Margaret Atwood

Surfacing (1)

Outline

Margaret Atwood

Concerned with Canada’s cultural identity & Women’s lives and identities

Survival (1972) & Victim mentality

Themes of Duality: Self & Other, Men & Women, Victim & Victimizer, City and Nature

The Circle Game

(1966, poetry)

Survival (1972, non-fiction)

The Edible Woman (1969, novel)

Surfacing

(1973, novel)

Lady Oracle

(1977, novel)

Dancing Girls

(1977, short)

Life Before Man

(1979, novel)

Dancing Girls and Other Stories (1982, short stories) Bodily Harm

(1982, novel)

The Handmaid's Tale (1985, novel) Bluebeard's Egg (1987, short stories)

Selected Poems: 1965-1975 (1987, poetry)

Margaret Atwood (2)

42 books; more than 10 novels

Postmodern, self-reflexive mode

mixing poetry and fiction, mixing a lot of genres (Gothic, detective story, fairy tales, family romance, comedy, allegory, etc.)

Selected Poems II: 1976-1986

(1987, poetry... US)

Cat's Eye

(1989, novel)

Wilderness Tips

(1991, short stories)

The Robber Bride

(1993, novel)

Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994, short stories)

Alias Grace (1996, novel) A Quiet Game(1997, The Blind Assassins (2000)

Margaret Atwood (3)

Margaret Atwood: general intro. and her family life on an island

Her views

of her

characters

Margaret Atwood (4)

Her Language; “Around us is the illusion of infinite space or of

no space, ourselves and the obscure shore which it seems we could touch, the water between an absence. The canoe’s reflection floats with us, the paddles twin in the lake. It’s like moving on air, nothing beneath us holding us up; suspended, we drift home” (end of chap 7).

Surfacing: Plot summary & major issues Plot: The narrator, together with Anna, David and Joe,

goes back to the village in the mountains in Northern Quebec and then to the island where she lived as a child—in order to look for her missing father. She also has to confront her past and the relations she’s involved in.

The setting: a border country between the English and the French, between wild nature and human civilization.

Time: early 1970’s, when young people are rebellious and aware of radical feminism, which, however, does not change all at once the structure of patriarchal society.

Surfacing: Title and Plot The title: The protagonist dives into her past and then

surfaces. Part I: arrival—fish and canoeing swimming //remembers

her past and her brother’s drowning experience (which she remembers as an ‘unborn baby’ end of chap 3)

ending --". . . finally being in the air is more painful than being in the water and I bend and push myself reluctantly into the lake."

Part II: (remembered after the six days of events, conflicts and diving) –ends with the finding of her father’s corpse

Part III: leaves the other friends and stays behind.

Surfacing: main characters David and Joe, teachers of a community college –

David teaches communication and Joe, arts; Work on Random Samples together; Anna and David, a couple The narrator, an illustrator Minor characters: Paul and his wife (French),

Evans and Claude—connections to civilization The “Americans”

Surfacing: Main Issues (1) Nature

1. Existence in nature – ‘founded on dead bodies’; empty and expansive –’everything echoes here.”

2. No electricity at night, the use of outhouse, etc.

3. p. 41 “refrigerator” 4. the narrator’s views -- chap 6 (p. 48);

chap 9 (p. 76)

Surfacing: Main Issues (1) Nature

2. Human invasion –fishing, hunting, the use of moose as commodities, jokes on beaver,

Chap 1 -- "I can't believe I'm on this road again, twisting along past the lake where the white birches are dying, the disease is spreading up from the south, and I notice they now have sea-planes for hire"(p. 3).

Surfacing: Main Issues (2) “Home”

sense of alienation: 1) arriving at her hometown, which she calls: "my

home ground, foreign territory" (7); 2) resisting telling the story: the narrator refers to

her parents, herself, and her brother "as if they were somebody else's family"; also she has to "keep [her]self from telling that story" (10).

3) Alienated from her parents since her ‘marriage,’ not hearing a word from her father after her mother’s death.

Surfacing: Main Issues (3) “the past”

How does she look at her past?

Her remembering the past happens simultaneously with her return home:

1.chap 3 – p. 25 the parents;

2. Chap 4 – p. 30 the husband

3. Chap 5 – pp. 43-44;

4. Chap 8 -- p. 70

Surfacing: Main Issues (4) gender relations

How is Anna related to David? (chap 5 pp.41; 44; chap 8 p. 67)

How is the narrator related to Joe? Chap 5 pp. 38-39; chap 6 pp. 54;

Surfacing: Main Issues (5) patriarchal society:

A. childhood constraints and freedom – Freedom from the fears of the war; Chap 6 – Sunday School Chap 8 – What do you think about the

game on p. 69?

B. The narrator’s job:

Chap 6 --