73 pages 2 hours read

Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Symbols & Motifs

The Red Sox Hat

In Oryx and Crake, the naked Crakers were endlessly curious about Jimmy/Snowman’s clothing, and his nostalgic replica Red Sox hat was hard to explain. They wouldn’t understand baseball, or even sports, and certainly not the idea of teams. Jimmy often found himself trying to explain the words that slipped out of his mouth or the trash the Craker children found along the beach because those words belonged to a frame of reference that was fully embedded in a culture that was gone. For instance, how to explain “toast” to someone who doesn’t know about bread, flour, wheat, or cooking? Along with his watch and one-eyed sunglasses, he claimed that he needed them to listen to Crake. As Toby and the other MaddAddamites would discover, the most efficient way to satisfy their questions is to say that it’s of Crake, but since Crake is their creator, which is true, the idea that he is living and can listen to Jimmy without being there makes him supernatural. Thus, he and Oryx become deified. This makes the hat an irreplaceable religious relic, an artifact that allows the wearer to speak to Crake, who none of them have ever seen.