camp the British officer states this line to the new prisoners, on p. 4:

"It is the strict adherence to daily routine that tends towards the maintenance of good morale and the preservation of sanity"

The novel shares similar plot and philosophical considerations to those found in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

The cover of some editions contains a portion of the left panel of Hieronymous Bosch's painting The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Coral Ann Howells argues that Oryx and Crake is in some ways a sequel to Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale in that it carries the national catastrophe in the earlier novel to global level. A major reference seems to be to the "Last Man" topos in science fiction, which was inaugurated by Mary Shelley's The Last Man, also a post-apocalyptic novel, whose main character is the only survivor of a plague that has killed off all other humans.

Joyce Carol Oates sees Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein (from Frankenstein (1818/1831)) in the character of Crake. Howells, too, sees Frankenstein, and also the influence of Jonathan Swift.