Oryx and Crake Essay ENG3U1

Jimmy's Father Does Not Fulfill his Fatherly Role
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

Kathryn Venema
ENG3U1
Del Cotto Kaminski, L
April/12/18

Throughout Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, the author incorporates a lot of insight to how Jimmy's dad played out his father role.  Jimmy has struggled through an unguided life, as Jimmy's father most definitely did not fulfil his parenting role for his son.  Jimmy's father, first, forcefully exposed his five and a half year old son to a traumatizing bonfire piled high with vibrant flames around scorching animal corpses.  This event is described to the reader as Jimmy's "earliest complete memory" (Atwood, 19), scaring and haunting him with a vivid, horrendous image of the scene forever.  Following this evidence of poor fatherhood, a character Ramona is introduced into Jimmy's life.  She was first known to Jimmy as his father's lab technician, only later being revealed as 'the other woman.'  As this affair continues, it leads to an unstable household for Jimmy, driving his mother Sharon to manic depression, and eventually, driving her to run away.  Ramona moves in after Sharon leaves the house, making Jimmy feel more invisible than ever. He feels minimalized by his own father, with negligible guidance as he began to go through adolescence.  Finally, as Jimmy does grow up through adolescence, Father is emotionally absent, not there as a role model for his son.  In fact, his father is quite the opposite of a good, responsible role model for a young man, and this is very evident as Jimmy grows up, subconsciously following in his father's disrespectful ways.  Jimmy's father is no father.  Maybe by blood, but not by role.

The first example of Jimmy's father's incapability of behaving as a responsible father is presented early in the novel.  Jimmy describes to the reader his earliest childhood memory of the mile high pile of blistering, smoldering animals.  This fire was no campfire, but more like an excruciating murder scene.  Jimmy stood, with his innocent five and a half year old eyes,  amidst the fire, in his "red rubber boots with smiling ducks on each toe" (Atwood, 19), feeling sorry and helpless for the poor animals:  "Jimmy was anxious about the animals, because they were being burned and surely that would hurt them" (Atwood, 22).  His father displayed so little sympathy, he told Jimmy they were merely "like steaks" (Atwood, 22).  To this day, the events of the bonfire genuinely scared Jimmy.  Young children should most definitely not be exposed to such a brutal display, and is a clear example of how Jimmy's father did not live up to his fatherly responsibilities.

To continue, it becomes known in the novel that Jimmy's father is having an affair with his lab technician, Ramona.  By cheating on his wife and Jimmy's mother, he created an unstable home for Jimmy as he is growing up.  The emotional abuse Jimmy's father put Sharon through pushed her into manic depression, causing her to physically abuse Jimmy, and his father couldn't care less.  He continued with the affair.  After Jimmy's father fired Sharon from her professional position at Organic Inc., she totally lost herself.  She became completely incapable of caring for her young child, Jimmy, and Jimmy's father was still never around to help.  Jimmy's father continued to prioritise Ramona even as his household and family was falling apart.  Sharon's depression got so bad that she left Jimmy and his dad, leaving nothing but a goodbye note.  Jimmy had lost his mom emotionally for a while now, but now he lost her physically too, all because of his dad's selfish behaviours regarding his affair.  Ramona moved in to the broken home after Sharon left, making the situation even more unbearable for Jimmy.  Jimmy continued to grow up and his dad and Ramona's publicly sexual relationship made him feel brutally uncomfortable, sometimes even overhearing their love making in the middle of the night.  As a consequence, "they made him feel invisible" (Atwood, 78).  As Jimmy grows older, he finds new social challenges with relationships and respecting woman, all because of his father's bad example, ruining his childhood home and family by disrespecting his mom with his affair.  Even the narrator agrees: "He's grown up now, with much worse things on his conscience. So who's to blame?...(He blames them)" (Atwood, 80).  Jimmy's blame is well-placed, as shown in his father's insistent selfishness within his affair, putting the needs of his son and family behind the other woman.

Finally, as Jimmy grows up, life faces him with new frustrations and challenges he doesn't know how to cope with, due to the lack of guidance from his father figure. These issues, as a young man, are obviously a result of his father's poor parenting.  Jimmy, coming from an unstable home, craves that feeling of family.  About a month before his mother left his dad and him, a boy named Crake came into his life.  Crake was very mature, "more adult than most adults," Jimmy's mother once said (Atwood, 83).  Crake was also very instructive and a little bossy, sometimes even a little too much so.  Jimmy thrived from this order and maturity as someone he looked up to in his life, never having had that from his own parents.  Jimmy and Crake were best friends all through high school, but by graduation time, Jimmy and Crake went separate ways because Crake was way smarter.  Jimmy struggled hard with this isolation from Crake, turning to alcohol, marijuana, and even harder drugs like cocaine.  At a time when he needed it, he had no father figure to help him through adolescence.  He also tried to cope with loneliness and self-confusion with meaningless sex with countless girls, treating them like objects, using them and showing no respect, just like his father did towards his mother.  He claimed he would never follow in his father's path and ways but subconsciously, that's exactly what he was doing.  He now, being known as Snowman, has flashbacks to his past and has to tell himself: "I am not my childhood" (Atwood, 81).  Young men will naturally take after their fathers, whether consciously or by default; in this case, despite Jimmy's persistence not to become like his father, he ended up doing exactly that because of the lack of fatherly guidance and the example he always portrayed.

In conclusion, Jimmy's father is incapable of fatherhood, and does not fulfill his fatherly role for his son.  The traumatizing impact of the bonfire set the stage for Jimmy's father's negative impact.  Spiralling downward from there, as his father introduced Ramona into Jimmy's life, Jimmy feels increasingly invisible, especially once his mother had left the family.  Once Jimmy reached adolescence, he sought out an imitation father figure through Crake; and as he lost this connection too, the absence of his own father set up the rest of his life for failure.  As a father, his dad did not act as a support or pillar of strength, did not show sympathy and compassion, nor was ever seen to Jimmy as someone he could or should to look up to.

Citations:
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Bloomsbury, 2003.