Oryx and Crake, No Zombies.

        First of all, I seriously thought this book was about a zombie apocalypse when I first started reading it. I kept waiting for those zombies and I was kind of glad the book didn't involve zombies at all, it was a good change of pace from a lot of movies I've seen lately. I wish they delved into Crake's reason for deciding to wipe of almost all of mankind. I feel like it was really slow moving up till then and suddenly there was this red death, Jimmy was locked in with the Crakes, Crake went shot Oryx, Oryx was dead, and then Jimmy shot Crake. It was a lot to take in after a really building plot. Without delving into Jimmy's past we wouldn't really have much of a story, we would've just had man going on a journey to get food so I liked the way it was laid out with the past interwoven throughout it.

        The relationship between Crake and Jimmy was really deep if you looked at it. It was sort of the joining of two paths: the right and left side of the brain. You have Crake, an analytical calculating genius who is rational and logical. Jimmy on the other hand, is everything he lacks, he's driven by his emotions, lust, as well as what he believes is right. I was surprised they hit it off so well. They almost matched each other. And since they sort of depended on their dual friendship, it was basically the building blocks of everything that followed.

        Jimmy's character really reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Jimmy's constantly at war with himself. He's over the top, he wants to go back to the way things were. He is a prisoner of his past and he's disillusioned. Jimmy is constantly thinking back on what he's done, trying to figure out what went wrong and if he could've fixed it. He's longing for the parental love he never had. I mean his mother was a depressed mess and his father was never really the emotional one. Crake's family life too, is void of love. Throughout this book, Jimmy's trying to find love and he goes through women like toothpicks because he's broken. He doesn't know how to really love some one. Jimmy's basically left wandering around with nothing left in his life. His girl is dead and he's killed his best friend. The human race is almost wiped out and he's stuck dealing with getting food and wild pigoons. His pointless existence is a reflection of man's pointless existence. He's stuck taking care of the Crake people who have basically kind of followed his lead like a God or Moses. And it's up to him to basically make up all this history and information for them.

        The ending really caught my attention as well. He's taken care of the Crakes because of what Oryx and Crake asked of him, even if he was unsure of their motives at the time. So what now? I kind of get the feeling it doesn't make sense for him to go back to the other humans, he's become a sort of loner but he was looking for others in the beginning. But if he does go back, what happens to the Crakes? Can they fend for themselves? And besides, it seems like the people that he runs into at the camp are like a reflection of himself. There's two men and one woman, like there was Jimmy and Crake—and later Oryx. It's kind of like Jimmy's become the man of two worlds and he has to decide where to go from there. Is he going to go back even though his best friend betrayed him and he betrayed his best friend? Is all man flawed?