Surfacing: Margaret Atwood

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He works for the Detroit branch of the Wildlife Protection Association of America. He wants to buy the land and build a retreat on it. Evans The novel could be classified as a psychological thriller, and as such it does not appeal to me. It is intended that the reader be confused. Repeatedly pronouns are used in an ambiguous fashion; often whom they refer to is not clear. The reader is to be kept guessing. We are to be tantalized by the mystery. We are meant to be left in the dark but egged on to search for understanding. I prefer writing that is clear. I don’t like guessing games. The garden has been rearranged since she was last there and the crop is paltry. Anna comes out looking for the toilet. She asks if the narrator is okay and she says sure, surprised by the question. Anna says she is sorry they did not find her father, her eyes big as if it is “her grief, her catastrophe” (33). Atwood's previous novel, The Edible Woman, dealt with a young woman who is so terrified of marriage that it causes her to lose her touch with reality and fall deeper and deeper into mental illness. It was a good novel but its biggest weakness was its plot. In Surfacing, Atwood treads much of the same ground but completely jettisons any semblance of a plot and thus presents us with a far more intriguing and mature work. Joe asks if there is any news of her father and she says no in a calm, level tone. Maybe that is what he likes about her—her cool demeanor. She cannot remember much about their first meeting except it was in a corner store and then they went and had coffee. He told her later he liked how she took off and put on her clothes like she had no emotion, but she secretly thought to herself that she really didn’t have any.

The last time I read this 1972 beauty was approximately half my lifetime ago. It was a vital part of a never-waning appreciation and adoration for Margaret Atwood's work. I'm pretty sure I didn't quite get it then, being a very young adult, unaware of many things going on in this far-out, complex ride into the Canadian wilderness. Separation is a major theme of Surfacing. This is established in the first chapter, when the narrator is shown to be politically dispossessed as an English-speaker in Quebec, at a time in which Quebec was aspiring to become an independent French-speaking nation. [3] The narrator also feels disconnected from the people around her, equating human interaction with that of animals. For example, while overhearing David and Anna have sex, the narrator thinks "of an animal at the moment the trap closes". [4] The story’s themes encompass not only the psychological consequences of separation but also Canadian nationalism, feminism and environmental concerns. In my view, the additional themes are simply touched upon. They are mere side commentaries to what is supposed to be an exciting mystery. I do not even think the central mystery of the missing father is adequately probed.This book is way too I-hate-God and Single-Cell-Organisms-Rule for me. I love Nature, but I can't even begin to tell you how much I DON'T want to return to my primitive state of a pile of mud. The quiet, shy, well-meaning boyfriend of the narrator. Joe is an unsuccessful artist who makes ugly pottery and teaches pottery classes. Joe remains too simple-minded to understand the narrator’s complexities. He insists on marrying the narrator, which she resists. Joe is a good man, but he is also potentially violent. Stumble along the hall, from flower to flower, her criminal hand on my elbow, other arm against the wall. Ring on my finger. It was all real enough, it was enough reality for ever, I couldn't accept it, that mutilation, ruin I'd made, I needed a different version. I pieced it together the best way I could, flattening it, scrapbook, collage, pasting over the wrong parts. A faked album, the memories fraudulent as passports; but a paper house was better than none and I could almost live in it, I'd lived in it until now.

A remote island in the Canadian wilderness, a missing family member, an abusive marriage, and an unstable narrator— Surfacing (1972) has all the makings of a horror novel, but the intensity of Margaret Atwood's (1939-present) novel is psychological, not physical. Atwood's second novel, Surfacing follows a group of characters who venture into an island near Quebec to find the narrator's missing father. Instead of uncovering the missing man, the narrator uncovers parts of herself that have long since been repressed. Surfacing examines themes such as the domination and alienation of women and the reclamation of identity. Keep reading for a summary, an analysis, and more. Surfacing Summary The narrator's greatest conflict comes from feeling alienated from her patriarchal society, which emphasizes the role of men over that of women. She even feels isolated from her boyfriend, who she can't decide if she loves or trusts, and her friends, who she realizes she knows nothing about. The narrator almost feels like she's an outsider looking into a world she doesn't understand or want to be a part of. The more time she spends with her friends, the more she realizes marriage—and life inside the patriarchy in general—terrifies her.Anna is a friend of the narrator and the only other female in their party. She is married to David and at first appears to have a great marriage. However, as the story progresses, it is revealed that their marriage is far from what the narrator had imagined. and then (with the always satisfying visceral, gritty Atwood detail; also, read it aloud and hear the SOUND of the words--another element of the poetry): The narrator is glad the others are with her because if she were alone the vacancy and the loneliness would overtake her. David starts to talk about the dead animals this country was built on and Anna chastises him for lecturing and tells him they aren’t his students. She strokes his face lovingly and the narrator wonders what their secret is. They have been married nine years and the narrator remembers how when she got married her husband changed and started expecting things from her. And in case this sounds idyllic to any of you compost-your-own-waste types, it's not. It's agony. As far as this reader can tell, Mom was a distant/aloof type and Dad was occasionally cool but waaay out there in his thinking. Neither parent supported the natural social growth or adolescent curiosity of their offspring, and when the kids went to school in the city during the winters, they suffered as the subjects of a cruel scrutiny and social disdain.

Unnamed Protagonist is a woodsy gal, not necessarily by choice, but by a plan of her father's making. She and her brother were raised by their bizarre parents on a remote island surrounded by a remote village somewhere in a remote and very Catholic corner of Quebec.In The Evil Dead these kids go and stay in a remote cabin out in the woods and they release evil spirits that want to kill them etc. In Cabin Fever these kids go and stay in a remote cabin out in the woods and catch a flesh eating disease and die and go mad, etc. In The Cabin in the Woods these kids go and stay in a remote cabin way out in the woods where a zombie army tries to kills them etc. Now these are movies but in Surfacing, which is a book, these kids go and stay in a remote cabin out in the woods but the big difference is there are no zombies and flesh eating bugs and evil spirits at all all though are they. It is a profound question. That story appealed to me for so many reasons: I was on very familiar territory with her setting and her nameless main character's deep need to escape it. I was amused by the way her city friends find the small, run down village to be cute and authentic when the people living in it would have rather been anywhere than there. But city people and country-side people always treat the other like zoo animals... I underlined many interesting reflections on social awkwardness, and the struggle of the introverts and how little the behavioral expectations of women and children have changed in the last forty years. Ms. Atwood doesn't miss much, does she? The second Atwood book I have read, and it was just as absorbing and as striking as the first, The Handmaid's Tale. Having finished The Vegetarian just before I started on this, reading this felt like a companion book to The Vegetarian. Both books have female protagonists that develop an aversion for animal flesh and human beings and later themselves and retreat into themselves but with varying repercussions. The others are surprised by the remoteness of this place but it is not weird to the narrator. She looks around for something like a note or a will but there is nothing; it does not seem like a house that has been lived in. She lights a fire and grabs a knife to go to the garden.

In this novel there is more explicit anti-Americanism than in Catseye, and it is of a different kind to that in her later novels which are generally unlove letters to the USA in one way or another. The narrator remains unnamed throughout the novel, emphasizing how she functions as a symbol of the feminine struggle to develop a personal identity within the patriarchy. She spends much of the novel searching for her missing father, oscillating between hope that he is alive, grief that he is dead, and fear that he has gone mad. The narrator also struggles to navigate her unloving relationship with her boyfriend and her fear that she is emotionless. She exemplifies an unreliable narrator, as her understanding of reality constantly twists, transforms, and contradicts itself. At the novel's end, the narrator sinks into madness, throwing off her complicated human identity and embracing that of an animal. Two Canadian campers whom the narrator initially mistakes for American tourists. They are avid fishers, and they befriend David. They are also responsible for killing and hanging a heron, and for their senseless violence the narrator believes them to be Americans. Claude David does not show much respect toward women. He is condescending to both his wife and the narrator and tends to only ever give consideration to his own wants and needs. He has openly been unfaithful to his wife, and continually makes sexual innuendos toward the narrator in front of his wife. He is extremely bullying and controlling toward his wife, often making negative comments about her weight and her intelligence. Although he sees himself as the obvious leader of the group, the narrator does not actually hold him in any high regard—though, ironically, she does see him as the closest in personality to herself. Joe

With the news of her father’s death, the narrator and her friends decide to go home. Instead of going with them, the narrator abandons them. She takes David’s film and destroys it and leaves by boat. Now she is alone on the island and she begins to become more unhinged as she destroys her own artwork, the furnishings of the cabin, and envisions her dead parents. She abandons her clothes, begins eating plants, and lives in a burrow. Paul’s wooden barometer, which features a wooden man and woman inside, becomes an unfortunately accurate emblem of marriage for the narrator. The narrator’s shifting assessment of the barometer traces her shifting attitudes toward marriage. Initially, the narrator views the barometer couple as representative of a simplistic and even empty marriage, and she compares them to Paul and Madame. She mentions how Paul and Madame even look wooden. The narrator later compares the barometer couple to Anna and David in that the wooden couple, like Anna and David’s happiness, is not real. The narrator also thinks of the barometer in relation to her parents. She compares the image of the barometer with the image of her mother and father sawing a piece of birch. The image of the birch is evocative because the narrator associates birches with unspoiled nature. The implication is that the barometer represents an unattainable, unrealistic version of love, whereas her parents possess true love. The Hanged Heron This is my third Atwood book after The Handmaid's Tale (which I studied in college) and The Blind Assassin (which I read of my own accord at University). Atwood has always interested me as a writer but never particularly enchanted me. Here was the first time I was genuinely stunned by her control of language; the prose in Surfacing is wonderful, a true pleasure to read from start to finish.