Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

In the Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, the main character, Lauren Olamina, leaves behind Christianity, a religion that she identified with her whole life and creates a new religion known as Earthseed. Earthseed is a naturalistic way of faith, based on the idea that God is changeable, therefore life, too, could change. Lauren Olamina creates Earthseed because she believes that it is what her people need in order to not only alter their chaotic and misguided ways, but to live a pro-active and positive life.

The short story, "My Last Duchess," by critically acclaimed, Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, is an intriguing and thought-provoking work of prose. Though it ties considerably to the famous work by the same name, written by Robert Browning, it also brings its own ideas, and symbols to the table. The most prominent symbolic link within this story is the representation between the characterization of Miss Bessie--the high school english teacher--and the narrator 's ideas, thoughts, and fears about life. The term life -- for the purposes of this essay -- is defined as the existence of an individual person and their course through the world. In “My Last Duchess,” the narrator 's life is symbolically represented through Miss Bessie by the character traits of a positive reputation, overcoming obstacles, and the solitary nature of people.

One company, OrganInc Farms, aims to improve the artificially formed pigoon through implementing, “a rapid maturity gene [that] was spliced in so the pigoon kidneys and livers and hearts would be ready sooner, and now they were perfecting a pigoon that could grow five or six kidneys at a time” (23). Through this attempt at “perfecting” the pigoon, OrganInc Farms promotes the importance of reaching an idealized version of living animals. Through inventing, and then accelerating the adaptation of the pigoon, OrganInc Farms transitions biological changes from an event outside of human control to an academic pursuit. This change signals a societal increase in control over natural surroundings, and a commitment to the advancement of humanity through the use of technology.

In the novel Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler paints a picture of a dystopia in the United States in which the current societal problems are overly exaggerated into the worst-case scenario. Butler describes a world plagued with high unemployment rates, violence, homelessness, a flawed police system, and a crumbling education system. Butler focuses the story on the poor and the homeless by only giving characters with this background a voice in order to show the reader that society’s views and stereotypes of these groups are flawed. Butler shows the lack of attention they receive and over exaggerates the problem in order to show the extreme consequences if it is not properly addressed.

Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler, is the story of a girl, Lauren, forming a new sort of religion in a post- apocalyptic world. As she travels through the remnants of a lost world, she begins to formulate her own belief system and calls it Earthseed. In short, Earthseed is described as a “combination of Buddhism, existentialism, Sufism” in addition to other worldly beliefs (261). All in all, Lauren hopes to create a new, sustainable religious community, and in turn, one day, a better human society.

Claire Standish or “the princess” portrays the stereotypical popular teenage girl in The Breakfast Club. She is in detention with everyone else because she decided to skip class and go shopping, which also plays into the stereotypical teen girl image. It can also be assumed that she is spoiled and rich since her father tried to get her out of detention but failed, and she mentions to the group that her parents only use her to get back at the other one. She brings a fancy lunch of sushi while the other teens either have nothing or the standard lunch one’s parents might pack for them. There are a couple of times in the movie that she brings up her social standing and could even be considered as looking down on those who are not as popular as her. Even closer towards the end of the movie she informs the others that if they were to say hello to her in the hallway in front of her friends, she would have no choice but to ignore them. By the end of the movie, she has opened up to everyone else about her fears of letting her peers down and has formed a close relationship with Bender.

In the novels Oryx and Crake and Frankenstein, mental health impacts the main characters and their everyday lives. Each character has been through different life changes that influence their state of mind. To more thoroughly comprehend what each character is going through, this paper analyzes the life changes that occur due to each characters’ mental state.

Economics is the study of scarcity within a systems of rules. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins’ can be translated into such, with hunger being scarcity and games being a system of rules. In the Hunger Games, we are introduced to a country called Panem. The country of Panem is divided into twelve different districts and the Capitol, where the government resides. Each district has their own different specializations and they have distinctive economies. The government regulates the trade and each district rely on trade from each other district and the Capitol for the goods they don 't produce. All of the districts and the Capitol is interdependent.

I choose to use a silhouette of a naked hung from a noose to represent snowman's sexual desires and morbid curiosity with death. The reason the background is so colourful and distracting is to show his slow descent into insanity; I choose to blur it because Snowman made his lover and best friend into deities to the "children of crake" and to me deities and gods are mysterious and shrouded in fog,

“Belief is nearly the whole of the universe whether based on truth of not.” by Kurt Vonnegut. People live day by day on what they believe whether it is their morals or values, and what people say. We choose to believe what we want to like in all of the Bluebeard variances. Bluebeard is a not as well known fairytales that tell you the grim consequences of disobedience and curiosity that women deal with during marriage. Although, marriages have many secrets, every wife and husband deserves the truth when it comes to dishonestly, disloyalty, and sometimes murder.

Oryx and Crake, a novel written by Margaret Atwood depicts a futuristic dystopia which reveals human relationships with the environment are often monetary-driven. Humans have a profound impact upon the environment and continue to put economic prosperity before the environment. Atwood provides insight to anthropogenic degradation, painting a picture of the future which no longer resembles the world we live in as technology backfires. In her novel, Atwood identifies industrialism and the capitalist mindset as being especially influential on our disregard for nature. Humans try to manipulate the world around them, with total disregard for the consequences due to monetary gain.

The Parable of the Sower, written by Octavia Butler, is considered a science fiction novel, classified as dystopian. This novel depicts a post-apocalyptic world where the United States has fallen into tremendous poverty. Crime, such as murder, rape, and theft, run rampant to the point where no one is considered safe. The society in this novel is completely destroyed. The foundation has crumbled socially, politically, and economically. The citizens are left to fend for themselves in, what is now, a ruthless nation with just a hint of civilized communities. Our sensible and above all, brave protagonist, Lauren Olamina, is the heart of the story. She is one of the few characters who can be identified through several viewpoints. Lauren’s persona, beliefs, as well as her actions allow her to be classified through four different lenses such as classism, deism, fundamentalism, and, more accurately, humanism.

White argues that the impact of science and technology dominated by western, Judeo-Christian thought, is what is responsible for the environmental crisis.13 The Abrahamic religions do not believe in spirits within natural objects, and see man as made in god’s image, not as part of the ecosystem. She interprets Genesis’s creation story as the cause of the man/nature dualism and the legitimizing source for man to exploit nature.. “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” (Genesis 1:26)8 White’s recommendation that the “roots of religion must also be the remedy” supports a religion-conservation collaboration, but was religion really the cause in the first place? 13 Hillel’s critique of White argues for an alternative interpretation of the creation story, one based on the fundamental Christian beliefs of God’s unconditional love and human stewardship. Adam should not be seen as nature’s dominator, but as a caretaker with a responsibility towards protecting and conserving the resources within it. Greed in developed countries and lack of sustainable alternatives in developing ones should be blamed for environmental degradation, not this framework of human accountability on its impact in nature, which is precisely in line with the conservation

Nicholas Hytner 's adaption of Arthur Miller 's The Crucible provides an interesting look into the life of the Puritans. The Crucible follows the small town of Salem as they are engulfed in the mass hysteria of witchcraft. A group of young girls are caught dancing in the woods, and thus fearing punishment claim that they were possessed by the devil. Soon the accusations run wild which resulted in the arrest of two-hundred peoples, and the execution of twenty. Today the film is regarded as an allegory for the McCarthy hearings though it also provides an intimate look into the closed societies of colonial America. The film displays some of the themes presented in Scupins book Anthropology of Religion. It has become the perfect contemporary depiction of the leviathan-like power the Puritan Church had over the community, and their ability to rule through fear. Furthermore, Salam was a small isolated town and was not exposed to outside ideas, this coupled with the Church 's power demonized any outside forces. The film also depicts women 's relationship with witchcraft, and how accusations were used by the patriarchy to maintain their power over women, and how the young girls were able to gain power and influence through the act of accusation.

In Oryx and Crake, Atwood portrayed multiple environmental problems that are very concerning to our planet. I’m going to discuss two of the major problems, which are industrial pollution and extinction of species. Atwood’s novel explained that by the increase of these environmental problems with no solutions, they start to become more complex and change to mysteries, which destroyed the natural system at the end of the novel and even science didn’t help after it was too late. The theme of species extinction and suffer was portrayed in Oryx and Crake as in this quote “ “Were there tigers?” Jimmy asked.