The Blind Assassin Analysis

I have read an interesting book by very famous writer Margaret Atwood. The book’s title is “The Blind Assassin”.

Now I’d like to share my opinion with you and wrote the book analysis. After book reading I had different feelings and it was rather hard at first to gather all thoughts in my head and right something about the book. I can’t to say that it was easy reading and the novel is not a story with a normal happy end. But the absence of happy end doesn’t influence badly on the book and make it better or worse. It is a story, life story and not every life story has a happy end. First of all before my books analysis will be begin I want to pay your attention on fact that “The Blind Assassin” is a well written book and even it is very poetic book, for my opinion of course.

Every book analysis should begin from the brief acquainting with authors personality, and as for me this process will help to understand the main writers ideas deeper and it will be more interesting to read the work by a person whom you was got acquainted, even in such a way. Of course it is only my opinion and it doesn’t mean that we have similar thoughts on this question.

I don’t want to write information about author which can be not very correct and with that aim I took the next information from the web-site about Margaret Atwood and her literature works:

“Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College.

Throughout her thirty years of writing, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and several honorary degrees. She is the author of more than twenty-five volumes of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid’s Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996). Her newest novel, The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize, was published in the fall of 2000. Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002), published by Cambridge University Press in March 2002, was her latest book and her next novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in April 2003. She has an uncanny knack for writing books that anticipate the popular preoccupations of her public.

Acclaimed for her talent for portraying both personal and worldly problems of universal concern, Ms. Atwood’s work has been published in more than thirty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian.

Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson.” (http://www.randomhouse.com/features/atwood/author.html).

Margaret Atwood’s biography shows that she is very popular like a novel writer, but also she like poetry and had a big amount of published volumes of poetry. I think that her love for the poetry is also the part of her success and these skills help her to write book in such intelligent manner. Honorary degrees are also a factor of popularity, but every writer said that the best the present for each writer is pleasant readers and for these results they tried to do their best and find new and new fictions for their creative activity.

Let’s begin our book analysis and it will be good to addresses to the text and be ready to find out important quotation. Margaret Atwood starts the book with such line: “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” A lot of book started by different phrases, but this phrase from the first word describe the situation and show the events which had place in the life of main characters.

It seemed that book is divided into several parts and each part has its own plot. All components of the book are close to each other and they are in the straight dependences from each other. The books part could be also called alternating parts for their changing from time to time. I can’t say that this changing is rude and make book bad, no it isn’t true one plot is going after another rather slowly or in a mild style. I think that such style of writing is a card of Margaret Atwood and maybe for this her readers like her books more and more.

Do you know that this book is very popular and even recommended by the people to each other? Yes, it is true and the book’s popularity growth very quickly. For the acknowledgement of my words I can write the words by journalist: “Margaret Atwood poses a provocative question in her new novel, “The Blind Assassin.” How much are the bad turns of one’s life determined by things beyond our control, like sex and class, and how much by personal responsibility? Unlike most folks who raise this question so that they can wag their finger ”“ she’s made her bed, and so on ”“ Atwood’s foray into this moral terrain is complex and surprising. Far from preaching to the converted, Atwood’s cunning tale assumes a like-minded reader only so that she can argue, quite persuasively, from the other side.” – said Karen Houppert (http://archive.salon.com/books/review/2000/09/12/atwood/).

As you understand, such words could be about only the popular author and about popular book. You can say that to the content of book the popularity question has no relation, and you will be right from your side, but I have another opinion. As for me if author is popular it is very important to be on the top and do all for such the situation keeping.

That’s why popular author should write a good books and Atwood is not an exception from these rules.

Returning to the plot I want to say that the book has four plots and it is not only my opinion. They are rather different, but connected with one link and can’t  be used by separate part. When you read this book it is seems that you string one action to the another and only at the end of book you have a whole picture. One reader gives a plot summary and I have the same thoughts about books plot.

“Plot Summary: The Blind Assassin actually has four plots. Atwood uses a framing narrative, which is a structure or a story within a story. Generally, these stories all fit together to prove some larger point. Think of Frankenstein, which is first a series of letters, then the story of Victor, then the story of the Creature, then the story of Felix and Safie. Or Wuthering Heights, which is actually a story told by Lockwood, who hears it from Nelly. I love framing narratives, and Atwood’s is quite complex. First, we have Iris, our main narrator, who at eighty is trying to write down her life, to pass on to her absent granddaughter. We read about her daily struggles to remain independent, and her interactions with Myra and Walter, friends of her family who take care of her. Then, Iris tells us the story of her youth – of her childhood at Avilion, her younger sister Laura, and the ruin wreaked by the Great Depression. Laura, who was always an odd child, committed suicide in 1945. After she died, Iris found a manuscript of a short novel that Laura had written, and decided to have it published. This novel is The Blind Assassin. Chapters of The Blind Assassin serve as the third level of the narrative, and revolve around a young couple having a secret affair. The final level of the framing narrative is a science fiction story, which the couple in The Blind Assassin write together when they manage to meet.” (http://www.librarything.com/work/409)

I want to add to these words that the books structure is little bit strange and it looks like a novel inside the novel. I have read such books several times, but it was rather hard to understand, what I can’t to say about this book. The framing structure is a novel; I even think that it looks like historical novel, about a wealthy Canadian family’s falls from their grace and prosperity during the World War II and the time of Depression. It was dark times for family and author characterized her personages by the trademark dark humor and deft hand. This situation is explained by the words: “War is good for the button trade. So many buttons are lost in a war, and have to be replaced – whole boxfuls, whole truckloads of buttons at a time. They’re blown to pieces, they sink into the ground, they go up in flames.”

“Atwood moves between these four narratives perfectly – whenever you are becoming very involved in one, she switches to the next. In this way, the reader is constantly on her toes, wondering which story is coming next, trying to keep the events separate. However, it soon becomes clear that these four narratives are not separate, but very intertwined. Is the woman in The Blind Assassin Laura? Is her novel about her own experiences? Who is the man? Why did Laura kill herself? How did Iris, once a very rich woman, come to live alone, poor, with a granddaughter who refuses to see her? As Iris’ story moves closer to the outbreak of WWII, the forces in her life seem at war as well – and death, betrayal, and catastrophe are looming.” (www.librarything.com). I specially used these words for the plot describing and rhetorical question are rhetorical only for the people who doesn’t read the book, because when you know what about is this book you can answer on every question and for the same time to fell yourself somewhere insight book and feel the same things which are influence on the main characters life and the way of living.

“I stood outside my house, my former house, waiting to have an emotion of any kind at all. None came. Having experienced both, I am not sure which is worse: intense feeling, or the absence of it.” ”“ these words from the book show the deep feeling and rather hard thoughts. When I have read them, I begin to imagine myself on that place and I understand that it is an awful felling to feel nothing, be near your house and feel nothing. It is an opinion from my side, but there is another side too: if you have bad feelings connected with you house maybe it will be better to forget all or for the better variant don’t feel something, only calm and silence inside you.

Returning to the text content I have such quotation: “Within this novel is an intertwined story of two unnamed lovers and their clandestine affair. During their meetings, the lovers ”” one of whom is a pulp writer ”” tell each other a bizarre fable that takes place on an alien planet, which underscores their unspoken feelings for each other. The fable, titled The Blind Assassin, is turned into a novel by one of the characters that develop a cult-like following. The intricate structure makes this an engrossing novel.” (www.librarything.com). This is about the part of plot which shows us the dream and thoughts about an alien planet.

I want to say that the books characters are very different and their thoughts are sometimes very interesting, for example “alien planet”. We of course know that this thought was taken from the authors head and used for the character of her book, but sometimes it is misunderstandable why such exact thought was taken for one, but not for another personage.

Reading my analysis it can to seemed for you that there is now right structure and my minds and discoursing are not connected and I jumped from one topic to another, but I want to try write like Margaret Atwood and decided to use several lines of the talk: among them are the line about writer, her life and popularity; then my own thoughts about the book and readers opinions. I think that it is a good idea to look through readers books opinions and compare them with my own. Frankly speaking I was impressed by this book and in future have a dream to read all books by Margaret Atwood.

Margaret Atwood lifts on a new height the art of teller in a new magnificent novel in which one surprising layer is opened out after other and ending with a wonderful and giving pleasure unexpected upshot. Wonderful book The Blind Assassin proves once again to all publicity that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid s Tale, it is destined to become a classic and will be read and often discussed.



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