Oryx and Crake

by

Margaret Atwood

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Oryx and Crake makes teaching easy.

Jimmy (Snowman) Character Analysis

Jimmy is the novel’s protagonist, who was the best friend of Crake and deeply in love with Oryx before they were both killed at the start of the plague. After they are dead and Jimmy is left in charge of the welfare of the Crakers, he opts to call himself Snowman, as a way of severing himself from the past. Jimmy is not a gifted scientist, but is talented with words (he thinks of himself as a “words person,” not a “numbers person”). He is also, in Crake’s opinion, a sex addict, and conducts affairs with numerous women throughout his youth. For all of his romantic engagements, Jimmy is a lonely character, whose parents are distant (his mother leaves when he is young and his father is uninterested in him). Crake is his only true friend, and Oryx his only true love. Jimmy is plagued by various addictions throughout his youth—he craves sex, cigarettes, and alcohol constantly. After the plague, Snowman is alone, and losing his mind. He hears voices from the past in his head, and is tormented by them. Nevertheless, he perseveres, and does his best to take care of the Crakers while keeping himself alive. He is a gifted survivalist, and a person of great interest to the Crakers. He also puts his love of words to good use: creating a kind of mythology for the Crakers, who revere him for his knowledge of their creator (Crake) and his memories of the time before they existed. Though he despises what Crake has done, he does care for the Crakers and worries diligently about their welfare.

Jimmy (Snowman) Quotes in Oryx and Crake

The Oryx and Crake quotes below are all either spoken by Jimmy (Snowman) or refer to Jimmy (Snowman). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Scientific Progress & Its Costs Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

It causes a jolt of terror to run through him, this absence of official time. Nobody nowhere knows what time it is.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

There are a lot of blank spaces in his stub of a brain, where memory used to be.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

“Leave Daddy alone,” said his mother. “Daddy is thinking. That’s what they pay him for. He doesn’t have time for you.

Related Characters: Sharon (speaker), Jimmy (Snowman), Jimmy’s father
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

He thought of pigoons as creatures much like himself. Neither he nor they had a lot of say in what was going on.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

From nowhere, a word appears: Mesozoic. He can see the word, he can hear the word, but he can’t reach the word…this is happening too much lately, this dissolution of meaning.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:

Strange to think of the endless labor, the digging, the hammering, the carving, the lifting, the drilling, day by day, year by year, century by century; and now the endless crumbling that must be going on everywhere. Sandcastles in the wind.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Homo Sapiens Sapiens was once so ingenious with language, and not only with language. Ingenious in every direction at once.”

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 99
Explanation and Analysis:

On some non-conscious level, Snowman must serve as a reminder to these people, and not a pleasant one: he’s what they may have been once.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman), The Crakers
Page Number: 106
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

How could I have missed it? Snowman thinks. What he was telling me? How could I have been so stupid?...
There had been something willed about it, though, his ignorance…he’d grown up in walled spaces, and then he’d become one. He had shut things out.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman), Crake
Related Symbols: Inside, Outside
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:

So a lot of what went on at Martha Graham was like studying book binding or Latin: pleasant to contemplate in its way, but no longer central to anything, though every once in a while the college president would subject them to some yawner about the vital arts and their irresistible reserved seat in the big red-velvet amphitheater of the beating human heart.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Related Symbols: Inside
Page Number: 187
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

The striped-pyjamas guy upstairs must have been a word person, then: a RejoovenEsense speechwriter, an ideological plumber, a spin doctor, a hairsplitter for hire. Poor bugger, thinks Snowman.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 233
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Maybe the guards tried to get out of RejoovenEsense just like everyone else. Maybe they, too, hoped they could outrun contagion.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman) (speaker)
Related Symbols: Inside, Outside
Page Number: 270
Explanation and Analysis:

From time to time he looks over his shoulder. The smoke is still there, just one column of it. It hasn’t spread. It keeps on rising.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 280
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

“People come here from all over the world—they shop around. Gender, sexual orientation, height, colour of skin and eyes—it’s all on order, it can all be done or redone.”

Related Characters: Crake (speaker), Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 289
Explanation and Analysis:

“If you take ‘mortality’ as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then ‘immortality’ is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal. Edit out the fear and you’ll be…”
“Sounds like Applied Rhetoric 101.”

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman) (speaker), Crake (speaker)
Page Number: 303
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Here are Crake and Oryx, what’s left of them. They’ve been vulturized, they’re scattered here and there, small and large bones mingled into disarray…He’s grinning with all the teeth in his head. As for Oryx, she’s face down, she’s turned her head away from him as if in mourning. The ribbon in her hair is as pink as ever.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman), Crake, Oryx
Page Number: 335
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“We made a picture of you, to help us send out our voices to you.”
Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we’re in trouble.

Related Characters: Crake (speaker), The Crakers (speaker), Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 361
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Oryx and Crake LitChart as a printable PDF.
Oryx and Crake PDF

Jimmy (Snowman) Quotes in Oryx and Crake

The Oryx and Crake quotes below are all either spoken by Jimmy (Snowman) or refer to Jimmy (Snowman). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Scientific Progress & Its Costs Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

It causes a jolt of terror to run through him, this absence of official time. Nobody nowhere knows what time it is.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

There are a lot of blank spaces in his stub of a brain, where memory used to be.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

“Leave Daddy alone,” said his mother. “Daddy is thinking. That’s what they pay him for. He doesn’t have time for you.

Related Characters: Sharon (speaker), Jimmy (Snowman), Jimmy’s father
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

He thought of pigoons as creatures much like himself. Neither he nor they had a lot of say in what was going on.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

From nowhere, a word appears: Mesozoic. He can see the word, he can hear the word, but he can’t reach the word…this is happening too much lately, this dissolution of meaning.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:

Strange to think of the endless labor, the digging, the hammering, the carving, the lifting, the drilling, day by day, year by year, century by century; and now the endless crumbling that must be going on everywhere. Sandcastles in the wind.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Homo Sapiens Sapiens was once so ingenious with language, and not only with language. Ingenious in every direction at once.”

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 99
Explanation and Analysis:

On some non-conscious level, Snowman must serve as a reminder to these people, and not a pleasant one: he’s what they may have been once.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman), The Crakers
Page Number: 106
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

How could I have missed it? Snowman thinks. What he was telling me? How could I have been so stupid?...
There had been something willed about it, though, his ignorance…he’d grown up in walled spaces, and then he’d become one. He had shut things out.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman), Crake
Related Symbols: Inside, Outside
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:

So a lot of what went on at Martha Graham was like studying book binding or Latin: pleasant to contemplate in its way, but no longer central to anything, though every once in a while the college president would subject them to some yawner about the vital arts and their irresistible reserved seat in the big red-velvet amphitheater of the beating human heart.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Related Symbols: Inside
Page Number: 187
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

The striped-pyjamas guy upstairs must have been a word person, then: a RejoovenEsense speechwriter, an ideological plumber, a spin doctor, a hairsplitter for hire. Poor bugger, thinks Snowman.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 233
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Maybe the guards tried to get out of RejoovenEsense just like everyone else. Maybe they, too, hoped they could outrun contagion.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman) (speaker)
Related Symbols: Inside, Outside
Page Number: 270
Explanation and Analysis:

From time to time he looks over his shoulder. The smoke is still there, just one column of it. It hasn’t spread. It keeps on rising.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 280
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

“People come here from all over the world—they shop around. Gender, sexual orientation, height, colour of skin and eyes—it’s all on order, it can all be done or redone.”

Related Characters: Crake (speaker), Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 289
Explanation and Analysis:

“If you take ‘mortality’ as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then ‘immortality’ is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal. Edit out the fear and you’ll be…”
“Sounds like Applied Rhetoric 101.”

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman) (speaker), Crake (speaker)
Page Number: 303
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Here are Crake and Oryx, what’s left of them. They’ve been vulturized, they’re scattered here and there, small and large bones mingled into disarray…He’s grinning with all the teeth in his head. As for Oryx, she’s face down, she’s turned her head away from him as if in mourning. The ribbon in her hair is as pink as ever.

Related Characters: Jimmy (Snowman), Crake, Oryx
Page Number: 335
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“We made a picture of you, to help us send out our voices to you.”
Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we’re in trouble.

Related Characters: Crake (speaker), The Crakers (speaker), Jimmy (Snowman)
Page Number: 361
Explanation and Analysis: