MaddAddam

Privately, Toby recounts what really happened, much of which she blames on her own actions. The two men they tied up were “Painballers” (9), violent criminals who were punished in a Painball Arena (a brutal gladiatorial form of punishment) before the plague. If they found a woman, they’d brutalize, rape, and cannibalize her. The Painballers had captured Amanda, and Ren and Toby had tracked them to rescue her. While they hid and prepared to attack the men, Jimmy stumbled into the area with a spray gun, prompting a chaotic series of events that led to the Painballers being captured; Amanda being freed; and Ren, who recognized him as a former boyfriend, trying to nurse Jimmy’s wounds. Because of her Gardner background, Toby was unable to kill the Painballers since it was a peaceful holiday that night, so she and Ren tied them to a tree. Then, the Crakers showed up, the group of “strange gene-spliced quasi-humans” (11) created by Crake as a replacement for the human race. The Crakers are preternaturally beautiful and do not wear clothes. They mate on a cycle indicated by when Craker women turn blue, which the men can smell. However, to the Crakers, human women always smell blue. The men overwhelm Ren and Amanda to mate. The women Crakers purr on Jimmy, who is hallucinating about Oryx, whom he loved. In the melee, the Painballers convinced the Crakers the rope was hurting them, so the Crakers untied the Painballers and they escaped.

The Painballers had grabbed their spraygun but not Toby’s rifle. Amanda and Ren sob. They are in danger from the at-large Painballers as well as the forest full of genetically manufactured carnivores, especially the pigoons: enormous pigs with human stem cells spliced into their DNA to grow human transplant organs including brain tissue, which makes them dangerously intelligent. The peaceful Crakers would be useless in a fight, so they need to get the entire party back to the MaddAddam cobb-house, a little shelter in a park where the group has made a home camp. The Crakers worry about Jimmy, whom they call Snowman, but when Toby accidentally calls him Jimmy the Crakers are confused and begin calling him Snowman-the-Jimmy. Toby insists that Jimmy must come with her to the cobb-house so he can get medicine, but the Crakers want to take him back to his tree on the beach. Toby explains what medicine is, so the Crakers agree Jimmy should have it and want to come back with Toby as well. The Crakers carry Jimmy on the long trek back. Amanda, who was always tough—a “pleebrat” (16)—puts on a brave face.

At the cobb-house, Crozier, Tamaraw, and Manatee greet them. Ren hugs Crozier, and he kisses her. Manatee recognizes the Crakers, having been one of the MaddAddamites forced to help create them along with Swift Fox and Ivory Bill. Toby wants to know if Zeb has returned from searching for Adam, but she is wary of letting on that she is in love with him. The only thing that happened while they were gone were some pigoons digging in their garden, but they were chased off with lights and the knowledge that the MaddAddams have spray guns. Swift Fox, young and pretty, comes from the cobb-house wearing a nightie, hoping the Crakers won’t stay and eat their food. Manatee reminds her that the Crakers eat leaves—a feature Manatee designed. Swift Fox, who worked on their brains, calls them “walking potatoes” (19) because, per Crake’s design, they have no aggression or sense of humor. Swift Fox goes back to bed, and Toby stops the Crakers from following her to mate. Jimmy needs a bed, and Ren volunteers Crozier’s, although Crozier is jealous of Jimmy, who broke Ren’s heart as a teen. Toby allows only a few Crakers to follow when she tends to Jimmy with herbal medicine, putting maggots on the wound. Ren worries as Jimmy hallucinates.

When Toby wakes, an escaped red Mo’Hair, a sheep bred with long, lustrous hair to be harvested and implanted in human scalps, is licking her legs. The cobb-house, once rented for parties and used by the God’s Gardeners to sell their handmade items, is a safe space because it is away from collapsing buildings and electrical fires in the cities, but it was never meant to be occupied full time. Toby, embarrassed about the Painballers’ escape, worries about Zeb, who had left to look for the God’s Gardeners when she left to rescue Amanda. She hopes he finds Adam, the once-leader of the Gardeners. Gardeners had prepared and trained for the “Waterless Flood” (26), an inevitable apocalyptic event, so he may have survived, but Adam is a needle in the haystack of ruined cities. Toby blames herself for the Painballers being on the loose and being another threat for Zeb, and she imagines worst-case scenarios. Painfully, Toby remembers that her friendship with Zeb is solid, but there has never been anything romantic between them. She shakes off the nihilistic thinking and gets on with the necessary tasks of the day.

Toby puts on a bedsheet, the popular clothing choice, wishing for a mirror, and goes to eat breakfast before tending to Jimmy. Toby spots Ren and Lotis Blue talking as Amanda silently stares in what the Gardeners would have called a “fallow state” (30), which could apply to any number of psychological disturbances but was imagined to be a state of quiet meditation and healing. Toby hopes Amanda, so dynamic and confident as a Gardener child, is finding healing in this state. Some of the men are strengthening the garden fence, realizing that the pigoon they chased away was only a distraction from other pigoons digging under the fence on the opposite side. The Craker men and Crozier pee in a line together to make a perimeter because their urine wards off predators. At breakfast, Rebecca, another former Gardener and the cook, congratulates Toby for rescuing Amanda and returning alive. Though Gardeners took a vow to be vegetarian, the needs for survival have taken over and everyone seems unbothered by pigoon bacon and wolvog ribs. Toby thinks about the apocalyptic atmosphere and how survival will continue to get harder, and Rebecca reminisces about losing civilized amenities. Rebecca hopes the Crakers, whom she finds unsettling, don’t stay, insisting, “They’re definitely not like us. […] No way close. That little pisher Crake. Talk about fouling up the sandbox” (35).

Jimmy is now outside, moved to a hammock by the Crakers, wearing his Red Sox cap, broken sunglasses, and broken watch. Two women purr on him. Greeting Toby by name, they explain that Jimmy needs to wear his things to hear Crake, and they moved him because Jimmy hated being inside. They assert that he’s on a long journey from the Egg (Crake’s Paradice dome lab). Oryx and Crake descended from the sky to give him more stories, and now he’s traveling back. It’s a rough trip, but he’ll wake up when he returns. Skeptical and thinking they are describing dreams, Toby checks Jimmy’s foot. The maggots are doing their job, but she’ll need new ones soon. The women state that Toby will tell them stories until Snowman-the-Jimmy comes back. Toby protests that she doesn’t know their stories, but they insist that she is Snowman’s helper, so she will eat the fish, wear the hat, listen to the watch, “and then the words of Crake will come out of [her] mouth” (38). She’ll tell of their creation in the Egg and how Crake “cleared away the chaos of bad men” (38) so Snowman-the-Jimmy could lead them to the beach. Afraid that disappointing them will make them return to the beach, unprotected from the Painballers, Toby reluctantly agrees, hoping they’ll cook the fish.

The Painballers have everyone on edge, but there are no attacks though Zeb still hasn’t returned, and Jimmy is still unconscious. Crozier and Zunzuncito tend the Mo’Hairs armed with sprayguns, but Toby worries about the Painballers’ surprise tactics. The Mo’Hairs are restless. Crozier shows the Crakers the water pump, which thrills them, but lightbulbs and the singular solar panel are too perplexing. At dinner, Ren and Lotis Blue urge Amanda to eat. The MaddAddamites go by their codenames, chosen from the list of extinct animals. Staring at Ivory Bill’s nose, Toby (codename Inaccessible Rail) notices that “the MaddAddamites chose codenames that mirrored parts of themselves” (42). They have little love for Jimmy, who they see as “Crake’s jackal” (42). Manatee doubts Jimmy knew much, but Jimmy was the only willing employee in comparison to the others being Crake’s “captive science brainiacs” (43). Crake was brilliant but arrogant, believing he could create a perfect human. They discuss some of the useful qualities Crake installed in the Crakers, such as natural insect repellent, the blue-signaled mating system (borrowed from baboons), and the carnivore-deterring urine.

However, they complain about the Crakers’ strange, unsettling singing, which couldn’t be removed without making them listless and vegetative. Toby interrupts, asking what story she is supposed to tell the Crakers about Crake now that she is expected to take Jimmy’s place. Crozier explains that Crake is like a god to them, but they don’t know what he looks like. This surprises Ivory Bill since Crozier isn’t one of the scientists, but Crozier asserts that the Crakers told him because they’ve become friends and even extended the honor of peeing with them to him. Manatee suggests a vague, cheerful story. In the dome, Crake’s girlfriend Oryx told stories to calm them. At dusk, gathered around Jimmy so he can listen, Toby goes through the ritual of eating the fish, wearing the cap, and listening to the watch. After their creation story, they insist that Toby tell them about the bad men and the smelly bone soup. The part where they untied the bad men upsets them, but they want Toby to tell it repeatedly. Suddenly, they smell men approaching, but not the bad men: Zeb and the others are back. Toby is overwhelmed with relief, and one of the Crakers notices she’s crying.

Everyone gathers happily, though the Crakers watch from afar. Ren hugs Zeb, her former semi-stepfather, and Zeb praises Toby for saving Amanda. They didn’t find Adam, but they found Philo, an old Gardener who loved smoking weed, dead. He died recently, so there could be more surviving Gardeners. The Crakers are curious about Zeb because Crozier told them Zeb once ate a bear. When Zeb and Toby can speak privately, he tells her that Philo’s throat was slit. They had seen the Painballers, exchanged fire, and rushed back to camp. Toby admits she let them escape, and, to her embarrassment, she starts to cry, but Zeb suddenly wraps his arms around her, and they finally come together with love and intimacy.