Research On Black Humor In Oryx And Crake

In the year 2003, "Queen of Canadian Literature" Margaret Atwood published the novel Oryx and Crake. At the same year, soon after its publication, the novel was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature and shortlisted for the British Booker Prize in Literature. The future world in Oryx and Crake has been controlled by various cutting-edge biotechnology companies, which are vying to develop biological and genetic technologies, grab technical talents, manufacture various biological products and prepare antiviral drugs. At the same time, they even develop new viruses to occupy more pharmaceutical markets in order to reap huge benefits. At last, a well-planned deadly virus disease bursts out and almost wipes out our human race. In this work, Atwood, with her strong sense of ecological concern, good scientific literacy, profound civilization reflection spirit, superb language art and amazing imagination, has vividly revealed the insane plunder and blind destruction of nature by humans due to their endlessly expanding greed as well as the serious alienation and thorough destruction of humans themselves. The novel’s profound meaning and superb artistry set off a new wave of research analysis among domestic and foreign scholars. Some start from the types of novel and consider it as science fiction with postmodern features. There are also researchers exploring the use of parody and other artistic approaches in the work. This essay attempts to interpret the Oryx and Crake from the perspective of black humor, thereby expecting to explain this Canadian classical novel by the brand-new angle of view.This thesis is comprised of three parts:an introduction, a body and a conclusion. The main contents of the thesis are as follows:The first part of the thesis is the introduction. First, this thesis briefly introduces the writer’s life and his position in the history of literature, and then, this thesis presents the purpose and practical significance, again, this thesis introduces the literary review of The Oryx and Crake at home and abroad. At the same time, the author puts forward the innovation of the thesis and the defect of thesis.The main body of this thesis is composed of four chapters. The first chapter introduces the theoretical framework about black humor. This chapter chiefly introduces the definition and features of black humor and its backgrounds, and then tries to find the relationship among other schools of literature and black humor. The second, third and forth chapters are the important parts in this thesis, which analyze the black humor elements involved in the characterization, theme and language in the novel.The second chapter analyzes the black humor elements involved in the characterization in this novel. This chapter will discuss from two aspects. First of all, the first part explores the definition and features of "anti-hero". Second, second part explores two main "anti-heroes", Snowman and Crake. They are two different typical anti-heroes, With his superb gene modification and grafting techniques, Crake wins the favor of biotechnology companies and eventually becomes a top member in one of them, but he is ruthless and regards life as nothing. On the contrary, Jimmy loves language and art and becomes an outcast in the age that "technology first". In the face of this difficult position in reality, he feels helpless, powerless, and just indulges himself in smoking "skunk weed", watching underground videos, moving between different women like a pimp. Atwood has magnified, twisted and extended these funny, ugly, deformed, cruel, dark people and their surrounding world from a unique perspective, rendering them more absurd, so that readers can experience a strong and profound shock.The third chapter analyzes the black humor elements involved in the theme in Oryx and Crake. This chapter will discuss from two aspects. We know that the themes in this novel are mainly about social crisis, absurdity and alienation of human and so on. The first theme is the ecological crisis including natural ecological crisis and cultural ecological crisis. Driven by the idea of "science and technology are the highest" and business interests, arrogant and cocky scientific elites transform all species in nature willingly, which at the same time has caused the precipitous deterioration of natural environment. Any damage to nature is accompanied by the damage to culture, so any ecological extinction is a kind of cultural extinction from a certain perspective. In the future world depicted by the novel, utilitarianism and pragmatism prevail unprecedentedly, while the humanity art declines, getting despised and even abandoned by common people. In the meantime, suffering from serious damage, the cultural ecological environment has become extremely abnormal and lost its supposed balance. The second theme is the alienation of human life. In the world portrayed in Oryx and Crake, different classes in the society are isolated from each other. The same coldness and alienation also exist in the level of family, which is the cell of a society. Whether it is in the society or family, people are estranged from each other and human relations are weak. People are rational, living in an enclosed circle needed by themselves and caring only for things profitable to them. They rarely interact with others, hence, they can’t even express their care and love to each other commendably. To some degree, they have lost the ability and right to love and be loved.The forth chapter analyzes the black humor elements involved in the language in this novel. The first part explores the black humor narrative styles in this work. First of all, the author explores the comic treatment of tragic materials. The author adopts indifferent and ironic tone to reach an effect of black humor. Second, the narrative style is shown in the loose narrative structure. The plots in the conventional sense are faded in the black humor novels, and novels themselves are no longer closed with tight structure. Oryx and Crake no longer evolves in traditional chronological order. Instead, it is narrated with independent scenes and stacking of details, which makes the content loose and the meaning more ambiguous. The second part in this chapter introduces the usage of rhetoric device, parody, which is one of the most frequently used rhetoric devices of creating black humor works.Last but not least is the conclusion part. The thesis explores the black humor elements in depth in the Oryx and Crake, it is not only beneficial to have a better understanding of this novel, but also more accurate to dig out the deep purpose of the writer. In addition, it has a profound and practical significance to explore the whole structure in this thesis. The author expects to interpret this work with a new perspective, thus making a great contribution to the future research.