Oryx and Crake: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Nooners. Noon is the worst time of day for Snowman, because the sun and heat are so intense. He must retreat away from the glare of the ocean back into the forest. Snowman remembers the knife he’d had when he’d first arrived here and set up camp, and wishes he hadn’t lost it. This makes him think of his ninth birthday, when his dad had given him a pocketknife. Snowman recalls, years later, telling Oryx about the knife, and Oryx telling him, “you need to give money when someone gives you a knife, so the bad luck won’t cut you.” Jimmy wonders who told Oryx this, and the thought of her with other men makes him jealous and angry. Her voice and touch soothes him, however—it is hard for Jimmy to concentrate on his hate when he is with Oryx.

We are told how Snowman learned to adapt to his environment: first he’d built a lean-to on the ground, but feral rakunks, pigoons, and, most dangerous of all, wolvogs had sent him up into the tree where it was safer. In the tree his biggest nuisance is mosquitos and biting ants.

Snowman rests on an old bedframe he’d found early on, trying to cool off. The word “Mesozoic” comes into his mind, out of nowhere. He can’t place it, and worries that his grasp of language is diminishing. He comforts himself by acknowledging that the heat is probably getting to him, and wishes dreamily that he could cool down by hanging his tongue out of his mouth.

The voice of an old schoolteacher, Ms. Sally Stratton, is in Snowman’s head. She is asking him first to play a game with her, and then her remarks become sexual. Jimmy fails to get aroused, and Ms. Stratton’s voice fades.

Snowman lets his mind wander back to his and Crake’s afterschool distractions. He remembers computer games they would play: Extinctathon, Three-Dimensional Waco, Barbarian Stomp, and Kwiktime Osama. He and Crake would also play chess on the computer, and Snowman wonders briefly if he could whittle a chessboard. He thinks maybe a diary could help him cope, but he knows his writing would have no audience; the Crakers (the beings he had earlier called children) cannot read.

Snowman watches a caterpillar drop down on a silky thread in front of his face—it inspires a sudden and unusual happiness in him, which Snowman suspects is evidence of a vitamin deficiency. He hears the caterpillar begin to speak in the voice of his former “Life Skills” teacher. Life Skills class informed students how to handle banking, contractual negotiation, finding a partner who is a good genetic match, and how to avoid sexually transmitted bioforms.

Snowman realizes he should be spending his time not looking for distraction but looking for food and water. He wishes he’d spent more time studying. A voice in his ear calls him “honey” and tells him he shouldn’t beat himself up. He cannot cool down at the nearby stream and watering hole, because the Crakers play in it, and they make him feel grotesque and ask him too many questions. And when the Crakers are not at the watering hole, predators can be found there. Snowman settles for imagining the pool, and Oryx floating in it, though the image makes him feel uneasy.

Downpour. Every afternoon there is a massive thunderstorm. Today the storm is strong, but there is no hail so Snowman doesn’t need to find cover. As the storm winds down he takes some empty beer bottles to the ruined remains of an old bridge and collects runoff water in the beer bottles and attempts to clean himself off. He looks at the bottles and wonders if he can pretend they actually contain beer.

The thought of beer sends Snowman into a kind of tailspin of longing. He desperately thinks, “let me out!” but realizes he couldn’t possibly be more “out” than he is already. A child’s voice speaks in his head and insists, “I didn’t do it on purpose,” then weeps. Snowman feels it’s a bad performance and doesn’t believe the voice. The voice of another self-help book tells him he must stay focused on the task at hand.