Margaret Atwood once said, “The thing about delirium is you think it’s great, but it actually isn’t. ” In Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake and Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go both take a place in a dystopian society, filled with elements of chaos, diseases, division, and oppression. In Oryx and Crake, the title character experiences an awful childhood that constructs a foundation for his personality. Crake was betrayed by his mother and best friend, which stimulated him to go on a path of destruction.
He is narcissistic, detached, and intellectually superior. In Never Let Me Go, Ruth shares a similar quality which is being very egotistical and projects herself as incredibly abrasive. She is a clone who serves one sole purpose in life which is to donate her vital organs, while being separated from society. In Oryx and Crake and Never Let Me Go, the following characters demonstrate how their personalities stems from the lack of parental guidance which explains their decision making process and why.
In Oryx and Crake, Crake appears to be the most dynamic character making a lasting impression. Crake happens to share the same qualities as a sociopath, according to Health Guidance “a sociopath acquires the qualities of having a lack of empathy, shallow emotions, being narcissistic, and having a high IQ. An additional statement about sociopaths is that “they are likely to be found in positions as stock brokers, as CEOs or even as politicians”, which supports the “theory” of Crake being a sociopath, because he ends up being the CEO of the company Reejoov.
Explaining why he graduated the first in his class and attended Watson-Crick Institute, a prestigious university similar to today’s Harvard University. Widely known as Asperger’s U, because of the students’ lack of social skills, which is an allusion regarding to Crake intentionally done by Margaret Atwood. According to the NIH, “Asperger syndrome (AS) is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) characterized by social impairment, communication difficulties, and restrictive, repetitive, fixated interest, and stereotyped patterns of behavior.
His mother-son relationship goes from little to non-existent once he finally uncovers that his mother was responsible for the death of his father, who was about to reveal a huge secret that would cause his company to go into turmoil. His father was his role model, so because of this it drives him mad leading him to seek revenge. Coincidentally just before his graduation, his mother died due to her work bringing her into close proximity with “a hot bioform that had chewed through her like a solar mower (Atwood 176)”, this raises suspicion in Jimmy believing that her death was no accident because Crake shows no remorse.
Crake makes a statement about his father saying that, “He believed in contributing to the improvement of the human lot” (Atwood 183). Foreshadowing Crake’s plan of wiping out the human race and replacing them with genetically modified creatures as if he were following his father’s wishes. According to Johanna Smith, “Freud’s theories are either directly or indirectly concerned with the nature of the unconscious mind,” there are three branches of the psyche which are: the id, ego, or superego.
According to Becki Butcher, “Crake suffers from an ID/EGO complex, Sigmund Freud explains the sexual fetishes as a part of a child’s natural development in the earliest of stages and that children will often fixate on an object and take pleasure in it and that Crake never got past that stage. ” This led Crake to madness and intensified his need for constant perfection and control. His innovation of the Crakers, was his way to finally achieve excellence. Even though they had the minds of infants, they were his most prized possession.
Crakers did not understand the concept of religion, the felt no sense of pride, jealousy, or all collectively the “seven deadly sins”. In Never Let Me Go, Ruth is the epitome of the emotions jealousy, lust, pride, and envy, which happen to fall under the seven deadly sins. Simply Psychology supports that Ruth suffers from an Ego/Superego complex, she knows “how you ought to be, and represents career aspirations, how to treat other people, and how to behave as a member of society”; she is also “rational, realistic, and orientated towards problem solving. Ruth is a clone who attends Hailsham who is the leader of her group of friends. According to Creative Psychologist, “it is a widely accepted fact that personality characteristics and behavioural patterns of adult are shaped and moulded by the events occurring during their early years of life (Uma ] 31). ” Lack of parental guidance has caused her to have an obsession for being the center of attention, for example, she pretended that one of the guardians gave her a decorated pencil case.
Another example of Ruth wanting to be the center of attention is when she, Tommy, and Kathy were at the Cottages and she was the last to find out about Tommy’s theory she said, “Tommy’s been telling me about his big theory. Ages ago. But now, very kindly, he’s allowing me to share in it to (Ishiguro 193). ” According to Psychology Today, “excessive attention seeking is not a character flaw. It is a brain wiring response to early developmental trauma caused by neglect. This is supporting the claim that the lack of parental guidance can affect the child’s psychological state. Ruth is also both envious and jealous of her best friends, Kathy and Tommy’s close-knit bond.
Letting her emotions take over, she decided to interfere and by developing an intimate relationship with Tommy, diminishing the opportunity for them to develop a relationship even though she knew that they would make a wonderful couple. She told Kathy, “Well, Kathy what you have to realise is that Tommy doesn’t see you like that. He really likes you, he thinks you’re really great. But I know he doesn’t see you like, you know, a proper girlfriend… Tommy doesn’t like girls who’ve been with… ell, you know, with this person and that (Ishiguro 200-201). ” Ruth is willing to sabotage the relationship with her best friends in order to remain the focal point and the “leader of the pack”. Though her actions were rash, she fortunately still has a conscious, and decided to let the two build a relationship and even tried to get them a deferral from donations.
Referring to the Creative Psychologists, “the differences in the personalities of orphan and non-orphans in terms of alienation, locus of control, and self-derogation were studied using a sample of 102 orphans and 109 orphans of the age group 13-18. (Uma ] 31). This study clear fits the description, which supports that orphans tend to have psychological problems. In both Oryx and Crake and Never Let Me Go, Crake and Ruth suffered from the absence of their parents and the lack of structure. While Crake faced a series of betrayal from his mother, best friends, and selfproclaimed love, causing him to go on a warpath wiping out an entire human race replacing them with humanoids that are almost “perfect”.
While Ruth is a clone who serves on sole purpose which is to donate her vital organs, and due to the lack of affection and discipline, she comes off as very abrasive and self-centered. Research by Moges and Weber, “Parenting decisions affect how children turn out physically, socially, and emotionally. ” Parents are powerful role models for children and because neither of one them have that guidance in their lives it tends to change their attitudes and behaviors into negative energy.
