Oryx and Crake is the eleventh novel by the prolific and award-winning Canadian author Margaret Atwood, and her third that might be labeled science fiction. Milton’s version of the myth of the Fall has been definitive for English-language literature, yet the epic’s substantial legacy in science fiction suggests that Paradise Lost has also provided material for the rewriting of this myth in new forms and to alternate ends. In this essay I show how Margaret Atwood’s 2003 dystopian novel, Oryx and Crake, fits into this tradition. As early as the seventeenth century, proto-science fictional works became vehicles for rethinking the myth of the Fall, and SF continues to offer a generic home for the rewriting of the Fall myth. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the first science fictional rewriting of Paradise Lost, focuses not on the otherworldly spectacle of Paradise Lost but on the ethical dilemmas of creation. In addition to the sublime, however, there is a second line of descent from Milton’s Paradise Lost to contemporary SF. Writers of science fiction (SF) have been inspired by the epic’s “otherwordly settings, grand conflicts of good and evil, heroes who determine the fate of their worlds, space travel, warfare, futuristic visions.” Science fiction has become the generic repository for the marvels and wonders that were once the domain of the epic. In their introduction to Milton in Popular Culture, Laura Lunger Knoppers and Gregory Semenza suggest that it is the sublimity of Paradise Lost that accounts for Milton’s influence on fantasy and science fiction. It also relies on the theory of the cyborg in combination with ecofeminist rebellion against oppressive systems to present a combination of ecofeminist and postmodern feminist discourse as demonstrated through the chosen novels. Ultimately, this thesis analyzes the strategies employed by the main characters of the aforementioned novels in their retreat from the societies which they inhabit. Both works are dystopic in nature, portraying the destruction of the environment and patriarchal discourse against women. It uses two works of literature, Our Life in the Forest by Marie Darrieussecq and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood to argue for the combination of ecofeminist and postmodern feminist strategies. This thesis argues that these two theories are not mutually exclusive, and must work together to effectively combat oppression faced by the environment and by women. Ecofeminism and postmodern feminism are regarded as opposite theories in their attempts to solve for ecological and patriarchal oppression.
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