In the childhoods of many children around the world, there are certain events that shape how a child will socialize, create, and advance along the path of adulthood. In many cases, the intensity of the experience created by these events foreshadows the outcome of key events in their maturity. In the novel Oryx and Crake, written by Margaret Atwood, the three main characters all lead different lives as children, consuming many different types of material and experiencing episodes of varying intensity. This raises speculation about the intentions of Atwood's creation of the children's lives, as these three children become adults with many different intentions and lead lives that are heavily mirrored in their youth. Margaret Atwood, through the different childhoods of Jimmy, Crake and Oryx, foreshadows the catastrophic events that occur in their adult lives. Jimmy, later in the novel “Snowman,” experiences perhaps the most detailed and intense childhood of the three characters. It is his childhood that also most prefigures his adult life. Jimmy grew up as the only child of his parents, whose relationship was bearable at best. Jimmy's relationship with his parents was characterized by skepticism and disappointment, and he only occasionally desired their presence. His father, a genographer for OrganInc, the company that owned the complex where they lived, was absent in his affection towards Jimmy throughout their relationship, leaving a negative mark on Jimmy himself. The image of the father figure, which Jimmy's father tried so desperately to embody, was transparent to Jimmy and led him to increase the distance between himself and his father. Jimmy's mother, originally a biochemist at OrganInc along with Jimmy's father, possessed mood swings and a near-constant pessimism towards the rest of her family, thus creating a great distance between