The Black and White World of Atwoods Surfacing Essay -- Atwood Surfa

The Black and White World of Atwoods Surfacing numerous people elect to view the world and emotional state as a series of paired opposites-love and hate, birth and death, right and wrong. As Anne Lamott said, it is so ofttimes easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality (104). This quote summarizes the thoughts of the cashier in Margaret Atwoods saucy Surfacing. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, must confront a past that she has act desperately to ignore (7). She sees herself and the world around her as either the costless dupe or the victimizer, never both. Atwoods use of opposing characters and themes throughout the original serves to support the narrators view of life as black and white, things that she can categorize as either a victim or a victimizer. hypercritical moments in the novel work to reverse the assumed roles and, for the narrator, only afterward her submerged memory has surfaced can she begin to see the possibility of life as more than a binary reality. Anna plays the role of the classic abject female married to Davids classic chauvinist male. Wanting to remain mesmerizing to her husband, Anna attempts to conform to the eroticized and commodified images of women promulgated in the mass culture (Bouson 44). Although the novel is stack during the 1970s, the decade of one of the great feminist movements in our history, Anna remains a woman who maintains herself for her husbands benefit. In a critical scene in the novel, the narrator sees Anna applying makeup. When she (the narrator) tells her that it is unnecessary where they are Anna says He doesnt like to see me without it, and then cursorily adds, He doesnt know I wear it (41). To the narrator, Anna is a victim. Although she allows he... ...l E. Margaret Atwood and the Poetics of Duplicity. The Art of Margaret Atwood. Ed. Arnold E. Davidson. Toronto folk of Anansi Press, 1981. Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird. New York Doubleday. 1994. Lecker, Robert. Janus Th rough the Looking Glass Atwoods number one Three Novels. The Art of Margaret Atwood. Ed. Arnold E. Davidson. Toronto House of Anansi Press, 1981. Shepherd, Valerie. Narrative Survival The power of ain narration, discussed through the personal story-telling of fictional characters, particularly those created by Margaret Atwood. Language and Communication. 15.4 (1995) 355-373. nigh of the novels characters can be classified as either a victim or a victimizer, but none more so than David and Anna. A classic submissive female, Anna maintains her marriage to David, the classic chauvinist male.