Surviving Surfacing

A discussion of Margaret Atwood - Charlotte May

[survivingsurfacing]

Amputation

both physical and mental, is a dangerous, subversive element. This notion of amputation is symbolic of the separation of Canadian native identity versus the colonized Canadian identity, fraught with tensions with many different colonial masters. Amputated from her own mind, Atwood’s protagonist within "Surfacing" explores the devolution of female power in both the public and the private sphere. The narrator’s interactions with other people and her reactions to her surrounding environment demonstrate this devolution and amputation of loss of feminine power. The lack of a definitive Canadian identity within the world sphere within Atwood’s revisited preface to "Survival" demonstrates devolution of power as well. Within her preface to "Survival", Atwood argues that the loss of power and amputation is not merely limited to the past, but continues to challenge the present. These two works, published thirty years apart, present an argument for the Canadian identity as a whole and on the individual level.

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Atwood’s disconnection from the world around her is witnessed within "Survival", starting with the introduction before her preface. Looking back at her novel thirty two years later, it was a “shock to everyone, including me” that her novel became a best seller and was considered “interesting” in the world of literature since it was the work of a Canadian author and a woman, at that (Survival 1). Atwood’s astonishment at her accomplishment is similar to the narrator’s failing self-confidence found within "Surfacing". Although Atwood wrote "Survival" as an “attempt to grapple” with attitudes that treated Canadian literature as

“a dreary joke, an oxymoron, a big yawn”,

her admission of wonderment related to its success belies her own self-doubt. Atwood’s flagging self confidence can be seen most clearly through the choice of a nameless narrator to detail the events found within "Surfacing". Her removal of a definitive identity for her narrator is representative of the Canadian identity, or the “hole in a non-existent doughnut”, that is commonly thought to be the case amongst the cognoscenti (1). The decision to deliberately not grant the narrator a name, and thus a definitive identity or sense of self, is a major indication of the trials and tribulations that are to come within the novel or have already occurred to fracture the narrator’s life and amputate her from the rest of humanity.

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Atwood’s narrator in Surfacing is at times ashamed of her Canadian identity and of herself as a collective whole. As the novel opens, the narrator confronts one of the major issues she has with her identity, albeit somewhat indirectly. She “can’t believe [she’s] on this road again” as she moves towards her family’s cabin out in the Canadian countryside (Surfacing 3). The narrator feels a sense of amputation from her natural surroundings and her heritage as she rides through the countryside with her friends who are “in the wrong place or I am” (4). At first glance, this merely appears to be the sentiment of a woman returning to a home she had thought to leave forever, yet this is not quite proven to be the case for the narrator. Her sense of amputation to the memories of her upbringing is indicative of a deeper mental trauma, witnessed through memories that haunt the narrator to this day. The narrator prefers to think of her parents as “closed safe behind a wall as translucent as

Jell-O, mammoths frozen in a glacier

” rather than confronting any trauma that has occurred directly (5). Atwood’s use of food imagery to describe the narrator’s relationships is used in a similar manner within her introduction in Survival.

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Atwood describes her relationship with her peers in Canadian literature following her success as if “a

mere chit of a girl

had appropriated a pumpkin they regarded as theirs” (Survival 1). Her choice in calling herself a “chit” of a girl implies that not only do her peers think of her as such, but she herself thinks that she is an immature or disrespectful young woman. The use of transparent imagery tells the reader a bit more about the narrator, communicating that the narrator prefers to watch her agonies and triumphs privately  rather than within the public sphere. This is an easy way for the narrator to deal with her past, but it does not help her to grow or heal her amputation in any way. 

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Atwood’s usage of natural imagery reinforces the narrator’s biological connection to the physical earth that Canada is composed of yet the mixture of American inventions subverts this strong connection. The wild landscape surrounding the narrator’s car where the

“white birches are dying, the disease is spreading”

is a particularly striking visual image (Surfacing 3). Her idea of a disease spreading across the landscape is similar to the disease that has spread across her life, yet her return to her natural lands would cause the narrator to become part of the contagion herself. This latent distaste towards her own natural heritage is witnessed more frequently as the narrator and her group of friends move through “the flimsy tourist cabins, and the signs saying GATEWAY TO THE NORTH” (5). This wild landscape is simultaneously tamed and untamable in the narrator’s description, yet most of the natural imagery encountered on her way into the Canadian countryside is dead or dying. This may be a result of seasonality, but it is also indicative of the state of Canadian literature as it is perceived by both scholars and the general public – an amputated limb in the world of literature. Atwood recounts her times traveling across the country in the sixties in her introduction to Survival, where she spent her time reading poetry and selling her own books since there were no bookstores that were willing or able to sell them for her. She remembers being asked if Canadian literature exists and

isn’t “just a second-rate copy of real literature, which comes from England and the United States”

(Survival 2). 

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Painting the reader’s image of the Canadian countryside as a ramshackle, egotistic, and decaying wild landscape is an interesting choice for a woman who is urging the value of Canadian literature as an art form worthy of attention. The urge to skip the “national or cultural” but emphasize the “personal and universal” in high school and university teaching, according to Atwood, is the fundamental reason Canadian literature has floundered in the public eye. The “Colonial Mentality”, as Atwood refers to it, implies that Canada as a whole is for some unknown reason unworthy of attention on the global level from some failing of Canada to rise above the influence of larger countries (2). There is a certain poetic flair to the form of amputation Atwood invokes with her description of the Canadian countryside, dominated by “the pit the Americans hollowed out […] it looks like an innocent hill, spruce-covered, but the thick power lines running into the hill” destroy the image of the natural countryside for the narrator (Surfacing 5). The narrator asserts that these Americans who have respect for nothing “could easily still be living in there”, subverting Canada from beneath its very soil (5). Her concerns are for the safety of the Canadian identity as much as they are for herself, as the “city invited them to stay, they were good for business” (5). Much as the traditional Canadian struggles to survive under pressure from colonial masters, the Canadian countryside also struggles to thrive beneath the increasing spread of consumerism. The danger of allowing Americans to live and thrive within Canada’s border is a real fear felt by both Atwood and the narrator of Surfacing. Atwood’s personal concern is that Canadian literature is considered lesser than other countries on economic successes, rather than being judged on its own merits.

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Consumerism and the spread of modern life are viewed quite negatively throughout Surfacing. For the narrator and her group of friends, being identified as an American is quite an insult and specifies an outsider or intruder into the world. The Americans used to be thought of as

“harmless and funny and inept and faintly loveable, like President Eisenhower”

by the narrator, but now they have become a threatening image to see out on the lake and in Canada (63). The narrator’s mention of President Eisenhower is faintly ironic, considering he signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 which expanded the reach and abilities of Americans to reach across both the United States and Canada with greater ease. 

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During a group fishing adventure on the lake, the narrator and her friends encounter a “big powerboat […] American flag on the front and another at the back, two irritated businessmen with pug-dog faces and nifty outfits” (63). The narrator later discovers that the men she has encountered on the lake are Canadian, but they do not fit the ideal image of the Canadian that she has created. The ease with which these perceived Americans move through the Canadian countryside is vastly different to the narrator, as they rely upon a “souped-up boat,

deafening the fish

[…] they’d do it with dynamite if they could get away with it” when they decide to move to a new location (63). The amputation of their hearing, a vital sense needed for survival, calls to mind the

deafening of the Canadian voice

by the decadent and opulent Americans. 

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For Atwood, the current trend of teaching Canadian literature is like

“teaching anatomy by looking only at the head and the feet.”

Much as the fish are deafened in Surfacing, Canadian authors are deafened by the more highly publicized American or European authors. For Canadian authors to gain any legitimacy in the public light, then they must overcome a seemingly insurmountable border or amputate themselves to any thoughts of gaining credibility beyond Canadian borders. The narrator has no faith in the individuals she has encountered, immediately coloring her perception of them due to their choice of transportation. Her instant skepticism of their motives and level of care for the environment are not unwarranted, as one of the men throws a cigar butt into the lake upon their meeting, but her immediate assumption that they are Americans shows her

distrust of everything in her world.

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The Americans’

utter disregard for natural life

in the eyes of the narrator, is one of the gravest sins possible and amputates them from the biological world. Their blatant flaunting of new technologies and devices separates amputates them from the surrounding world, granting a vast power unto the Americans themselves. While their separation amputation grants them strength, this new found power is dangerous,

subverting and reducing the influence of the natural landscape.

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The “happy killers” the narrator encounters and perceives as Americans throughout Surfacing, however, are not Americans at all (129). The narrator is “furious with them, they’d disguised themselves” by placing American flags upon their boat while at the lake (129). By placing these flags upon their boat and being perceived as Americans, these men have amputated their connection from other Canadians. Their disconnection from their own society contributes to the sense of isolation that the narrator feels with the world, witnessed by her fury over their deception. Atwood’s feelings towards

the aggression of the American populace towards Canadian culture

can be witnessed through her preface to Survival. After accepting that Canadian literature does in fact exist, a fact disputed by many, Atwood prompts the reader to see that Canadian literature

isn’t just a “feeble version of English or American, or, in the case of francophone books, of French literature”

(Survival3).

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Atwood’s repeated assurances of validity for Canadian literature as a proper model of literature belies her own self-doubt that a reader will actually take her seriously. She calls the United States a

“huge aggressive neighbor to the south”

within Survival, placing the country itself as an aggressor to the

“rocky, watery northern country, cool in climate, large in geographical expanse, [and] small but diverse population” of Canada

(3). The obsession in Canadian literature, as implied by the title of Atwood’s novel, was simply survival in 1972. Surviving against the cultural aggression of the United States was the pinnacle of acceptance for Atwood, as her narrator demonstrates within Surfacing.

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Encounters with animals native to the area influence the narrator deeply, bringing long forgotten memories to the surface of her mind. A group of who the narrator assumes to be American hunters have

abandoned the body of a heron

upon one of the islands surrounding the lake. The heron has been left to rot and is strung up by a thin blue nylon rope

“hanging in the hot sunlight like something in a butcher’s window, desecrated, unredeemed”

(Surfacing 131). Her description of the heron suggests the wastefulness and shamefulness of the act, as though the heron itself has lost any sense of majesty, power, and ability it possessed while still living. 

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For all of the narrator’s horror, however, the men within her group are fascinated by the dead heron and want to film it for their movie. The men’s preoccupation with the heron for commercial purposes is immediately at odds with

the narrator’s desire for the respect of the natural world.

Their fascination with the heron is sickening to the narrator, but she is unable to stand up to their ideas and insistence to degrade its body further in order to capture it on film. She is traumatized that the hunters have

“strung [the heron] up like a lynch victim […] it was valueless”

to their purposes, an entirely unnecessary act of violence (118). This willful desecration of beauty and natural power is entirely typical of the American behavior that the narrator believes she holds knowledge of. The narrator believes that Americans are amputated from the ability to have a respect for and a love of nature because they have been exposed to such a wide swath of new technologies. For both the continued survival of the narrator and of Canadian literature, the narrator’s skepticism of the scene must be taken seriously. The treatment of the heron’s body sparks a fear within the narrator that

she too will be trussed up and abandoned in the wilderness

due to her comparison to a lynching victim, yet she realizes that she will inevitably meet them amongst the wilds of the island.

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The narrator’s obsession with the heron causes a feeling of

“a sickening complicity, sticky as glue, blood on my hands, as though I had been there”

(131). Her sense of complicity is suggestive of her inability to stand up to any outside force, no matter how threatened she feels. Her inability to defend herself against the trauma caused by witnessing the treatment of the dead heron

does not support Atwood’s vision of a self-confident, reassured Canadian identity

that can protect itself against the “huge aggressive neighbor to the south” (Survival 3). Atwood critiques the state of Canadian literature pre-1970, as it was “not a bundle of uplifting Pollyanna cheer [… it was] a somewhat dour concoction” (4). In order to subvert this dour state of affairs, however, the persistence of the narrator to face her issues with death is commendable. The narrator’s description of sticky blood sparks several new connotations concerning the image of the hanged heron. 

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This image of the heron not only sparks a deeply buried childhood memory in the narrator’s mind, but raises

the specter of the narrator’s aborted baby

for the reader. The sense of complicity felt by the narrator from the heron’s death is directly tied to her sense of failure to prevent the deaths of animals in her past. The narrator visited what can only be assumed to be her brother’s “laboratory” where he kept

“the slower things […] in jars and tin cans”

near the swamp on their island when he wasn’t there one day (Surfacing 132). These creatures were presumably captured and entrapped to be kept alive, but the day that narrator visited, many of them had died of neglect or starvation. The animals kept inside of jars and cans reinforce an image from earlier in the novel, “an unborn baby has its eyes open and can look out through the walls of the mother’s stomach, like a frog in a jar” (28). Much as she failed to save the small animals her brother has captured, the narrator will

fail to save her own child

from the fears and demons that drive her. The narrator is unable to find the courage to confront her brother directly about his experiments, but frees all of the surviving creatures while he is away. Her sense of courage, however minute, is indicative of Atwood’s courage in facing the world at large to declare that Canadian literature is worthy of being considered as part of the international dialogue. 

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The narrator’s

inability to have courage and protect herself

in the presence of a male is witnessed again in the narrator’s memory of where and when her abortion occurred. The narrator faces the trauma of her abortion on her own, having lost the support of her family when she left Canada and her childhood home to join a larger society. While “he hadn’t gone with me to the place where they did it,” the

specter of a male’s power and dominance

is enough for the narrator to go through with her unwanted abortion (145). This sense of death mirrors her underlying guilt that motivated her to create her paper house and leave her former life.