Oryx and Crake?

Question

Describe the two principal male characters in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake: Did Atwood sketch two diametrically opposed characters for a reason?

Answer 1

Here you go 3 for the price of 2:

Snowman, whose original name is Jimmy, is the main protagonist; the story is told from his perspective. The name "Snowman" is short for "abominable Snowman," a reference to the Yeti, a mythical ape-like creature of the Himalaya. For the online-game Extinctathon, Jimmy temporarily also has the animal code name "Thickney," which Crake chooses for Jimmy from an Australian bird known for inhabiting cemeteries.

Crake is Jimmy's boyhood friend; an excellent student in high school, he becomes a brilliant geneticist and turns into a version of the mad scientist when he devises a plan to rid the earth of homo sapiens and to replace this destructive species with a more peaceful and environmentally friendly human-like creature: the "Crakers." His code-name for Extinctathon is from the Red-necked Crake, a small Australian bird, and remains his name for the rest of his life.

Oryx is a mysterious woman, the third protagonist and symbolically related to the waif-like girl from an online child-pornography site that begins to haunt Jimmy as an adolescent; Crake first hires her for sexual services and as a teacher to the Crakers, but she becomes Crake's (and Jimmy's) lover. After the catastrophe, she remains present to the Snowman as a haunting memory. Her name is from the Oryx, an African antelope: "It's not even her real name, which he'd never known anyway; it's only a word. It's a mantra"

Answer 2

Oryx And Crake Summary