Crake's creation of the CrakersThe following is an analysis of what drove Crake to create the Crakers.
What led Crake to regard and create the Crakes as the perfect human being is motivated by several reasons. To understand his reasons behind a course of action that might have seen as morally wrong to others, one must look at Crake’s way of perceiving the world. Crake is a person who is driven by logic, not his emotions. This is seen throughout the book on several times, for one when he indifferently watches his mother die. His logic is also implicated when he constantly questions what is real, when he is breaking free from the concept of reality that society has created. On of these occasions occur when Jimmy and Crake are watching executions: "Do you think they're really being executed?" [Jimmy] said. "A lot of them look like simulations." "You never know," said Crake. "You never know what?" "What is reality?" The quote implies that Crake believes that reality does not only encompass what can be seen or touched, but rather that the concept of reality is what can be visualized, that imagining something makes it real. This is also shown when Jimmy and Crake are playing online chess and Jimmy asks why they don’t use real plastic men and Crake answers that that wouldn’t be real either; the real game is in your head. When taking this in to account while looking at Crake’s actions regarding the creations of the Crakes, it is not surprising that he see nothing morally wrong with it, while Jimmy feels that there is a line that has been crossed. Crake states at one point that he does not believe in Nature with capital N as little as he believes that there is a God. These facts leads to the conclusion that Crake considers his creations as real and justified as any other human beings and not an abomination in Nature or not “real humans”. Because as he always says; what is real? Another reason for why Crake created the Crakers can be found in his childhood. Crake grew up in a human society dying by its own default construction and with humanity on the brink of collapse by its own nature. When this fact, in combination with his cold logic, is taken in consideration, his actions when creating the Crakers are not that strange. Through Jimmy’s narrative it is shown that Crake seldom speaks about his father, but at one point it is learned that it was his father that had taught Crake how to play chess. As demonstrated earlier, logic is Crakes most influential trait and chess is solely based on logic. The fact that it was Crakes father that taught him what later became the most dominant part of his personality suggest that Crake’s relationship with his father was important to him, and therefore so was his believes. Crake adopts his fathers mission, but he comes to the conclusion that humanity as it is now is too faulty to fix. Its problems lie in its very nature, on a molecular level, and thereby the solution requires genetic modification, which is what motivated him to create the Crakes. This view of Crake is demonstrated when he discusses the pain of love: “How much misery […] how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately won’t or can’t love you. As a species we’re pathetic in that way: imperfectly monogamous” And when Jimmy points out what would be lost in Crakes plan, that humans would become only like hormone robots, he replies that: “…we’re hormone robots anyway, only we’re faulty ones.” The Crakes are what Crake believe to be the perfect human beings. Concluding, Crake’s motivations in creating the Crakes can be found in his logic, childhood and brilliance. Author: Lovisa Gullbrandson |