More handpicked essays just for you.
The writing style of Margaret Atwood
Critically analyse Margaret Atwood as a novelist
Critically analyse Margaret Atwood as a novelist
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The Canadian award-winning writer, Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born on November 18, 1939 in Ottawa, Canada. Ottawa is the national capital of Canada and the fourth largest city. English and French are the two main languages spoken there. The weather there has a semi-continental climate with hot summers and cold winters like most places in Canada. Although it gets really humid in the winter which explains why its so hot. The saying you hear a lot there in the summer is, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity". She is the second of three children of Margaret Dorothy and Carl Edmund Atwood. Around eleven years old she spent half of each year in the northern Ontario area with her father. He was an entomologist and did his work there. Even at the age of six she started writing many pieces. Like morality plays, poems, comic books, and had started a novel. Margaret Atwood was sixteen years old when she decided that she wanted to make writing as a lifetime career. She is internationally known as a poet and writer. She is a literary critic, journalist, author, and poet. Although she is best known as a novelist. Her work has been translate into thirty different foreign languages. Margaret Atwood had received her bachelor’s degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto in 1961. Then took the step to get her master’s degree at Radcliffe College in 1962. She became a lecturer in English literature. (http://www.notablebiographies.com/An-Ba/Atwood-Margaret.html) (http://canadaonline.about.com/od/ontario/a/ottawa.htm)
Margaret had many career achievements and awards. She became a lecturer in English literature and created a collection of poems entitled The Circle Game in 1966. It won the Governor-General’s Award. Since that time sh...
... middle of paper ...
...e. She explores her very own identity through her own writing. Throughout her work she tries to encourage her readers to have a more positive view within themselves. The image within themselves shows the cultures like Native American or French-Canadian instead of the common British or American cultures in which she wants the readers to know about. Her Canadian heritage is a perfect example that she writes about in her novels. In everything she writes you can always get a glimpse and pits and pieces of her identity and personality within her writing.
Works Cited
(http://salempress.com/store/samples/survey_american_lit/survey_american_lit_atwood.htm)
(http://www.biography.com/people/margaret-atwood-9191928#career-highlights&awesm=~oCp2V7emNGuSMV)
(http://www.notablebiographies.com/An-Ba/Atwood-Margaret.html)
(http://canadaonline.about.com/od/ontario/a/ottawa.htm)
“Take Charge” is a scientific short story by Margaret Atwood. This story underlies a dark and problematic past and future of our times. In each part of the story readers encounter a problem with a given situation. During the first part of the story which seemed to be set around mid-1800, the problem encountered could be fixed, but the helpers would not cooperate. They made up excuses like “I can’t swim” or “My leg’s been shot off” but the captain kept on encouraging them to try and do their best. The audience can clearly understand that Margret Atwood was exploring the possible consequences as technology improved and progressed. She expressed her attitude though the choices she made with the setting of the story. As the time went on the story
The play The Rez Sisters is written by one of Canada's most celebrated playwrights, Tomson Highway. Highway was born in 1951 in northwestern Manitoba. He went on to study at the University of Manitoba and graduated from the University of Western Ontario, with honors in Music and English. Native Literature is inspired by 'contemporary social problems facing native Canadians today; alcohol and drug abuse, suicide, wife battering, family violence, the racism of the justice system, loneliness, rejection, youth awareness, as well as modern-day environmental issues.';(P. 172 Native Literature in Canada.) Highway once said, 'We grew up with myths. They're the core of our identity as people.';(P. 172 Native Literature in Canada.) I am going to focus on the image and identity of Native people as seen through the play The Rez Sisters.
She was a writer who suffered from Lupus. Her father died of the same illness when she was thirteen. Her Catholic beliefs reflected in her work, as well as the implementation of violence and darkness ironically used in her short stories. The titles in the stories give the readers an idea that the stories are the opposite of what the titles really state. She uses metaphors and similes to describe the characters and the settings of the stories. Each story relates to the darkness of the characters: people with racial prejudice, ignorance, and evil. Each story ends in a tragedy. The use of irony allows her to transport a meaning to each story that is not easy for readers to understand.
What do the works, “As Canadian as Possible under the Circumstances” and “I’m not the Indian you had in mind” have in common? The dissection of these writing pieces revealed that they do in fact have multiple similarities. Those ideas are the use of identity, stereotypes as well as double meanings.
Born and raised in a family of storytellers, it’s no wonder that this author, Louise Erdrich became a prolific writer. Louise was born in Little Falls, Minnesota. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, near the Chippewa Reservation with her mom, who had Native American roots and her dad who was of German descent. Her parents encouraged and challenged her at an early age to read, also to write stories and even paid her a nickel for each one that she wrote. Lorena Stookey states that Louise Erdrich’s style of writing is “like William Faulkner, she creates a fictional world and peoples it with multiple narrators whose voices commingle to shape her readers’ experience of that world” (Stookey 14). Louise writes this moving story “The Shawl” as she is haunted by the sorrows of the generations of her people, the Anishinaabeg. I initially saw this tale as a very complex reading, but after careful reading and consideration, saw it as a sad and compelling story.
...in her essay “No Name Woman”. The Chinese tradition of story telling is kept by Kingston in her books. Becoming Americanized allowed these women the freedom to show their rebellious side and make their own choices. Rebelling against the ideals of their culture but at the same time preserving some of the heritage they grew up with. Both woman overcame many obstacles and broke free of old cultural ways which allowed them an identity in a new culture. But most importantly they were able to find identity while preserving cultural heritage.
Canada is of the major influences of Grandfather Connor’s identity. When Vanessa was eleven years old she was interested in pioneers and how they had build the nation she calls home. She shows this interest through her book called “Pillars of a Nation” and found out her grandfather was considered a pioneer. Vanessa’s Grandfather Connor is the stereotypical Canadian during the 1930s. He was a hardworking man trying to make a living while helping build a town in the prairies during the depression. He was “the first blacksmith in Manawaka” and was also able to start up his own hardware store (7). In the short story “The Mask of the Bear” Vanessa describes her grandfather as his “bear fur coat”, like a quintessential Canadian. Rough and grizzly, no emotion or feelings, Grandfat...
Many people to this day still do not have a collective agreement on what is the Canadian identity? Depending whom you ask you may get a wide variety of answer spanning the spectrum of possibilities, more so now, than at any point of the history of our nation. This essay will investigate how Pierre Elliott Trudeau found himself as a Canadian, and will demonstrate how it is his surroundings in which he immersed himself that shaped who he became. It is only later in his life that he truly discovered himself as well as his identity. Through the use of John English's biography as our primary reference we will investigate the development in Trudeau's character as he becomes older and experiences turning points in his life.
Julia Alvarez was an example of how a Latina writer identified herself in a new culture outside of her comfort zone. She, as a Dominican Diaspora, had to reinvent herself as she migrated into a new scenario. Her assimilation into the United States culture allowed her to understand and relate to the reader’s needs and points of interests. After all the effort, Alvarez kept in mind that she could not comfort to all the reality that she lived in, so she re-reinvented herself all over again to process her thoughts and beliefs into her life. She put her perspective on her writing so that the new wave of readers, even if they did not understand, could relate in some way and appreciate the differences. The sole purpose of her writings was for everyone to change their perspective from “walk to the other side of the street in order to avoid sharing the same sidewalk” to “I do not know them, but I do not avoid them because I do not know them”. She instilled in her reader’s mind how ordinary events were viewed differently through other cultures’ eyes. Her story Snow was a great example of how she portrayed her technique.
Sunday, July 18th 1926, at 7:30pm at the Neepawa General Hospital, one of Canada's greatest authors, Margaret Laurence, was born to proud parents Robert and Verna Wemyss. Verna's father, John Simpson, was a self-made man. Born in 1853 in Middletown Ontario, John attended school, training to be a cabinetmaker. In the 1870's John, with only his change in his pocket, made his way towards Portage la Prairie Manitoba, in an attempt to unite with a cousin who sold clothing there. While working in the clothing store, John met his future wife, Jane Bailey. Four years after marrying Jane the Simpson family decided to move north, towards to the newly founded town of Neepawa.
... a border be it physical or psychological. Examining both novels as well as doing secondary research into the Canadian border, will also help in understanding Canadian identity. A deep analysis of the two novels will also overcome the constellations of the symbolic imagery that is narration which will dramatize semantics of belonging, loss, and absence that is within the definite of the historically bound and personal context of Canadian experience.
Her book makes me do a lot of personal reflecting on how I can help reshape my family to celebrate their Métis identity. Fiola makes me realize once inner security and self-confidence is claimed that racism can be addressed in constructive ways, to get to the root of our problems. Realizing that I am internally racist to my own culture was very hard but the book helped provide me with evidence that other people can reclaim their identity and be proud. The Indigenous people she interviewed helped me realize that I can do reshape my identity and become a spiritual women. I found a lot of peace within her sharing these stories and expanding on how the Métis people lived and have gotten to where they are today. Fiola (2014) talks about Louis Riel in an inspiring light how he managed to “straddle two cultures, Native and white, and came as close as anyone to envisioning a sympathetic an equitable relationship between the two. That Canadians may someday achieve this vision that remains Louis Riel’s legacy”. Louis Riel is a dominant figure to many Métis people, including my self. Riel shows me that many people have made sacrifices to get me to where I am today as a Métis
Oates studied English at Syracuse University and earned her Bachelor degree in 1960 and the Master degree in the University of Wisconsin in 1961. Besides fiction, poetry, and short stories, Oates also wrote mysteries under Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. Her characterizes individual of American
Virginia Woolf, in her novels, set out to portray the self and the limits associated with it. She wanted the reader to understand time and how the characters could be caught within it. She felt that time could be transcended, even if it was momentarily, by one becoming involved with their work, art, a place, or someone else. She felt that her works provided a change from the typical egotistical work of males during her time, she makes it clear that women do not posses this trait. Woolf did not believe that women could influence as men through ego, yet she did feel [and portray] that certain men do hold the characteristics of women, such as respect for others and the ability to understand many experiences. Virginia Woolf made many of her time realize that traditional literature was no longer good enough and valid. She caused many women to become interested in writing, and can be seen as greatly influential in literary history
She visited Kentucky, saw the life of slavery, she is affected by strong anti slavery sentiment father school. This feeling into her novels tone. In 1850, with her husband moved to Maine, where the discussion of anti slavery made her very excited, so spare time to write the novel ...