COVID-19 Infodemic: A New Historicist Analysis of Atwood’s Oryx and Crake

This research intends to explore the current calamitous situation of Covid-19 in the context of Oryx and Crake, mirroring how Covid-19 and Oryx and Crake are linked through the perception of unification and the consciousness of the world as a whole by holding the entire world hostage. It vigorously examines the disease being presented as a weapon of mass destruction, followed by a conspiracy theory, the reality of the present and fancy of the future, generating a feeling of mingled contradiction, a psychological aspect, and stout human response to the unpredicted as some shared themes between the two. The potential strength of the New Historicism was found applicable in contextualizing COVID-19 and Oryx and Crake, which explore and project forward the biotechnological, social, political, cultural, economic, and climatic givens of the pandemic ridden world. It involves a parallel study of a literary work, interpreting events as the products of time. The textual interpretation was based on observation of historical context to see how following pandemics of the past may allow today’s world to detect the fundamental causes of such diseases. Understanding the pandemic through intellectual history highlighted the consequences of unscrupulous exploitation of bio-engineering threats, a sense of uncertainty, fear, and insecurity, biotech corporations, and marketing genetically engineered life forms.