A comparison of Symptoms vs. Causation

Symptom vs. Causation- For this prompt I’ll be taking an approach more in tune with my field of study. I was a biology student at Defiance and will be starting Chiropractic school in October. In the medical field the term symptom is used to describe a feature that indicates a condition. For instance, a symptom of Lumbar (lower-back) degenerative disk disease would be sharp pain in the lower-back that is increased when in an upright sitting position. (Thanks HealthSource internship)

In our novels, there are a variety of features that indicate the specific apocalypses. In “The Children of Men”, James describes a world enveloped in fear and utter hopelessness. The last ray of hope humanity had seen was snuffed out when the youngest person on earth is killed in a bar fight. Greed, desperation and violence accompany the hopeless world, heightening the fear of humanity. As each day passes without medical breakthroughs and as violence runs rampant, desperation increases. All these; fear, hopelessness, violence and greed (brought on by desperation) as very clear symptoms of this particular apocalypse.

The cause of the apocalypse in “The Children of Men”, in my opinion, would be due to a loss of passion in love. This only gets worse as the apocalypse unfolds itself. The desperation to procreate becomes the central focus and the deep passion between a man and women involved in creating life is lost.

To examine the causation and symptoms of the apocalypse in the novel “Oryx and Crake” the reader must be careful to remember that what is being written about the time prior to the apocalypse is but one man’s (Jimmy/ Snowman) account of the world. From his perspective we can see that humanity had become increasingly vain and obsessive about prolonging human life and beauty. It’s interesting to think that this obsession with prolonging human life is seemingly what brought it to an end. This notion is personified in the life of Crake. His mentality is a microcosm of the humanity of which he lived and worked. From the beauty companies and their age defying creams and pills to the OrganInc’s pigoons and the harvesting of human organs, it’s clear to see that humans had become obsessed with defying nature and death. Humanity attempted to cover up corruption and evil (personified in the lives of the youths, Jimmy, Crake and Oryx) with prolonging life and superficial beauty. This is similar to how Jimmy uses the name “Snowman” to cover up his identity. It can be presumed that the obsession was truly the cause of the apocalypse leading to a dreadful disease. But what about the symptoms? What are the identifying features of the decaying world left for Jimmy to muddle through? While, it is certainly desolate. All that seemingly remains throughout much of the book is Jimmy and the Crakers. Because Jimmy doesn’t desire to be close with the Crakers he is lonely, plagued by the memories left from a confusing childhood and the memories of Oryx and Crake. This apocalypse is different from the one depicted in the “Children of Men” in that, until the end of the book, it is presumed that humanity is completely done, with the exception of Snowman. So for this particular apocalypse I feel the symptoms are best summed up as loneliness, desolation and a haunting realization of what is lost.

*on a side note, Thanks for everyone's patience during my Internet apocalypse. I finally got a service person to fix it; something about the modem. Interestingly, during the time when my Internet was down I was able to think that if the Internet ceased to exist as we know it now, our world would be thrown into an apocalypse of its' own. One I'm not positive we could bounce back from.