73 pages 2 hours read

Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Part 1, Chapter 1-Part 3, Chapter 9

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Egg”-Part 3: “Cobb House”

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Story of the Egg and of Oryx and Crake, and how they made People and Animals; and of the Chaos; and of Snowman-the-Jimmy; and of the Smelly Bone and the coming of the Two Bad Men”

Toby tells the Crakers their origin story using euphemistic language to accommodate their childlike nature, and she must repeatedly ask them to stop singing each time she mentions Crake. The chapter is written in Toby’s point of view and includes only Toby’s first-person perspective, though she often interrupts the story to address some question or reaction from the Crakers, often about “smelly bones,” which are bones from animals that humans have eaten. The Crakers seem to express confusion over the smelly bones because Crake made them with no need or desire to eat meat. She explains that Crake created them in an Egg (a research lab with a large dome) and Oryx taught them how to survive. Crake “cleared away the chaos” (45), meaning he released a plague that killed most of humanity. Jimmy, called Snowman-the-Jimmy by the Crakers, led the Crakers to the beach to live. One day, Jimmy went on a journey for supplies back to the Egg where Crake lives. He cut his foot and got a serious infection. The Crakers tried unsuccessfully to heal him with their purring. Two bad men survived the plague and tortured and raped