GODS, GENES, AND GLOBAL COLLAPSE: POSTMODERN APOCALYPSE IN MARGARET ATWOOD'S ORYX AND CRAKE

This paper explores Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake through a postmodern lens, interrogating the novel’s treatment of apocalypse, identity, and narrative structure. It argues that Atwood rewrites the apocalyptic tradition not as divine judgment but as a man-made catastrophe. Drawing on postmodern theorists such as Jean-François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson, and Jean Baudrillard, the study examines how the novel deconstructs grand narratives, destabilizes identity, and replaces moral certainty with ethical ambiguity. The paper also analyzes the commodification of life, the manipulation of memory, and the simulation of truth within a world governed by corporate power and consumer ideology. Through its non-linear narrative, metafictional strategies, and symbolic use of characters like Crake and Oryx, the novel foregrounds the ethical crisis. Ultimately, Oryx and Crake emerges as a postmodern apocalypse a meditation on survival, myth, and the human in an age of technological excess and moral collapse.