Characters and Power
The novel's characters are shaped by the systems they inhabit. Jimmy is a word man in a world that values science; Crake is a scientist in a world that values profit; Oryx is a survivor in a world that treats her as a product. The Crakers are the result of all three.
Character map
| Character | Role | What they expose | Question to ask |
|---|---|---|---|
| Snowman / Jimmy | The novel's protagonist and narrator-figure; a copywriter trained in the humanities. | The power of storytelling, but also the weakness of a man who watches rather than acts. | Is Jimmy a witness, a collaborator or a survivor? |
| Crake / Glenn | Jimmy's childhood friend; a brilliant bioengineer and the architect of the Crakers and the pandemic. | The danger of intelligence without empathy, and of utopian thinking that treats people as material. | Is Crake a monster, a visionary, or a product of his world? |
| Oryx | A woman who survives exploitation and becomes Crake's colleague and Jimmy's lover. | The novel's entanglement of desire, commerce and violence; the difficulty of representing a survivor's agency. | Whose story is Oryx allowed to tell? |
| The Crakers | Engineered humanoids created by Crake. | The ethics of creation, consent and designed happiness. | Are the Crakers a utopia, a product, or a people? |
| Sharon | Jimmy's mother; a scientist who becomes disillusioned with the corporate world. | Resistance, depression and the cost of leaving the compound. | What does her absence do to Jimmy's narration? |
| Jimmy's father | A corporate scientist working on pigoons and organ technology. | The ordinary professional who participates in unethical systems without seeing himself as evil. | How does the novel make complicity look normal? |
| Ramona | Jimmy's father's colleague and later partner. | Pragmatism, adaptation and the everyday compromises of compound life. | Is she a survivor or an accommodator? |
| Ren | Jimmy's girlfriend at Martha Graham Academy. | Intimacy, memory and the possibility of a life outside the novel's central triangle. | What does Jimmy's memory of Ren reveal about him? |
Jimmy and the power of words
Jimmy is trained in the humanities at Martha Graham Academy, where students learn to write advertising copy and propaganda. He is smart, ironic and emotionally needy, but he is not a scientist. His power is verbal: he can tell stories, persuade people and make the Crakers believe in a world they cannot see. That power is real, but it is also limited. Jimmy watches the catastrophe taking shape and does not stop it.
The novel's interest in Jimmy is not whether he is a hero. It is how a decent, clever, passive person becomes complicit in a system he dislikes. His narration is part of that complicity: he turns his life into a story, and the story makes him look more innocent than he is.
Crake and the danger of utopia
Crake is brilliant, controlled and emotionally distant. He sees the world as a design problem: humans are flawed, so he will design better ones. His plan is not simply evil. It offers an escape from suffering, conflict and environmental destruction. That is what makes it dangerous. The novel asks whether a world without suffering is worth having if it is achieved without consent.
Crake's relationship with Jimmy is also a power relationship. He hires Jimmy, uses his skills and keeps him close. Jimmy's admiration for Crake is mixed with resentment and dependence. The novel does not resolve that ambivalence.
Oryx and the ethics of representation
Oryx is the novel's most difficult character. She is introduced through a pornographic image that Jimmy and Crake watch as teenagers, and she later becomes Crake's colleague and Jimmy's lover. Her past includes trafficking and exploitation. The novel gives her a voice, but it also filters her through Jimmy's desire and memory.
A feminist reading might ask whether the novel critiques the exploitation of Oryx or repeats it. A postcolonial reading might ask how her origins and race shape her treatment. These questions do not have easy answers, and the novel's discomfort is part of its point.
The Crakers
The Crakers are peaceful, herbivorous and designed to live in harmony with their environment. They worship Crake and Oryx, and they treat Snowman as a teacher. They are also a product: created without consent, designed to be happy and incapable of understanding the world that made them. The novel asks whether their happiness is genuine or engineered, and whether that distinction matters.
Power in the novel
- Corporate power: compounds, brands, security and access to health care.
- Scientific power: the ability to design life, including human life.
- Narrative power: the ability to explain the world and make others believe it.
- Economic power: who can buy safety, pleasure and a future.
- Gender and sexual power: who is looked at, who is used, who gets to speak.
Questions
- Which character has the most power, and which has the least?
- How does the novel make Jimmy's complicity visible without making him a villain?
- Does Crake's intelligence excuse him, explain him or indict him?
- What does Oryx's story reveal about the world that produced her?
- Are the Crakers a solution to human violence or a symptom of it?
Character interpretations are offered as readings to test, not as fixed answers. The novel is in copyright; this page does not reproduce its text.