by Alia Luria
I exist in two places, here and where you are. - Margaret Atwood
The above quote embodies a thesis Atwood spends a lot of time examining in her work. It’s a succinct argument for the multiplicity of identity. Each person exists not only independent of every other human but also in relation to others. Is that existence, built from observation, perception, and interaction, a wholly formed existence? Or is it a wholly separate person? Perhaps it must be. It is a challenging notion, and one that many people do not feel comfortable with. Is the “me” created in the mind of another any more or less real than the “me” in my head?
This premise is one that Atwood examines repeatedly in her work, but it forms an integral part of the Maddaddam trilogy, composed of Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and Maddaddam (2013). In this series, Atwood doesn’t stop at challenging the multiple identities of her characters. She challenges the reader to consider that perception may in fact be more important than reality in shaping identity, particularly if one is trying to become a god. Atwood’s work makes the case that setting oneself up as a god requires only three steps:
- 1: prey on the naïve, stupid, or greedy, and manipulate them into total trust.
- 2: martyr yourself.
- 3: wipe out anyone who doesn’t believe you are a god.
Et, voila! Godhood achieved.
Okay, so the steps might not be “easy,” but they are alarmingly right out of the fascism playbook, and Atwood spares no punches in crafting a story where one man’s personal beliefs, however misguided, brings about the end of society as they know it and creates a new, horrible world where he is a god.
The Maddaddam trilogy doesn’t follow a standard chronological format. Instead, it tells the same story from multiple perspectives, each adding to and extending the understanding of the reader as more voices weigh in with respect to the events in the books—namely the end of humanity as the dominant life on earth. All the stories to some degree revolve around the mythological figure of Glenn, also called Crake, who is the individual primarily responsible for first sterilizing and then ultimately wiping out all but a very limited number of humans and simultaneously installing genetically modified people, the Children of Crake aka Crakers, in their place. One of the key aspects of this storyline is that, while the cataclysmic events on Earth and the lives of all the remaining survivors discussed each of the three books revolve in some way or another around Crake, there is no single scene in any of the three books written in his perspective. Gods don’t talk directly to humanity. Gods have emissaries to tell the story for them.
What the reader knows about Crake, or the situation he created on Earth, they learn from other characters, either through that characters’ direct interaction with Crake or through the characters’ recollections or opinions about Crake. Always, these glimpses are distorted, filtered through minds varying greatly in intelligence, naiveté, and socio-political worldviews. While these varying perspectives reveal new facets of Crake and the aftermath of his actions, the reader never gets the story directly. In this way, the versions of Crake and the state of the world that exist in the survivors’ minds are more important than the truth of what occurred or how Crake might have felt about the result. To Atwood, perhaps they are the only versions of Crake that matter.
The primary point of view character in Oryx and Crake is Jimmy, also known as Snowman, who is Crake’s childhood best friend and, often, patsy. Jimmy is intellectually inferior to Crake, as well as emotionally needy and generally weaker than him. Ultimately, like everyone else, Jimmy becomes one of Crake’s tools, even to the point where Crake manipulates Jimmy into helping him commit suicide, i.e., realize step two. Jimmy is also an unreliable narrator, constantly fluctuating between the past and his present post-apocalyptic situation. Thus, even an astute reader is thrown into the jumble of Jimmy’s mind, leaving Crake’s motivations veiled. When Crake orchestrates the release of the Jetspeed Ultra Virus Extraordinary (JUVE) virus, Jimmy doesn’t even seem to process his friend’s culpability.
“’Change can be accommodated by any system depending on its rate,’ Crake used to say. ‘Touch your head to a wall, nothing happens, but if the same head hits the wall at ninety miles an hour, it's red paint. We're in a speed tunnel, Jimmy. When the water's moving faster than the boat, you can't control a thing.’ I listened, thought Jimmy, but I didn’t hear.” (Oryx and Crake)
It is only after the fact that Jimmy recalls these important nuggets of information about Crake. At the time, the deeper meaning to his statement eludes Jimmy and is not conveyed to the reader until he understands its significance. Jimmy is not perceptive. He’s wrapped up in his own despair, and this selfish, immature point of view confines the reader’s initial understanding of Crake to Jimmy’s limited perception of the situation. Jimmy blames Crake, and thus Crake is cast solidly as the villain in the first novel.
The Year of the Flood follows the story of Toby and Ren, both of whom are swept up as members of the religious organization called the God’s Gardeners, and both of whom know Crake in different contexts. The Year of the Flood focuses much more on the environmentalists and what is going on in the pleeblands (free cities). Essentially, where Jimmy was inside the machine looking out, the God’s Gardeners are outside the machine looking in. Unbeknownst to Jimmy, Crake influences both worlds. He plays the corporate angle to bottle “immortality” for unlimited funding, couched as “solutions to the biggest problem of all, which was human beings.” (The Year of the Flood)
Simultaneously, in the third novel, Maddaddam, he courts the God’s Gardeners by promising “a population crash.” Yet again, Crake has infiltrated this sub-group of humanity and has used the scientists and hackers who are part of the group as recruits to his cause, both voluntarily and through coercion. He even obtained the basis for JUVE from a pill smuggled out of one of the major corporations at the behest of other researchers and eco-conscious people.
He never lied to either group. He just allowed each of the opposing ideologies to interpret his words in a way that made them comfortable and allowed him to continue to manipulate them. In some ways, this revelation that the “good guys” helped him is the most shocking and revealing part of the story. Crake, a cold, calculating, potentially sociopathic individual cast as the villain from the very beginning and the ecology-driven, peace-loving God’s Gardeners colluded—in a fashion—to bring about humanity’s “population crash.” One’s disdain for humanity intersected with the other’s love for the Earth and the animals inhabiting it. Neither ideology left room for humanity in its current state. Unfortunately for the God’s Gardeners, they failed to understand that they would not be exempt from the consequences of Crake’s actions and ultimately suffered along with the rest of humanity.
This is one of the most important pieces of information that the reader learns, and it comes almost near the end of the trilogy, long after Crake and almost all the God’s Gardeners have been killed. The reader can no longer look at Crake as having operated in a vacuum, as the only “villain.” As usual, life is much more complex than good and evil. Morality and ethics exist on a spectrum, and right and wrong are a matter of perspective. Although Crake was the catalyst for humanity’s downfall, all the other characters enabled him in his quest for destruction.
Despite its long and winding path, Crake accomplished all three steps to godhood. First, Crake manipulated his friends, business partners, and associated idealogues into trusting him and his plans. Between Jimmy, the big money corporations, the God’s Gardeners, and the Crakers, Crake used each person’s or group’s respective intentions, good or bad, against them.
Second, he made himself a martyr to the group chosen to carry his message onward. Crake manipulated Jimmy into shooting and killing him by slitting the throat of the woman Jimmy loved right in front of him. By taking himself out of the picture, Crake was able to escape all the myriad consequences Jimmy and the remnants of humanity face. He also preserved himself in the minds of the Crakers as a benevolent protector and teacher.
Third, and finally, the JUVE virus propagated by Crake through his sexual enhancement drug, BlyssPluss, wiped out nearly all of humanity, leaving a clean slate for Crake’s innocent, genetically enhanced Crakers. Jimmy mused that Crake would be upset to hear of the Crakers referring to him as a god, but Jimmy’s love for Crake, even given all that happened, keeps him from accepting that Crake’s plan has been fully realized.
The parallel between Crake’s step one is what should drive fear into our blood, as a society struggling with rising fascism. Groups don’t have to align on ideologies, because savvy actors can prey on those ideologies, irrespective of what they are, to achieve a specific result. It is imperative that we stop examining each action and its result against our own personal codes of ethics, morals, and philosophy. We need to focus on the totality of what is going on around us. We stand on the precipice of reliving those portions of our history that dehumanized black people, jews, indigenous peoples, the disabled, and the LGBTQ+ communities. It is a sobering thought that someday, all that might survive of humanity is its shadows, designed to worship a false god. Is it hyperbolic to suggest that disruption of human society on a global scale is possible? Perhaps, but it’s hubris to brush it off as impossible, and I think Margaret Atwood would agree.
© Copyright 2025 Alia Luria
About the Author
Alia Luria's debut novel, Compendium, was published in 2015 and garnered several accolades, including the National Indie Excellence Award in Fantasy, the eLit Gold Medal in Science Fiction / Fantasy, an IPBA Benjamin Franklin silver award, and the Reader's Favorite Silver Medal in Fantasy. It was also a finalist for the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Award in three categories, including First Novel.
Read more at https://www.alialuria.com and follow on Instagram / TikTok @alialuria