Surfacing: Margaret Atwood

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I am not an animal or a tree, I am the thing in which the trees and animals move and grow, I am a place Atwood digs deep into the female psyche, as well as the human psyche, probing and poking in all the dark underwater caves that the modern world has separated us from. Her unnamed protagonist is searching for her missing father in a remote area of northeast Canada. She has brought along her current lover and a married couple whom, removed from their city life in Toronto, she is able to see clearly and critically, and bit by bit she comes to measure how far removed she has become from the more conscious life of her childhood.

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 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 unnamed female protagonist, together with three others leave the city for a cabin by a lake in the woods she grew up in. Experiencing the loss of her parents, the protagonist combs through her past and nature to find links that connect her to her childhood and her family. On a personal level, the narrator's society has alienated her from herself as well as others. The narrator doesn't seem to have any control over her memories or sense of reality. Her stories don't quite blend when she talks about her past with her husband and child. It's almost as though she has been told so many different things, she doesn't know how to separate fact from fiction anymore. The narrator's false memories of her husband and child have been used to distance herself from the guilt of the abortion and affair. But the narrator's complete acceptance of the lies as truth shows how little control she has over her own identity. She watches as Anna is oppressed by her abusive husband, who traps her in a marriage characterized by emotional abuse, infidelity, and violent sex. Anna accepts his actions as the norm, never rebelling against or leaving him when he mistreats her. On the outside, their marriage looks happy and healthy, but the narrator soon realizes what she thought was romance is merely control and manipulation.

Surfacing - Key takeaways

It takes submerging herself in water for the narrator to unbury her repressed memories and realize the truth of her history. The dunking herself in the water as she vainly searches for her father's lost research is symbolic of baptism and rebirth. The narrator surfaces cleansed of the identity the patriarchy has forced on her and can discover herself anew. The novel's title refers to the narrator's symbolic surfacing out of the lie-based reality she has been taught by the patriarchy and into a reality she can define for herself. There is plenty of symbolism, principally different types and states of trees (live, stumps, ash, sawdust); problems of understanding between French and English speakers and also between those ostensibly speaking the same language, and watery visions of drowning, inundating and surfacing. There is also a strong anti-American, anti-colonial theme: wanting to repel those who want to take over and spoil the wilderness. The male characters in "Surfacing" are obnoxiously misogynistic: given that this was written around the same time it is set in, it makes me really angry to think that women were subjected to this sort of talk on a daily basis (from their husbands!) and that this was considered perfectly normal. You begin to sympathize with the main character's revulsion at the idea of marriage if this is what she can be expected to deal with... The seasoned American guide who takes the narrator, Joe, Anna, and David to and from the narrator’s father’s island. Evans is gruff and minds his own business; he is aware that the narrator’s father has disappeared, but he never asks the narrator about it. Madame In both cases, the camera symbolizes how the value of women and nature is commodified by the patriarchy, alienating both from the society in which they exist. The narrator eventually destroys the film as an act of rebellion against the oppression, exploitation, and alienation of women and their identities. Surfacing Themes

A woman travels in the company of friends to a remote island to find out what happened to her father, who suddenly disappeared without a trace. Underneath the surface, stored memories of things past begin to move - upward, outward - until they burst like bubbles when they are surfacing. 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 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. They stay in her father's very rustic cabin while she searches for him. And tensions mount. There is a constricting malevolence present; there are eyes that seem to be watching, a predatory atmosphere. What should be an idyllic week of camping in the woods, is ... not. Though this book definitely has environmental themes, it isn't described in Wordsworthian swoon-inducing curlicues. In fact, what with the leeches, the rotting bird carcass, the entrails, et al, nature isn't something to mess with.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. Claude tells them they can hire Evans to take them out to the cabin. Paul would take them for free, she knows, but she does not want him to misinterpret the men’s longish hair and beards and think they are trouble. The narrator observes David and comments on his past just before taking her friends to the island in Chapter 3. The narrator’s disdain for David’s enjoyment of Greenwich Village reflects her intolerance for tourists who come to Quebec seeking an authentic outdoor experience. David is a city-dweller, and the narrator feels perturbed by his casual enjoyment of the trappings of outdoor life, such as fishing or chopping firewood. She inherits this disdain in part from her father, who used to size up men for their ability to live outdoors on their own. Another part of her resents the American tourists who seek out the wilderness only to spoil it. You could decide she's losing her mind, there's plenty of things that would support that idea. But the way I see it, our girl is in the process of "surfacing" - which to me is someone coming out of the depths, to breathe air. She's rejecting the world she came from, rejecting marriage, kids, religion, French Canadians, Americans (SO anti-American... this I gotta say I didn't quite understand), career, and sex (described several times as death). She morphs into her true self, where titles, statuses, even forms are not necessary to define her identity.

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?

She says she would like to go down to the lake for a couple days to look around, and her friends agree. David says he wants to catch a fish. If her father is safe, she does not want to see him, as her parents never understood about the divorce or even the marriage, but she did not understand it herself. They also did not understand why she left the child but she could not explain how it was never really hers anyway. 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.