- More accessible and modern
- Picks up on the theme of creator and creation that we’ve seen in other texts
- In other texts, creators were trying to prove a point, but it this text it’s to eradicate a problem
- What do you notice about the structure of the narrative?
- Separated into different segments – each one has a theme; jumps around a bit; hard to follow
- Not chronological
- Organized according to Snowman’s train of associations; almost stream of consciousness
- Thinking aloud rather than structuring a narrative
- Story told in a broken way – makes sense if you’re him, difficult to follow for us – disorienting
- Setting: there’s nothing else to do but remember
- Reminiscent of Catch-22: jumps around
- Trying to show chaos: reflects the chaos of the post-apocalyptic world
- Old world and new world coexisting – things are repurposed; new meanings in new context
- What is the significance of Snowman’s name?
- Snow is a sign of death – everything dies in the winter; but of course we expect spring to come – and snowmen to melt
- So maybe it’s reflective of humanity’s demise
- Snowmen could not exist in the post-apocalyptic world because of climate change
- Abominable is a secret joke – but snow is as imaginary to the Crakers as the abominable snowman
- Abominable has a negative connotation – reflects his true nature (or feelings about himself) – powerful stance to be able to say it – he’s telling them that he’s bad, but not telling them
- What’s going on with the “feathers”?
- He’s different from the Crakers
- He’s also messing with them; he knows something more – they take everything seriously; the power of knowing
- Almost like a god or god-send; he has the answers; he creates the answers
- It’s almost like they’re making up a religion – they make things up to explain the world; the explanations are simplistic; rationalizing why he’s here and so on; but never questioning the source; reconciling the “facts” he gives them with what they know of the world; generating cosmology and trying to keep it consistent
- Human nature to try to explain the world, to make sense, to make a narrative
- Could lack of consistency reflect the unreliability of the narrator? We don’t have any evidence that he’s not lying to us as well as the Crakers
- Fragmentary narrative
- Are the Crakers human?
- Maybe not? Something new? Theme of making up a religion – restarting again – parody of creation – new
- Have characteristics of “human nature”
- Might be? Next version of humans?
- does it matter if they’re human?
- We perceive humanity based off ourselves; they could be intellectual dinosaurs and it wouldn’t change the novel
- Clearly capable of learning
- Is Frankenstein’s creature human?
- No, he’s a monster
- He had the mental capacity of a human, ability to learn and grow – he had an identity, intangible humanity
- He’s made of human body parts, so he’s anatomically human
- Are the pigoons more or less human than Crakers?
- Were the Crakers looked down upon?
- Similarity to I Am Legend – last man narrative
- Chapter headings
- Seem to be random
- “Flotsam”
- she might perceive himself as human flotsam – debris left of humanity’s shipwreck
- literally debris that the Crakers go through
- importance of words
- holding onto words; once the words are gone, the meaning will be gone too – tend to relate to art, music, myth sense of destiny, hope, sex – or he just likes the way they sound
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