“Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.”

– Frederic Jameson

Apocalyptic literature has become an increasingly popular genre in contemporary times because it showcases various anxieties about the state of the world in which we live. H. Hicks states, “apocalypse shifted from its origins as the story of the annihilation of a sinful human world to become, in novel form, the story of the collapse of modernity itself” (2). Since colonialism has ended, we have witnessed the unabated rise of global capitalism. Although the system of patriarchy is much more ancient, the unequal distribution of wealth and power has maintained the oppression of workers and women globally. Feminist revolutionary Denise Comanne writes, “Analysis of its methods shows that, on the one hand, the capitalist system feeds on a pre-existing system of oppression – patriarchy” (6). This powerful union of an economic and social system has become so ingrained into our culture that we essentially have to write fiction in order to imagine a world without either of them. As per Jameson and Hicks, ending patriarchy and ending capitalism is akin to ending our contemporary world as we know it. Thus, I assert that authors use apocalyptic fiction as a medium through which one can envision a permanent death to capitalism and patriarchy. But what is a post-capitalist, post-patriarchal world like? Naturally, without oppressive systems in place, there is more freedom.

In the dystopian novel Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood, we see a hypercapitalist world run by corporations that lead to a global apocalypse. Before the fall, animals are genetically engineered beyond reason in order to harvest more product, and companies sabotage each other to the point of murder in order to maintain an edge on one another.  “‘Drive the prices up,’ he opines. ‘Make a killing on their own stuff’” (Atwood 18). This line spoken by a main character named Crake is referencing how corporations create diseases while also selling the cures. Atwood is showing us the dangers of scientific advancement, which is now thoroughly enmeshed within the capitalist economy. This leads to rampant competition and subterfuge to maintain profits and market dominance. The crime-ridden pleeblands serve as a reminder of the economic barriers between the poor and the privileged few like the main characters Jimmy and Crake who are the embodiment of patriarchal capitalism. They live in isolated compounds because their families are scientists and researchers for corporations, representing the privilege of being born “safe and secure.”

The apocalypse in this novel is orchestrated because of a patriarchal character named Crake and his desire to impose his will on a world he views as unethical. Crake’s upbringing is mostly told from our narrator Jimmy’s perspective, but we are led to believe that Crake’s father was murdered by a rival corporation or maybe even Crake’s uncle Pete, who ends up moving in with Crake’s mother. Although we don’t get Crake’s perspective, it can be interesting to note that Jimmy suspects Crake tested a bioform on his mother and surrogate father, which brings to mind the famous lines, “Frailty, thy name is woman”  from the play Hamlet (Shakespeare 1.2 150-162), where Hamlet obsesses over the death of the patriarchal King Hamlet that he places on a massive pedestal. Just like Hamlet, Crake may even violently resent his mother’s sexual autonomy and desire his uncle’s demise. These events at home likely influenced Crake’s warped views of the world at large as he developed and may explain why he has no problem manipulating women such as the other protagonist Oryx. Crake is only able to impose his God-complex on everyone because of his VIP status which was verified through capitalist structures since corporations are more than happy to exploit and commodify intellect. By forcing an apocalypse on the world, Crake’s will serves as a final act of patriarchal oppression.

The method Crake uses to kill billions also suggests the relevance of capitalism because only through global capitalism could a sexual supplement spread a disease throughout the entire world before it was too late. Even Crake’s last act in the world is slitting the throat of the woman Jimmy loves, a literal act of misogyny. In the novel, our perception of the events abroad is mostly configured via the internet, where Jimmy and Crake watch executions and child sex slaves in pornographic films. Since this violence and explicit exploitation are commodities that strip women of their autonomy, one can see how patriarchy and capitalism work in conjunction to oppress women. These women, such as our other main character Oryx, are mostly from a lower class furthering the notion that under capitalism and patriarchy women have far less agency than men do.

Based on the events of Oryx and Crake, Atwood is suggesting that Crake’s apocalypse is sadly the only way to end capitalism and patriarchy, because without people to maintain those structures they will die out. The tenacity of these ideologies is remarkable to the point of the world needing to end. In Oryx and Crake, the CorpSeCorps enforce the capitalist ideology and arrest dissidents like Jimmy’s mother who threaten the patriarchal capitalist status quo in place. Because this system is self-serving, it must get torn down from the ground up rather than from slow changes from within. Ideology persists as long as humans do, just as we have been unable to rid ourselves of warfare despite thousands of years of bloodshed. Regimes rise and fall and mass extinctions may come and go, but when will things finally change? The other novel I’m analyzing may help us come to a better conclusion.

In the Orison of Sonmi 451~ section of the epic novel Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, we see far into the future where the world is dominated by hypercapitalism somewhat similar to Oryx and Crake. Whereas in Oryx and Crake, the corporations have taken over and the governments of the world seem to have vanished, in Cloud Atlas, the corporations and the government have merged into what is called Corpocracy. Our protagonist, Sonmi 451, is a female fabricant who breaks free from her oppressive serving job in a futuristic South Korea. Fabricants in Cloud Atlas, are clones created for the sole purpose of servitude. By leaving Papa Song’s employment, Sonmi has taken the first steps to removing her shackles – although she soon discovers that the corpocracy also functions largely through violence. Sonmi 451 is exploited in her workplace, just like the other fabricants, all of which are gendered as female. The domination doesn’t end there for Sonmi 451; she is even othered and frequently dehumanized because of her fabricant clone origins, just as women are subjugated and viewed as “less than” because of their biology. Even the fact that this society has decided to make female clones whose only purpose is subservience and servitude is reflective of how patriarchy is deeply rooted in this hyper-capitalist future. Sonmi notes, “Purebloods always see us but rarely look at us” demonstrating the reductive nature capitalism and patriarchy imposes on both workers and women (Mitchell 219).

Near the end of the second chapter detailing Sonmi’s journey, we discover that the fabricants are slaughtered and recycled into “soap” which is used to nurture the next generation of fabricants. This unintentional cannibalism of fellow fabricants implies several things. First, that the workers (who are again, notably women) are perceived more as machines than beings since they are commodified and objectified by the economic system which values their labor more than their individual agency. Secondly, it reifies the implicit connection between patriarchy and capitalism since the fabricants don’t necessarily need a gender to perform their tasks; yet they are coded as female to continue the domination of their gender which furthers the naturalized assumption of patriarchy that women are meant to serve men. This is clear both in their purpose of serving food, and when the fabricants are recycled it serves the profits of men at the top of the hierarchical structure the most, such as Papa Song, a symbolic corporate patriarch.

There is an intrinsic difference between the ideology of Crake and Somni. Crake knew the world was immoral, partly because he was an active participant in the various systems of oppression, so he thought the right thing to do was to end it. Somni, on the other hand, who doesn’t come from a place of privilege like Crake, but a background more similar to Oryx, also knows this evident truth about the evil oppression in the world. Even though these stories arrive at similar conclusions, their executions are completely different. Crake has lost faith in the world, so he kills off almost everyone and hopes his genetically modified “children” will represent a second chance for the human race. Somni decides revolution is the way to go, because she has not lost faith in humanity at large. She states, “All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities” (Mitchell 342). Sonmi’s revolution is indicative of the oppressed majority rising up for the good of the future in hopes of rebuilding in an almost classical Marxist fashion, whereas Crake utilizes science and technology to destroy society and culture, deeming it hopeless.

Both authors use the apocalypse genre to imagine these oppressive ideologies perishing. While the last century has led us to become more critical of the patriarchal world we live in today, there have not been many changes to it. That is in part because patriarchy has a safe home within capitalism, where people turn a blind eye to pay gaps and various facts such as women representing only ten percent of top management positions. Capitalism on the other hand, has been criticized for over a century since Marx’s time and has only become worse. Because of corporate capitalism and its influences on environmental destruction, human rights abuses, and imperialistic governing policies, it is not only easier than ever to imagine the end of the world, but harder to imagine a realistic way of it ending that does not relate to the ideology. If a system is so tenacious that it could lead to the end of the world while also requiring the end of the world to bring it down — it may be an oppressive system that is at odds with democracy. As with most speculative and apocalyptic fiction, but especially so in Cloud Atlas and Oryx and Crake, these novels force us to examine our own values, ideals, and take direct action to prevent the active harm being done by these systems. Like Somni said, revolutions and change can only happen when people work together and believe in their own potential for change. Governments are supposed to work for people, not corporations, and that is one important step to help save our planet and the life that inhabits it.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Great Britain: Virago, 2003.

Commanne, Denise. “How Patriarchy and Capitalism Combine to Aggravate the Opression of Women.” cadtm.org, 28 May 2010.

Hicks H. J.. The Post-Apocalyptic Novel in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas: A Novel. Sceptre Books, 2004.