Preview

Women's Roles in Oryx and Grake

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1567 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Women's Roles in Oryx and Grake
Oryx and Crake- Essay Assignment

Women play many roles in life: from mother to leader, from caretaker to evildoer. It is easy to see that the world could not development without women. In a similar fashion, women in literature also play important roles. The roles which women play can always push the plot forward. It is obvious to see how important women’s roles are, how the roles influence this story and how those roles make readers think deeply in the most literature. In Oryx and Crake, women’s roles are that of: mothers of the main protagonist, in which case they influence their child; objects of sexual service, which always represents the temptation and they are puppets used by evildoers to do something horrible and hurt others without purpose.

Mothers play essential roles in Oryx and Crake. They play the role of a destructive maternal force that affects the main characters and pushes the plot development. Basically, mothers should be great people and they are the most important teacher in their children’s lives. However, the mothers in Oryx and Crake, all of them show a negative image to readers; none of them really care about their children. Sharon, the mother of Jimmy, once worked for OrganInc like her husband and fought with him a lot. She does not care about Jimmy and always spends her time sitting in her bathrobe and smoking. Eventually, she runs away from OrganInc compound, abandoning her son and taking his pet rakunk, Killer, with her. Finally, she is killed by CorpSeCorps. Sharon’s poor relationship with her husband makes Jimmy no longer believe in love. He becomes a womanizer and he has a lot of relationships with many different girls. What is more, his mother’s role in his life is the reason that Jimmy has many lovers, many of whom are married women. Sharon’s absence and execution, and the role she plays in Jimmy’s life, makes him feels lost and long for a truly romantic relationship with someone. Crake is similar to Jimmy: he too has

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Year of Wonders Study Notes

    • 16401 Words
    • 66 Pages

    ©2000-2007 BookRags, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The following sections of this BookRags Premium Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources. ©1998-2002; ©2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design® and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". © 1994-2005, by Walton Beacham. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". © 1994-2005, by Walton Beacham. All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copywritten by BookRags, Inc. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.…

    • 16401 Words
    • 66 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Oryx and Crake

    • 2152 Words
    • 9 Pages

    In Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake we see the cause and effect of how our childhood and how we are raised has a large correlation to what type of adult we become. Through the character of Jimmy and later his new persona Snowman, the reader is shown the detrimental effects of an abandoned childhood. Not only do Jimmy’s poor choices in his adult life have a clear link to his neglected and unguided childhood they also create an adult that is emotionally damaged and unable to see the right path in his life even when he wants to.…

    • 2152 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Gender In The Crucible

    • 76 Words
    • 1 Page

    In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, women are portrayed as both powerful and weak at once. The author shows that during that time women had no rights and were inferior to men. However character such as Abigail presented her dominance over other girls which were included in the “witchcraft” action. The plate doesn’t make any specific statement about the gender roles by showing multiple sides of women and the variety of their dimensions as human being.…

    • 76 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the world people put other people into categories. This happens especially with women, some of the categories that people use today are: beautiful, ugly, good, bad, innocent, whore, loyal, and unloyal, those are just a few. In Homer’s The Odyssey you see that there are different roles and types of women. I will prove that there are 5 main roles assigned to women: the good wife, the bad wife, the goddess, the monster, and the seducer, and these many times are related to each other.…

    • 86 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women have always played a major role in society. They play very essential roles such as the carrier of the life cycle. They were created to be a companion of man. Overtime women have varied their roles in today’s society. As seen in the novel’s The Crucible by Arthur Miller and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, women can travel outside of society’s norms. Women also played major role in both novels. These stories were written by totally opposite authors but the settings of these stories are the same, the Puritan era. Both authors portrayed the strengths of women while also portraying their downfalls too.…

    • 529 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    While reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, we can clearly see the different roles women played in that time. These women were very diverse, some were considered harlots, others full of wisdom, and some were called gods. Each woman in these stories help the audience to see how important gender roles actually are. Women, as a whole, play a very key role in making this happen. Women start out to seem to be equal to the men in a sense that both genders are “gods." However, the main god happens to be the male. Women are also respected due to the fact that they are able to bear children and reproduce. It is also seen that in terms of physical attraction and sexuality, women are able to have control over the men and somewhat given the upperhand in that…

    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Death Foretold Thesis

    • 1225 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Original thesis statement: In the novels Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh women are portrayed and play significant roles in the works of literature.…

    • 1225 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Portrayal of the Plight of Women by the Author, In Their Particular Period of Time…

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Since what seems like the beginning of human civilization, the role of the female has varied from society to society. This role is symbolically represented in The Odyssey by Homer and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, two of the most famous works of literature, and yet two of the most different. In each book, the author uses a rich variety of symbolism to express themes he finds necessary to enrich the story. In both books, feminine figures are used as symbolism to represent the role of the female in the society of the author.…

    • 930 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In 'The Crucible', Acts Three and Four, Arthur Miller has demonstrated female roles and dominance through the use of the themes: prejudice, paranoia and power. Moreover, Miller also utilises poetic and language devices to express the female roles in the times of the Salem witch-hunts and trials in the 1600s, as well as the ‘McCarthyist’ era in the 1950s. Firstly, Act Three leads on and constructs female dominance as a follow on from Act Two, the playwright than ‘morphs’ female dominance into female submission as the play enters into Act Four. In Act Three, ‘Abigail’ is the most dominative figure in the text, she also represents Senator McCarthy through demonstrating his powerful influence and involvement with the HUAC trials as ‘Abigail’ does…

    • 1738 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Antigone Research Paper

    • 1095 Words
    • 5 Pages

    When U2’s Bono sings “women of the future hold the big revelations” (Bono “Get On Your Boots”), he is referencing the rise of women’s roles in Africa in the twenty-first century. Yet, this phrase can also apply to women in other time periods such as in ancient Greece seen in the Sophocles’ play entitled Antigone. In Antigone, the protagonist, Antigone, is a daughter of the house of Lauis, which is a noble, ruling family that has been through much affliction from deaths in the family. When a law forbids Antigone to honor her traitorous (to the state) brother in a proper burial, Antigone disobeys it to honor the gods’ instructions. This act eventually leads to the deaths of Antigone and other main characters. For the twenty-first century reader, it is important to understand how gender roles and relationships vary from time period to time period in order to fully appreciate the equal status of women in today’s society. The authors of the feminist play, Antigone, portrays the society’s perspective of women as vindictive people, the limitations of women, and the growing strong-willed quality of some women that start to rise in the respective time period.…

    • 1095 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Given all of the crimes that were committed in the 1920’s, why does Fitzgerald focus his attention so much on prohibition and gender roles? The era of the 1920’s was a time of prosperity and corruption throughout society. Some wealth was gained through honest work while other wealth was earned through greed, organized crime, and other illegal acts. In Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, he displays multiple accounts of prohibition, gender roles and organized crime and shows how they were present in everyday life.…

    • 821 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the sixth century BCE, women were given very small roles in the Greek community. The female duties were glorified in literary such as Antigone and The Odyssey. The typical housewife was made to have children and take care of the home while the men worked and fought. Women were given very few rights and didn't have an input in political issues. Women could exercise very little power in Ancient Greece due to literary, social, and political ideals.…

    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women In A Tale Of Genji

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages

    It is pathetic and moving, an expression of undefined sadness. These are a few of words that may describe the Japanese phrase mono no aware, though none capture the entirety of its essence. In the novel Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, the short life of Genji's mother, a major figure in his early years, leads Genji on a subconscious quest to find women who resemble her, all of whom have similarly short lives. These women represents the meaning of mono no aware, and the insignificance of earthly affairs.…

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Summary: Gender plays a very significant role in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Although the main characters of the story, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, are male, and while men were considered to be the most powerful and wisest humans and gods, women had the power to significantly influence these men.…

    • 1013 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays