Surfacing: Margaret Atwood

Product Information

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. 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. 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 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.

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): 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. Margaret Atwood's writing is so vivid, and so clear-eyed in looking at people and their intentions and limitations. This book is somewhat an artifact of its time - I immediately guessed it had been written in the early 1970's - but it is also timeless in many ways. It is also a compelling read, something I needed after struggling with a couple of the books I am "actively" reading; Atwood's prose never disappoints, and her cutting insights about human nature are witty and unsparing. When she morphs into an amoeba or whatever the hell happens to her in the end, her tentacles and whatnot, I'm sort of just hoping that she'll die. A nameless protagonist is in northern Quebec, in a very remote area, in search of her father who has gone missing. She brings with her Joe (her boyfriend) and another couple, Anna and David (who are super effed up, btw). She also brings with her ghosts from her past, things that have haunted her her entire life and have somehow kept her separate from others, even from herself, even from the reader (who cannot hope to relate to her, and doesn't ever even learn her name).

So, if you happen to know the general plot of Margaret Atwood's Surfacing, you can understand, with confidence, that I have very little in common with the Unnamed Protagonist. We both might have had unusual parents, but the commonalities stop there. 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. Here are some of my favourite bits - spoilers because they mark essential revelations (I would call them plot points, but let's face it, plot is a little too generous a concept). These mark the most Atwoodian use of language: poetic and suggestive, more than descriptive or concrete. They rely on the reader having read carefully to that point; and then they deliver with a gut-punch of comprehension that belies the abstract, disembodied words and images themselves. Read these at the risk of potentially dulling their impact if you're going to read or re-read this novel: 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. 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.

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. 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]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 Joe is the narrator’s boyfriend. A veteran of the Vietnam War, he works as a pottery teacher to supplement his income while working on his personal pottery, which the narrator finds ugly. He is surly and gloomy and doesn’t verbalize his emotions, barely speaking much at all. 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. The story starts out with an unnamed narrator who is on a trip to a remote cabin with her boyfriend and a married couple. She is going there to look for her estranged father who has disappeared. The couple and the boyfriend are filming a documentary and are hoping for some footage. 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...

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 SummaryThe 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 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. Soon after, David approaches the narrator and tries to seduce her, stating that Anna and Joe are having an affair. The narrator does not give in to his advances. When Anna hears of the narrator’s rejection of David, it causes her to feel guilty and she is cruel to the narrator instead of her husband. The friends’ relationships remain frayed.

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. Anna’s makeup, which David demands she wear at all times, represents the large-scale subjugation of women. The narrator compares Anna to a doll when she sees her putting on makeup, because Anna becomes David’s sexual plaything. At the same time, makeup represents female deception. Anna uses makeup as a veneer of beauty, and the behavior is representative of the way she acts virtuous (but sleeps with other men) and happy (but feels miserable). Makeup goes completely against the narrator’s ideal of a natural woman. The narrator calls herself a natural woman directly after her madness, when she looks in a mirror and sees herself naked and completely disheveled. The narrator comments that Anna uses makeup to emulate a corrupt womanly ideal. The Ring A police officer arrives and talks to David, Anna, and Joe while the narrator watches from a distance. David breaks the news that the narrator’s father is dead, and they have found his body. She refuses to believe this, as she is still certain he is alive. In her manic state, she decides that she has forgiven Joe for cheating on her and the two have sex. The narrator is certain she has conceived a child from this encounter.The hanged heron at the portage represents the American destruction of nature. The narrator obsesses over the senselessness of its slaughter, especially that it was hanged and not buried. The heron’s death emphasizes that the narrator defines someone as American based on his or her actions. She condemns any act of senseless violence or waste as distinctly American. That the bird is killed with a bullet and hanged using a nylon rope emphasizes the subversion of nature to technology. Also, the narrator thinks of the hanged bird as a Christ-like sacrifice, which reflects Christian ideology. By using Christian ideas to describe nature, the narrator emphasizes her near-religious reverence for nature. The narrator also compares herself to the heron during her madness, when she worries that the search party will hang her by the feet. By associating the narrator with the hanged heron, Atwood associates the way Americans destroy nature with the way men control women. Makeup I enjoyed and was fascinated by this book, all the way through. I marvelled at the writing. It's poetic, visually evocative, full of mood. But it's complex. It's slippery. I wouldn't say it's an easy or "delightful" read. It's more how I feel about eating a kale salad... I know it's good for me, I know it's important. Margaret Atwood is such a powerhouse, "feminist" does not cover it; she shoots female identity so far out of the box, she isn't contained by language, clothes, or definitions. 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. 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.