Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
In "Surfacing," by Margaret Atwood, the unnamed protagonist acquires a radical perception of reality that is developed through an intense psychological journey on the island that served as her childhood home. Truth can be taken from the narrator's viewpoint, but the reader must explore the inner turmoil plaguing her in order to understand the basis of such beliefs. The narrator's perception of reality can be deemed reliable once all of these factors are understood; however, throughout the novel Atwood develops many unseen connections that are essential to such and understanding. Once the reader is able to understand the basis of the narrator's perception of reality, it is then possible to receive and accept Margaret Atwood's stance on the role of women and nature and, thus, discover the underlying meanings of the novel.
The narrator returns home to an unforgotten place that is gradually being taken over by the diseased culture of the "Americans." At this point in the novel the narrator feels as if she has allowed herself to fall under the control of man and hence has, too, like nature, been a victim of the "American" culture. Although it is not yet clearly evident, it can be inferred when she makes first light of the situation. The baby was "my husband's, he imposed it on me, all the time it was growing in me I felt like an incubator. He measured everything he would let me eat, he was feeding it on me, he wanted a replica of himself." With this in mind, it is quite understandable why the narrator feels contempt towards the "Americans." Perhaps, she relates her husband's masculinity and need to control her to the "Americans" need to disrupt and manipulate nature. Thus, it is hypothesized, that as t...
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...ain with nature. She is now pure.
The narrator's perception of reality is constantly developed throughout the novel. She returns to her childhood home in the same state as she was when she left, but she undergoes a complete transformation in which she discovers the true essence of her reality. Although she becomes psychotic and withdrawn, she eventually arrives at a logical and reliable perception of reality. Nature leads her to the ultimate state of purity and acts as a psychiatrist to pinpoint the torments of her soul. Margaret Atwood uses the narator's experiences during the week at the lake in order to stake the main argument of the book. By relating examples of senseless acts against nature with the defamation of women, Atwood helps the reader understand the problems that are embedded in society and the "American" culture.
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Surfacing
Our journey starts in the year 1853 with four Scandinavian indentured servants who are very much slaves at the cold and gloomy headquarters of the Russian-American fur-trading company in Sitka, Alaska. The story follows these characters on their tortuous journey to attempt to make it to the cost of Astoria, Oregon. Our list of characters consists of Melander, who is very much the brains of the operation as he plans the daring escape from the Russians. Next to join the team was Karlson, who was chosen by Melander because he is a skilled canoeman and knows how to survive in the unforgiving landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Third was Braaf, he was chosen because of his ability to steal and hide things, which made him a very valuable asset to the teams escape. Last to join our team is Wennberg who we know is a skilled blacksmith who happens to hear about their plan and forces himself into the equation.
In Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation” a woman, as the title implies, who experiences a revelation. Pigs are an important symbol in the protagonist’s, Ruby Turpin’s, revelation. Throughout Ruby’s journey to her revelation, pigs appear frequently in “Revelation” and are important to Ruby’s revelation at the end of the story. Pigs reflect several aspects of Ruby’s life, primarily her perceptions. Ultimately, pigs reflect Ruby’s true character throughout the entire story.
The main female characters of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Seraph on the Suwanee, move from oppression to liberation throughout the course of the novel. Their journey to find their own “niche” in life occurs via their relationships with men. For Janie, her relationships with dominant male figures stifle her identity as well as her ability to achieve self-actualization. For Arvay Meserve, her personal background and relationship with her authoritarian husband cause miscommunication and thus prevent her from personal growth and awareness. In both cases, a hurricane is the mechanism through which both women find their identities and place in life.
In looking back upon his experience in Auschwitz, Primo Levi wrote in 1988: ?It is naïve, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism (Nazism) sanctifies its victims. On the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself.? (Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 40). The victims of National Socialism in Levi?s book are clearly the Jewish Haftlings. Survival in Auschwitz, a book written by Levi after he was liberated from the camp, clearly makes a case that the majority of the Jews in the lager were stripped of their human dignity. The Jewish prisoners not only went through a physical hell, but they were psychologically driven under as well. Levi writes, ??the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts? We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death?? (Levi, 41). One would be hard pressed to find passages in Survival in Auschwitz that portray victims of the camp as being martyrs. The treatment of the Jews in the book explicitly spells out the dehumanization to which they were subjected. It is important to look at how the Jews were degraded in the camp, and then examine whether or not they came to embody National Socialism after this.
Flannery O'Conner has again provided her audience a carefully woven tale with fascinating and intricate characters. "The Displaced Person" introduces the reader to some interesting characters who experience major life changes in front of the reader's eyes. The reader ventures into the minds of two of the more complex characters in "The Displaced Person," Mrs. McIntyre and Mrs. Shortley, and discovers an unwillingness to adapt to change. Furthermore, the intricate details of their characters are revealed throughout the story. Through these details, the reader can see that both Mrs. McIntyre and Mrs. Shortley suffer from a lack of spiritual dimension that hinders them as they face some of life's harsher realities. Mrs. McIntyre struggles throughout the story, most notably during the tragic conclusion. Her lack of spiritual dimension is revealed slowly until we ultimately see how her life is devastated because of it. Mrs. Shortley, on the other hand, seems to have it all figured out spiritually -- or at least she believes that she does. It is only in the last few minutes of her life that she realizes all she has convinced herself of is wrong.
Allegra Goodman was born in Brooklyn New York in 1967, but she grew up in Honolulu, where her parents moved and taught at the University of Hawaii in 1969. She received a Ph.D. in English Literature from Stanford University. Ms. Goodman began writing short stories in high school, and the summer after she graduated in 1985. Now, she has published two short story collections and six novels. The Other Side of the Island, which was published in 2008, describes how the world was controlled by Earth Mother after eight years of the Flood, and what the Greenspoons, especially Honor, did while they were living in the Colonies on Island 365 in the Tranquil Sea. On one hand, Earth Mother and the Corporation were protecting and providing citizens with the new weather, the Enclosure; on the other hand, they were trying to control everybody from Unpredictable and defeat the Forecaster and his partisans. Ms. Goodman wrote the book while she suffered from the heat wave in Boston. She realized that everywhere around her things are attached air conditioners: her house, her car, and shops. People didn’t live in the real world anymore; she even wished there were air conditioned streets as well. Therefore, she started with that concept: “All this happened many years ago, before the streets were air conditioned. Children played outside, and in many places, the sky was still naturally blue.”
The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas is a short story written by Ursula Le Guin. In her story, Le Guin creates a model Utilitarian society in which the majority of its citizens are devoid of suffering; allowing them to become an expressive, artistic population. Le Guin’s unrelenting pursuit of making the reader imagine a rich, happy and festival abundant society mushrooms and ultimately climaxes with the introduction of the outlet for all of Omelas’ avoided misfortune. Le Guin then introduces a coming of age ritual in which innocent adolescents of the city are made aware of the byproduct of their happiness. She advances with a scenario where most of these adolescents are extremely burdened at first but later devise a rationalization for the “wretched one’s” situation. Le Guin has imagined a possible contemporary Utilitarian society with the goal to maximize the welfare of the greatest number of people. On the contrary, Kant would argue that using the child as a mere means is wrong and argue that the living conditions of the child are not universalizable. The citizens of Omelas must face this moral dilemma for all of their lives or instead choose to silently escape the city altogether.
Margaret Atwood’s “Happy Endings” is an Author’s telling of societal beliefs that encompass the stereotypical gender roles and the pursuit of love in the middle class with dreams of romance and marriage. Atwood writes about the predictable ways in which many life stories are concluded for the middle class; talking about the typical everyday existence of the average, ordinary person and how they live their lives. Atwood provides the framework for several possibilities regarding her characters’ lives and how each character eventually completes their life with their respective “happy ending”.
Margaret Atwood’s novel, Alias Grace, nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel, depicts a young 16 year old girl who is found guilty of murdering her employer and his lover in conspiracy with James McDerrmott. James McDermott is put to death by hanging, but Grace is brought to prison because she is of the “weaker sex.” This is a reflection of the construction of femininity and masculinity of the mid and late nineteenth century. A social issue of the Victorian age was women being treated as subordinate to men. Queen Victoria says, “Victorian ideology of gender rested on the belief that women were both physically and intellectually the inferior sex”(YILDIRIM). Women were seen as highly susceptible to becoming mentally ill because of this belief. Women were subject to only be “housewives.” The novel, Alias Grace, accurately shows the construction of this gender identity through society, sexuality, and emotion while challenging it through Grace’s mother and Mrs. Humphrey.
She is a seventeen year old in her prime who feels immortal because she has a long life to live, therefore decision making are not based on careful planning but emotions, peer pressure and fantasies. Risk taking from a teenager normally comes from poor judgement, why would America take the decision of leaving the comfort of her home to go to a country which is mainly travelled by the men in her town? Why did she leave with the most unlikely candidate, her brother-in-law? In adversity her first yearn was for her mother’s touch, her food and her home, the fragile little girl in her cries for a mother touch when times are hard because that’s what she is used to, mom handling the
In “Good People” by David Foster Wallace and Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” two young couples are faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Sheri Fisher may be sympathetic because Lane Dean Jr. gives her little input in a decision within their discussions, he is unsure as to whether or not he loves her, and because Sheri has made big plans for her life ahead before the unplanned pregnancy. I contend that Jig deserves more sympathy because the American is persistent in his persuasion toward the operation, his love is unjustified, and because Jig has not made plans for her life with or without the child.
In the story "The Open Boat," by Stephen Crane, Crane uses many literary techniques to convey the stories overall theme. The story is centered on four men: a cook, a correspondent, Billie, an oiler who is the only character named in the story, and a captain. They are stranded in a lifeboat in stormy seas just off the coast of Florida, just after their ship has sunk. Although they can eventually see the shore, the waves are so big that it is too dangerous to try to take the boat in to land. Instead, the men are forced to take the boat further out to sea, where the waves are not quite as big and dangerous. They spend the night in the lifeboat and take turns rowing and then resting. In the morning, the men are weak and exhausted. The captain decides that they must try to take the lifeboat as close to shore as possible and then be ready to swim when the surf inevitably turns the boat over and throws the men into the cold sea. As they get closer to land a big wave comes and all the men are thrown into the sea. The lifeboat turns over and the four men must swim into shore. There are rescuers waiting on shore who help the men out of the water. Strangely, as the cook, captain and correspondent reach the shore safely and are helped out of the water, they discover that, somehow, the oiler has drowned after being smashed in the surf by a huge wave. (255-270) “The Open Boat’s” main theme deals with a character’s seemingly insignificant life struggle against nature’s indifference. Crane expresses this theme through a suspenseful tone, creative point of view, and a mix of irony.
Mrs. Marian Forrester strikes readers as an appealing character with the way she shifts as a person from the start of the novel, A Lost Lady, to the end of it. She signifies just more than a women that is married to an old man who has worked in the train business. She innovated a new type of women that has transitioned from the old world to new world. She is sought out to be a caring, vibrant, graceful, and kind young lady but then shifts into a gold-digging, adulterous, deceitful lady from the way she is interpreted throughout the book through the eyes of Niel Herbert. The way that the reader is able to construe the Willa Cather on how Mr. and Mrs. Forrester fell in love is a concept that leads the reader to believe that it is merely psychological based. As Mrs. Forrester goes through her experiences such as the death of her husband, the affairs that she took part in with Frank Ellinger, and so on, the reader witnesses a shift in her mentally and internally. Mrs. Forrester becomes a much more complicated women to the extent in which she struggles to find who really is and that is a women that wants to find love and be fructuous in wealth. A women of a multitude of blemishes, as a leading character it can be argued that Mrs. Forrester signifies a lady that is ultimately lost in her path of personal transitioning. She becomes lost because she cannot withstand herself unless she is treated well by a wealthy male in which causes her to act unalike the person she truly is.
Gretel Ehrlich describes her move to Wyoming as awakening from a nap, satisfied in her new home she becomes absorbed in its tranquility and indifference. She is reborn, starts anew and creates a new life for herself. Ehrlich even cut her hair and buys new clothes to create a "new" and different person. To read and understand this essay means looking deeper into the author's story of rebirth, and how the big Wyoming skies were healing and put things into perspective for her. Thus, improving her quality of life without any fillers or distractions.
The American Man is manipulating her into thinking this unborn child will destroy their lives and their love for each other. He doesn’t want something to tie himself to her nor want a child. In one peer view of the short story, it states “Their silly interaction of the need to protect their freedom does not justify their first need for woman.” (Susanty). He is making life without him will be a miserable one, yet he knows that she would do it to be with him. The way he talks to her is enticing her into making this decision. The American Man says “I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.” (Hemingway 3). He’s words of comfort are uncover words of controlling her mindset into