The Doctrine of Unintended Consequences

In Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, events that happened before a worldwide catastrophe are narrated by Jimmy/Snowman, who was privy to the beginning of the plague that left no continent untouched. Interspersed through the daily post-apocalyptic activities that he encounters, Snowman reminisces about his lover, Oryx, and best friend, Crake, and recounts how the entire situation began, reverting to his original name, Jimmy, during these flashbacks. Though many factors contributed to the creation of the plague, idealism was a prominent element in Crake's motivation to bring an end to the current human species. 

As young teens, Jimmy and Crake played games involving extinction, annihilation, and balance--most notably a game called Blood and Roses, a game of strategy which featured players battling against one another using human achievements and atrocities as leverage. In order to stop atrocities (genocides, war, massacres), an achievement (art, literature, architecture) must be given up. For every atrocity committed in human history, there was an achievement that balanced the scale. This idealism on the part of Crake, that there was somehow perfection worth the cost of human life and devastation, attainable only through equilibrium of action, led to his creation of the Children of Crake. When Jimmy first viewed them at the Paradice Dome, he inquired about his inspiration for the new species, one which eliminated all of the traits in humans that Crake found undesirable or impractical (fear, desire, etc.): Crake replied that the Children "represent the art of the possible" (305). In Crake's world, there is always a price to pay, and the price for the perfection of the Children he created was the annihilation of the current species, devoid of any beneficial use after the introduction of his final work of art. Like the game of Blood and Roses, Crake rolled the dice and  decided that the atrocity of human extinction through plague was worth the price of his achievement. 

But what Crake did not count on was that, while he used the word "possible" in his description of the Children of Crake, he did not factor in--or perhaps deliberately chose to overlook--the possibility that humans, other than Jimmy, might actually survive the apocalypse. Crake's attention to detail and strict control over his experiment ended when he took his life in a murder-suicide involving Oryx: without his intervention the world became "one vast uncontrolled experiment…and the doctrine of unintended consequences [was] in full spate" (228). Crake essentially restarted the game of Blood and Roses when he relinquished his control of the outcome of his game.