Oryx and Crake: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Sveltana. Snowman wakes up with a hangover and wishes he hadn’t drunk the scotch the night before. He climbs down from the tree to get some water from his beer bottles. He sees a flock of birds and resents them because they are free and among their own kind. He sits down and tries to remember the meanings of old words floating through his head. After a while he knows he must eat and retrieves a package of Sveltana No-Meat Sausages. They are not enough to get him through the day. Snowman recognizes that he is slowly starving to death. He decides he must go to the RejoovenEsence compound. It is a long way away, but Crake’s old bubble dome is there. It had been called “Paradice,” it was full of food and weaponry, and Snowman remembers how to get there.

A voice in his head tells Snowman he doesn’t want to go back to RejoovenEsense. Snowman insists he’s forgotten about what happened there, but the voice says he’s forgotten nothing. He reminds himself that if he does not eat he will die, and must stick to these essential truths.

Before Snowman leaves he must explain his departure to the Crakers. He does not want them to worry that he’s missing and put themselves in danger by coming to find him. Though he finds their naïve optimism, friendliness, and calmness endlessly irritating, he feels protective of them. He makes his way toward their camp whistling, so they are able to hear him coming.

Purring. When Snowman arrives, the men are performing their morning ritual where they urinate along the invisible line that marks their territory. Crake designed the Crakers so that the smell of their urine would ward off predators. He gave the ability only to the men, because they needed something important to do that wasn’t childbearing so that they didn’t feel left out.

The Craker called Abraham Lincoln welcomes snowman, and asks him to come across the line. Snowman notes that Abraham has become a kind of leader, and recalls Crake saying to watch out for leadership—it leads to tyranny, slavery, and massacre.

Inside the circle, three women are tending to a hurt child by kneeling over him and purring. The purring was bred into them by Crake, who made them able to purr at the same frequency as the ultrasound technology that was used to heal wounds and broken bones. The women tell Snowman the child was bitten by a bobkitten (another manmade genetic splice), and they were forced to throw rocks at the animal. The say they will apologize to Oryx tonight for harming the animal, and ask her to prevent bites in the future. Snowman is satisfied by the fact that Crake failed to breed religion out of the Crakers, eliminate “the cluster of neurons” where he believed God resided—the Crakers have clearly developed a kind of reverence.

Snowman takes in the scene inside the Craker circle. Women are tending a fire. They never eat cooked food and the fire is purely for warmth. Children roam around—Snowman still has not grown used to the Craker children’s rapid growth rate (Crake believed far too much time was wasted in childrearing). He sees “caecotrophs” (clumps of semi-digested excrement) and is revolted. The Crakers pass food through their digestive system sometimes more than once, rather like a rabbit, in order to maximize nutrition. Jimmy had objected that Crake was making the Crakers “eat their own shit.” Crake dismissed it as an “aesthetic objection.”

Snowman tells the Crakers he is going to go on a long journey, to see Crake. Children beg to come with him, saying they want to see Crake too. The men insist that they should accompany him, so that he has protection. Snowman tells them that they are not allowed to see Crake. The men protest but Snowman says he must go alone, and says that Crake will be watching over them. One of the women tells Snowman to tell Crake they are very grateful.

As Snowman leaves the Craker camp, he again feels anger towards Crake. The voice of his father tells him he must stop whining. Snowman points out to his father that he had never set a very good example.

Blue. Snowman starts his journey, shoeless and carrying as little as possible. He keeps an eye out for bobkittens and wolvogs. As he wanders away from the beach he can hear laughter, chanting, and singing from the forest. He thinks it must be the Crakers mating. It only occurs once every three years per female, and when she is ready, her backside turns blue (a trait borrowed from baboons) which alerts the males she is ready to be pursued. She selects the male she prefers, and the others leave with no hurt feelings. She and the male do a dance similar to one done by mating crabs, and then copulate for many hours. Crake noted to Jimmy when he first explained this that any adaptation a person could think of would be one that nature had already invented.

Snowman notes the advantages of this sexual system: there was no more rape, no more heartbreak. Sex is no longer mysterious, no longer loathed or hidden, and no longer inspires suicides or murders. It is only an “athletic demonstration, a free-spirited romp.”

Crake and Jimmy, in their early twenties, are talking over lunch. Crake wonders at the misery caused my biological mismatches, pheromones and hormones. Jimmy points out to him that without love (and its failures) there wouldn’t be art. Crake laughs at this. Jimmy grows flustered, and also points out that when civilizations crumble, all that’s left is art and language, or “imaginative structures.” “Human meaning is defined by them” Jimmy insists. Crake notes that bones and pottery are also left over. He then says that art is the equivalent of a male frog making noise to get attention from females, and that female artists are simply biologically confused.

Snowman leans against a tree and listens to the sounds of the Crakers mating. He wonders why, since there is no longer any jealousy or domestic violence, he feels so dejected. He uselessly asks Crake why he’s on this earth, why he’s alone—where his “Bride of Frankenstein” is. He collects himself and moves on his way.