“Born to Be Sold”: Child Commodification, Sexual Exploitation, and Systemic Impunity in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and the Jeffrey Epstein Network

Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003) is frequently interpreted as a dystopian critique of biotechnology and corporate capitalism, yet its most politically significant figure — Oryx, a woman whose childhood begins with her sale into sexual exploitation — has received limited critical attention. This article argues that Oryx’s narrative trajectory, from her commodification as a child to her death within the novel’s dystopian power structures, constitutes an anatomy of conditions that render child trafficking systemic. Drawing on feminist literary criticism, postcolonial theory, trauma studies, and Marxist theories of commodification, the study offers a close reading of Oryx’s exploitation within global economic hierarchies. The analysis places this narrative in dialogue with evidence from the Jeffrey Epstein network, revealing mechanisms: targeting vulnerable children, commodifying the human body, conditioning victims into silence, and protecting perpetrators. The article argues that Atwood’s dystopian fiction illuminates patterns of exploitation that legal and political systems have failed to confront.