Gender Roles In Oryx And Crake

In the novel, Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood, Jimmy has a less than ideal framework on gender. Although it is difficult to sympathize with, the creation of this needy, sexist character is the product of influence from his cheating father, an empty relationship with his troubled mother, and submission to an unhealthy friendship with Crake. At a young age, these are the only mentors, and significant connections, that Jimmy has, therefore setting the stage for Jimmy’s ultimate gender bias. Contradictorily, Oryx, a female, is the only person to foil Jimmy’s invulnerability; her numbness and emotional disconnect unravel Jimmy as a powerless, desperate and pathetic narrator who is motivated by connections that solidify his broken ego which will …show more content…
Jimmy watched firsthand the demise of his parent’s marriage. He knew that they would fight over anything, even problems he caused, and that, “all he had to do was say nothing and pretty soon they’d forget why they’d started arguing in the first place.” (16) The reader recognizes Jimmy’s comfort in this tense environment; unsettlingly, he understands the cycle so much that he is able to manipulate it. Unfortunately, this is Jimmy’s first exposure to a relationship, and therefore he has a misconstrued standard for what is functional. Often times his parent’s fights are about moral and ethics battles. Jimmy’s father works between big time, top security corporations that force their family to live in compounds. When Jimmy’s mom gets upset about the ethical integrity of her husband’s work, he regards to Jimmy, “women always get hot under the collar,” and Jimmy wonders, “why nothing about the hot collars of men? Those smooth, sharp-edged collars with their dark, sulphurous, bristling undersides.” (17) Jimmy’s questioning is wholesome and emphasizes how young he is, but because he is still learning, the reader can see how Jimmy’s father lays the foreground for Jimmy’s prejudice. His father, unaffected by his wife’s feelings, generalizes women and stereotypes that they get upset easily and irrationally. He accepts no blame, and feels no guilt. …show more content…
Martha Graham is a run-down school, with a below average education program, but Jimmy is experiencing the independence he’d been longing for. One of the first realizations Jimmy made is, “that he is interested in damaged, artistic women, because he finds them easy to manipulate, and finds satisfaction in listening to others’ vulnerabilities.” He’s misogynistic like his father, finding comfort in the power he assumes over women, he’s unreliable like his mother, continuously finding and leaving new girls, and he’s superficial like Crake, generalizing all ‘damaged’ and ‘artistic’ women as ‘vulnerable’. This is inexcusable evidence that Jimmy has adapted to their behaviors and