Surfacing - summary

Context

Change in the 1960s: Quebec's Quiet Revolution

 The "Quiet Revolution" in Quebec, Canada, came at a time of social and cultural change across
North America

 BUT in Quebec it bore unique characteristics because of broad changes to political, economic, and
educational systems

 Before the 1960s Quebec's school system was run by the Catholic Church
o The political party that took power in 1944—the Union Nationale—was extremely conservative
and invested in maintaining traditional values

 When the Quebec Liberal Party, led by Jean Lesage, won a majority in 1960, change was rapid and
widespread

(1) The public hospital network was created

 Private power companies were transferred to government control

(2) The electoral map was redrawn, and election finances were regulated
(3) The voting age dropped from 21 to 18
(4) Women's rights expanded
(5) The power of the Catholic Church in directing educational institutions decreased while the
influence of government in education greatly increased

 One result was a far greater role of government in daily life and a consolidation of power in
Quebec's leaders, which sometimes put the French-speaking province at odds with the rest of
Canada

(6) Another result was a secularization of society, as the Catholic Church became less prominent in
directing social norms
o Although there was some pushback against these reforms later in the 1960s, the change
that occurred in the early part of the decade had lasting ramifications
o Much of the religious tension in Surfacing shows signs of these effects, as the distrust
between the religious, traditional citizens of the town and the narrator's nonreligious family
adds to her sense of isolation and separation.

The 1960s and 1970s: Changing Sexual Attitudes

 The Quiet Revolution occurred amid a cultural shift that was far more widespread, as women's
rights gained traction across the continent
 o The birth control pill became available in 1960  within a decade millions of women in
Canada and the United States were using it
 This gave women the freedom to engage in sexual activity without worries about
unintended pregnancies
 At the time Surfacing was published, abortion was only legal if the health of the
mother was endangered
 Not until 1988 did women in Canada gain the freedom to choose legal abortion as a
matter of women's rights.

o Women's roles in society were already changing, and attitudes toward sex were becoming
more liberal among the younger generation
o This shift was aided by the availability of reliable birth control and legal abortion

 these changes had the unfortunate result of alienating generations from one another, something
that is apparent in Surfacing. The young characters are estranged from their parents. The narrator
often thinks about the way the older generation will see and judge her and her friends' clothing and
hair.

Postcolonial Literature

 Postcolonial literature generally concerns itself with the stories of populations living in areas
colonized by European empires

 It uncovers the racial and cultural tensions that continue to exist in these populations and the ways
indigenous and colonial populations coexist in the same space

 Although the predominant cultural tension in Surfacing is between French-speaking and English-
speaking cultures, some scholars have made the case that the novel can be read as a kind of
postcolonial literature

 The novel involves an area with a preexisting indigenous culture, represented by the rock paintings

 The threat of a more aggressive colonial presence exist: American culture, which colonizes not with
weapons but with the infection-like poison of senseless violence.

 If postcolonial literature describes the process of healing and integrating in the aftermath of
colonization, Surfacing may qualify
o It takes place, after all, in "border country," where cultures meet and accommodate each
other in an uneasy peace
o The loosely formed Canadian identity constantly feels under threat, both from the insidious
American culture and from the French and English cultures on which it rests

Survival

 In her nonfiction work Survival (1972), Atwood explores the issue of Canadian cultural identity
o She looks at the influence of British and American cultures
 o Furthermore, she explores how literature expresses Canadian identity, pointing out that
cultures often have basic symbols or guiding ideas that weave throughout their literature
and represent a fundamental aspect of cultural identity

 For example, the American symbolic idea is the frontier

 The British symbol is the island
 Atwood argues that the Canadian idea is survival  Canadian literature, she says,
features stories about "those who made it back. ...
 The survivor has no triumph or victory but the fact of his survival." These
ideas, and this particular sense of Canadian identity, prominently characterize
Surfacing; The narrator endures painful emotional experiences, processes
these in a dramatic break from reality, and survives  the alternative to
achieving wholeness—reuniting her head and body—is death

Part 1, Chapter 1

 An unnamed narrator is driving through a "city" (although she immediately undermines its claims to
being one) in Canada. Apparently, the narrator used to live around here.
o only a few shops and restaurants around, old and gross food is served
o before the protagonist was born there was war: her brother said as a joke “the Germans
shot our feet off” (WW2?)
o after that they didn’t have shoes on (poor?)

 We learn that she's in the car with a married couple named David and Anna (it's their car they're
driving) and her boyfriend, Joe - they've been driving several hours.
o car is old, David pretends he doesn’t have money to buy new one (protagonist thinks it isn’t
true)
o protagonist feels like she is in the wrong place or they are but together it doesn’t feel right
o Anna can reads hands at parties
 reads protagonists hands: she asks if she has a twin because of double lines
 she sees a happy childhood but there is a break
 protagonist just wanted to know how long she would live

 Protagonist doesn’t know if dead is dead or alive

o envies children whose parents died young because you remember them, and they stay
unchanged
o didn’t go back home, scared, too many explanations
o father is in voluntary recluse (Einsiedler)

 drive by the generals’ concrete bunkers, and the underground apartment buildings of soldiers (they
all might still live there – they drink a lot) and the former rocket deposit

 Protagonist is not only separated from family and town but also from friends and surroundings
o Anna is the protagonist’s best woman friend and they’ve only known each other for two
months
o she watches the landscape through "the side window as though it's a TV screen."
 It turns out that David and Joe are making a movie called Random Samples. It will consist of random
stuff they feel like photographing; when they run out of film, they're going to cut it together.
o Joe is doing the camera work but has never done it before (they teach themselves like “new
Renaissance men”
o David’s idea  calls himself director, rented camera

 They stop at a place called the Bottle Villa, which is a house made entirely out of bottles (even the
fence); the boys get some film of it.

 welcome sign has bullet holes from hunter who use it for target practice (the bullets seem to
reappear like a disease how many times they replace or paint it)
o rural: mills, sawdust, fabricating wood
 Then they enter the company town, from which they are trying to find the road to somewhere else
—however, the way the narrator knew to go is blocked.
o neatly planned: public flowerbeds, 18th century fountain in the middle, stone dolphins…
o She stops into a corner store to ask directions and buy some ice cream
o apparently a new road has been build

o everything seems different from how she recalls it  she feels disconnected to and
separated from the city that she once called “home”
 ice-cream comes in scoops not rolled up in pieces of paper and it has seaweed in it
now
 she doesn’t know the way anymore

 The narrator is a bit antsy (zappelig). It seems she's coming home to find her father (to whom
something has happened). She's kind of wishing she could just go back to "the city" and never find
out what happened to him.
o she imagines that she will start crying and nobody will know what to do
o she is mad that they build a new road  “he” should have stopped them (father?)

 They drive through a newly build part of the town

o square bungalows, but also a few shacks  children playing in the mud (Anna: “They must
fuck a lot here”)

 They then come to a gas station with some stuffed moose dressed in people clothes. They of course
get out of the car to check it out.

 She talks about her family saying “they” and realizes its wrong  distance, separation
o they used to drive the old road that followed the way the land went (you got sick in the car
because of the hills etc.
o the old road is fading away  grass and saplings

 religious distancing  “the alien god, mysterious to me as ever”

o sees crucifix with a wooden Christ, ribs sticking out but cannot identify with religion
  They are almost to "the village" when the chapter closes
o they see election slogans “Québec libre”  all slogans are written in French
 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
o Once they reach a lake  she feels deprived of something as if they cant get there unless
they suffer (through tears and vomit)

Themes:
separation vs. wholeness
1. Language:
o sign at the border of Quebec "says BIENVENUE on one side and WELCOME on the
other, once they enter the city: French election slogans
o Growing up as an English-speaking person in a town where most people spoke
French, the language barrier created a major separation between the narrator and
other residents. She recalls the throat-tightening feeling she had when she
discovered how "people could say words that would go into my ears meaning
nothing."

Canadian identity

 David's comments about "bloody fascist pig Yanks" and "rotten capitalist bastards" launches the
theme of Canadian identity and the main threat to it: American culture's pervasiveness
power

 the narrator isn't driving the car—David is. She begins to feel as though she's lost even her
knowledge of the correct route: "Nothing is the same, I don't know the way anymore."
o The narrator feels powerless and out of control

water

 The end of the chapter leaves readers with a potent symbol that will be used throughout the novel:
water.
o The novel's title is a clear reference to the lake, a symbol of the narrator's emotional
journey throughout the book.

Part 1, Chapter 2

 They pull up to a motel with a small bar, and David, Anna, and Joe (protagonist’s almost boyfriend,
crush) go inside to have a drink.
o she likes the others but now wishes they weren’t here (wants to be alone) – she knew she
needed them and the car (no bus, train) and they wanted to do her a favor
 o they all disown their parents (no contact, barely talk about them and if so in a bad way) 
generational separation ("Joe never mentions his mother and father, Anna says hers were
nothing people and David calls his The Pigs."

 The narrator walks onto a dam that separates a river from the lake and recalls an incident in which
she and her family canoed dangerously close to the rushing water of the dam.
o they went backwards, didn’t hear wolves but the village dogs, but parents stayed calm and
they didn’t die (they would have if the canoe tipped over)

 She thinks about her childhood during the war and admits it was good
o she didn’t see all the bad (bombs, concentration camps, leaders in uniforms, pain, useless
death), only later her brother found out and told her about it
o she doesn’t feel the nostalgia hitting walking through the village

 She walks through the village and down a dirt road to a house belonging to a man named Paul, a
family friend. She asks Paul if her father has come back yet. He says not yet, "but maybe soon."
Madame, Paul's wife, makes them tea, and the narrator recalls being there with her mother when
her father was visiting Paul.
o Protagonist only remembers songs and quotes from French lessons in school but cannot
speak it  language barrier with the French speaking couple

 narrator recognizes she is annoyed with the way Paul and his wife dress up (like carvings – the
habitant kind - you can buy in souvenir shops) but she also thinks about what they might think
about her wearing jeans, sweatshirt and a fringed bag – maybe they think it’s immoral even
o but she thinks she can be forbidden because her family way “by reputation peculiar as well
as anglais” (21)  language isn’t the only thing that separates her family from the others
o later Paul asks if her husband came with her  “What he means is that a man should be
handling this” (24) – gender inequality, generational gap

 she cannot communicate with Madame (who doesn’t speak English)  she remembers her mum
and Madame to have the same problem when their husbands went outside (expedition etc.) and
they had to talk (not more than 5 words)
o language barrier especially in-between the women prevented a deeper friedship (Paula lso
knew English)

 She recalls how her dad and Paul went outside together, how they exchanged vegetables as a
ritual, how her mother and Madame sat silent next to each other, rocking the chair
o Madame says something to Paul in French, and he translates: "Your mother, she was a good
woman, Madame says it is very sad; so young too."

 The narrator recalls being with her mother in the hospital as she was dying of brain cancer. She had
told her mother she would not go to her funeral. Her mother had agreed that funerals are not
enjoyable.
o mother only went to hospital when she couldn’t walk anymore (scared they experiment on
her)
 o put her on morphine, she lost weight, looked bad, deaf on one ear
o her mum kept a weather diary

 The narrator asks Paul what happened to her father, and he says he "is just gone."
o he left everything like always: door open and boat there but he was gone
o Paul called the police because the boats are there so his father couldn’t have left the island
but they couldn’t find anything

 This is why Paul had written her to say he had disappeared

o Her father left her a “caisse postale and the keys” (24)

 Paul asks about her husband, and she lies and says he's with her. She says she is divorced and has
left her child with her husband.
o Her status is a problem (24)  she newer threw away the ring
o “[divorce]isn’t part of the vocabulary here”
o she doesn’t mention the divorce to them and not that the dad lives in a completely different
city with the baby
o barometer of wooden house with man and women responding to the weather is gone 
she realizes things have changed and her dad might not be here anymore

 After tea the narrator tells Paul and Madame she is going to go to the lake.
o she wants to look for her dead again (even though Paul assures he has looked himself
several times)

Themes:
Natural versus artificial
 the idea that not knowing the truth about something allows a fictional reality to exist
o Reader gets the sense the narrator doesn't want to face what might be a difficult reality
about her father  he may be dead, no one is sure.
This not knowing occurs in a wider context as well: During World War II when the narrator was a child, she
didn't know about the terrible things that were happening until her brother told her
o "At the time it felt like peace" (17)
o When she was unaware of the violence, it was like living in a fictional, or artificial, reality in which
Hitler did not exist

 The theme is also developed through the description of the barometer couple
o The barometer is decorated with a carved wooden man and woman the narrator thinks
Paul and Madame look like the barometer couple: "I'm annoyed with them for looking so
much like carvings ... but of course it's the other way around” (20)

o the narrator is unsure which explanation tells the true story; she can't distinguish between
the artificial or fictional and the real. She effectively creates a fictional version of her own
narrative, which she is telling to the reader
  This echoes the observation in Chapter 1 that the fountain "looks like an imitation
but it may be real."
 These references to artificial versus real things are an important part of the
narrator's search for self  they are also a clue that all may not be what it seems in
the novel; it is important to keep in mind that when a novel uses a first-person
narrator, readers get one person's account of reality = readers must look for other
clues that the narrator's observations may not be reliable  unreliable first-person
narration

Part 1, Chapter 3

 The narrator walks back toward the motel, stopping briefly at a store. A woman with a light
mustache is behind the counter
o she wore slacks and a sleeveless jersey top (old priest is gone, he disapproved it; shorts
were forbidden by law; many women never learned to swim because they were afraid to
put on bathing suits
 we see influence of the church on the life of people, especially women (restrictions,
strict on sexuality)

o Two men in Elvis Presley haircuts are at the counter in the back  distance, generational
gap, separation (she doesn’t like their looks)
o The narrator awkwardly buys some groceries and leaves as the shopkeeper makes fun of her
inadequate French
 she thinks if you live somewhere where they speak two languages (“border land”)
than you should know them – “But this isn’t where I lived” (28)

o She thinks about how there used to be just one store in the town, run by a woman called
Madame ("none of the women had names then" 29) who was missing one hand.

 She arrives back at the bar

o imitation vs. reality: photograph = imitation of more southern places (rapids, trees, man
fishing) which are themselves imitations (“the original someone’s distorted 19 th century
English gentleman’s shooting lodge” 30)
 David’s yokel dialect is “a parody of himself” (31)
o barboy Claude said lake is fished out, business is bad, they have big dragnets, some are
really big
o David (teaches Communication) and Joe work for an Adult Education Programme

 Joe asks her if she learned anything and she says no.
o he mumbles it  she knows he would prefer she wouldn’t talk
 She remembers their first meeting and considers maybe he likes her because she shows no emotion
 she admits she doesn’t even after having sex with him

 She tells the others she'd like to go to the lake for a few days and look around. They agree—they
plan to go fishing
  She recalls her father being upset when she left her husband and child; he considers leaving your
own child an "unpardonable sin." (32)
o if she knew he was safe she wouldn’t want to meet him
o she says “there was no use in trying to explain to them why it wasn’t really mine” (32)

 The friends don’t talk about their pasts  “my friends’ pasts are vague to me and to each other
also, any one of us could have amnesia for years and the others wouldn’t notice” (34)

 The four friends hire a man named Evans to take them by boat to the island where the narrator's
father's house is
o narrator feels “homsickness for a place where I never lived” (34) – the expected feeling
finally arrives, but soon she cannot see the village anymore
o it starts to rain, every year people drown in boats in this lake,
o They pull up to the dock (it was replaced with new materials but it is the same dock)
o The narrator thinks of her brother falling off the dock when they were kids and nearly
drowning.

In this chapter it becomes clear that not knowing is not only related to the theme of natural versus
artificial but also to the theme of separation versus wholeness. First is the "mystery" of the shopkeeper's
missing hand. The narrator "wanted to know how the hand had come off and ... whether [her] own hand
could ever come off" (29). However, the narrator was happier not knowing something that might be scary
—happy to live in a false, safer reality by refusing the fearful knowledge. It is also significant that the
woman's hand had been separated from her body. She was not whole. This is not the only example of
severed body parts readers will encounter, a reoccurring motif.
Not knowing connects the two themes in another example as well. The narrator elaborates on how much
she doesn't know about her friends. David "spent four years in New York and became political ... during the
sixties, I'm not sure when," she says. "My friends' pasts are vague to me and to each other also." (34)

Part 1, Chapter 4

 The four unload their baggage from Evans's boat, pay him, and watch him motor away#
 Narrator “[doesn’t] want to hear the absence” (38) – prefers to stay in the belief he might be there
than actually admitting he is gone (reality)

 They take their bags along the dock and walk toward the cabin
o father left a lot of things the way she remembers them as a child but it wasn’t like them to
keep things that are no longer needed “ The fence is a reproach, it points to my failure” (38)
– no grandchildren, she never brought her child
o the narrator thinks about her child and about her sense the child never belonged to her: it
was her husband's
 he imposed it on her, “he wanted a replica of himself” 39 and “after it was born [the
narrator] was no more use” (39)
 he was clever and kept telling her he loved her
 o She unlocks the door and everyone goes inside, poking around and finally settling down for
a beer
 David orders somebody should bring him a beer and Anna brings him one “that’s
what I like, service “ (41)  idiot, macho
o She sees no evidence of what happened to her father
 she expects “a note, a message, a will” (41) from her father, she also expected that
from her mother, not money but a token or an object; she checked her postoffice
box twice a day, but there was nothing

 The narrator lights the stove and scavenges for some vegetables in the garden, which is weedy and
overgrown

 Anna asks her if she is okay “as though its her grief, her catastrophe” (43)

 They eat dinner, wash up, and go down to the dock to smoke pot
o narrator is afraid they get bored: separation of life there (lonely, quiet, simple) vs. life in the
city  “There’s no TV or anything, I search for entertainments” ( 44)

 Anna and David seem to be happily married for nine years, and the narrator is haunted by
memories of her failed and unhappy marriage
o “he changed after I married him […] he began to expect things, he wanted to be pleased”
(46f.)
o She holds Joe's hand and listens to the call of a loon echoing over the lake.

The isolated setting of the novel becomes more apparent as Evans drops the four characters off on the
island. The sensory language used in the description of the boat's departure heightens the sense of
isolation: "the sound dwindling to a whine and fading as land and distance move between us” (37). As they
settle into the house, the narrator shows the first signs of agency—taking action, having power. Unlike on
the drive, when David was the driver and the narrator was simply a passenger, on the island the narrator is
in charge. She has expertise the others do not have, and they wait aimlessly for instructions, at a loss for
what to do.
Her clear competence in this domestic situation contrasts with her poignant memories of being powerless
and lacking agency in her marriage. She recalls that once they'd signed the papers for the marriage, her
husband had "wanted to be pleased" (47) and then, when she'd become pregnant, she felt the child was
her husband's, not hers: "He imposed it on me, all the time it was growing in me I felt like an incubator”
(39). The symbol of the barometer couple is used to elaborate on the narrator's confusion about marriage.
As she thinks about her unhappy experience, she describes her expectations of marriage in terms of the
barometer couple: "two people linked together and balancing each other."
Atwood uses and reuses images and ideas throughout the novel. For example, the narrator's desire to not
know and her discomfort with change emerge in this chapter. She refrains from announcing their arrival at
the house: "I want to ... shout 'Hello!' ... but I don't, I don't want to hear the absence” (38). And when she
visits the garden, she is struck by how much it has changed: "Before there were scarlet runners up one side
of the fence” (42). Her preference for a pleasant fiction over a harsh reality is evident in how her family
reacted to her mother's illness: "We ceased to take her illnesses seriously, they were only natural phases,
like cocoons” (40). There are consequences to preferring artificial reality over true reality: "When she died I
was disappointed in her” (40).
An odd episode in the garden furthers the theme of power. As she works the narrator has a memory in
which she believes the beans left to ripen and split in the garden could make her "all-powerful." When she
was tall enough to reach these beans, she found they did not give her power after all. In a reference to
world events, particularly Hitler, who is mentioned several times in the book, she thinks, "If I'd turned out
like the others with power I would have been evil." It's clear the narrator associates power with doing
harm, suggesting she does not wish to have power and may be actively working to avoid having it.

Part 1, Chapter 5

 The next morning, before dawn, the narrator wakes up to the sound of birds
o narrator studied art

 She looks at Joe, still sleeping, and tries to decide whether she loves him or not (49)
o Joe hass nightmares everytime they are in a new place  she can ease him with her vice
o She thinks she would "rather have him around than not; though it would be nice if he meant
something more" (49) to her
o she never felt more for anyone after her husband
o compares divorce to amputation  you survive but there is less of you
o even Joe and her are separated: most of the time Joe “is off in the place inside himself
where he spends most of his time” (53)

 She looks at the pictures on the walls—her own childhood drawings—and a jacket that had
belonged to her mother, now hanging at the foot of the bed  “dead peoples’ clothes ought to be
buried with them” (51). She falls asleep and wakes up—"surfaces"—again later, when Joe is also
awake.

 The narrator gets out of bed and gets dressed

o Anna is already up, putting on her makeup  “her artificial face is the natural one” (her real
face is battered, a worn doll’s face)
o Anna says “he doesn’t like to see me without it” (52)  David is superficial

 narrator learned about religion how others learned about sex  on the schoolyard
o she believed what the children told her – that there was a dead man watching you in
heaven so she told them how babies were made

 After breakfast the narrator makes plans to go search for her father since he cannot have left the
island
o The four go out into the forest, and as they walk along the trail she recalls being with her
husband, years ago, when he seemed perfect
 she won’t trust the words “I love you” again (56)

o She also recalls a conversation with Anna while they were cleaning up breakfast. She'd
asked Anna how she and David manage to stay together
 Anna says it’s about making an emotional commitment and letting go (but narrator
asks herself: of what?)  she starts speaking like on radio when she gives advice

o She'd told Anna her own marriage fell apart because she was too young
  she hasn’t told her friends about her baby and forces her to forget about it
 apparently “it was taken away from me, exported, deported” (57)

o Then she thinks about reading survival manuals, rather than romance magazines, as a teen.

 They find no sign of the narrator's father, and she realizes the futility of trying to find him in the
dense woods. They turn around and go back to the cabin.
Both the narrator's thoughts on Anna's predawn makeup routine and on Joe develop the theme of natural
versus artificial. As the narrator watches Joe sleep, she suggests he is content with their relationship
because he doesn't know if she loves him or not. When he knows, he might not like it: "There's always a
moment when curiosity becomes more important to them than peace and they need to ask" (49). He
might want to know for sure someday, but the risk in facing reality is you might not like it. Anna's makeup
plays a similar role: it maintains an artificial beauty that is a substitute for the natural Anna. Anna claims
David doesn't know she wears it—a statement that may or may not be true, but which is itself a fiction
Anna prefers. The narrator is surprised at Anna's face without the makeup: it looks unnatural. She thinks,
"I've never seen her without it before ... her artificial face is the natural one” (51).
The motif of language is used in this chapter to develop the theme of separation versus wholeness. The
narrator recalls "the feeling, puzzled, baffled, when I found out some words were dirty and the rest were
clean" (53) This idea evokes a remark found in the preceding chapter, when the narrator remembers her
brother needing to divide things into categories of good and bad. Here the separation between clean and
dirty—good and bad—words is based on what people are afraid of: "The bad ones in French were the
religious ones ... and in English it was the body” (53). The implication is that fear causes (or is at least one
cause of) separation and the related need to categorize and label. The question is, what creates wholeness,
or connection?
The motif of severed body parts makes an appearance as the narrator compares divorce to an amputation:
"A divorce is like an amputation, you survive but there's less of you" (49) Like the one-handed shopkeeper,
something has been separated from the narrator's self because of her experience of marriage and divorce.

Part 1, Chapter 6

 The narrator feels there is nothing to do but wait since the search is futile; she wants "to go back to
where there is electricity and distraction" (61)
o Joe and David are canoeing and Anna is reading a book
o She observes how like her own younger self Anna looks, and how like her brother and father
Joe and David look
 She thinks this leaves her playing the role of her mother
 But she's not her mother, who she remembers going on long walks in the woods and
feeding the birds in the afternoons

 The narrator is a commercial artist and currently illustrating a book of children's folk tales
o For a while she was going to be a real artist, but she listened to what her boyfriend (and
later husband said)
 “he said I should study something I’d be able to use because there have never been
any important woman artists” (63)  no gender equality; that si why she went into
Design and fabric patterns (she still listens to what he said)
 o She begins an illustration of a phoenix and a princess, briefly recalling making childhood
drawings at this same table
o After a few unsuccessful attempts at the illustrations, she gives up.

 She and her family have been pretty much cut off from the other villagers so she doesn’t know
much about them (65)
o one reason: Christianity  they did not believe as everyone else did (narrator became an
outsider in school for not going to Sunday School)
 weren’t allowed into a church as children, not even to peek through the windows
 Father: “Christianity was something he’d escaped from, he wished to protect us from
its distortions” (66)
 at some point he decided narrator was old enough and was guided by reason

 All the narrator likes about Joe is physical (69) “everything else is either unknown, disagreeable or
ridiculous” (ibid.)
o Joe teaches pottery and ceramic
o maybe it is his failure she likes (70) – it has kind of purity

 Anna comes inside and asks her, abruptly, what her father had been doing up here. She answers,
"He was living."
o He'd enjoyed isolation, she thinks, and he was a pacifist  so he withdrew from human
society to an island in "the most remote lake he could find” (71), recreational purpose of the
house at the lake
o narrator is furious with him for vanishing like this  she cannot give answers to people; if
he wanted to die he should have openly

 The narrator looks through a stack of papers left by her father and finds them to be unintelligible
drawings with nonsense words on them. She realizes he might have gone insane. She puts the
papers away as Joe and David return to the cabin.

Even though in the previous chapter the narrator made an attempt to find her father, it was a
feeble attempt. Randomly searching the dense woods and brush on the island has little chance of
success. She admits this: It is "like searching for a ring lost on a beach or in the snow: futile” (61) Yet
she feels "absolved from knowing" and is resigned: "There's no act I can perform except waiting”
(ibid.) Her attitude engages the themes of power, as the narrator chooses to be passive and wait
rather than take action. She willingly gives up her own agency and power.

The theme of natural versus artificial comes into play as her motivation for remaining passive is
explained: she doesn't want to know what happened to her father. She's afraid to know, preferring
the fiction of ignorance. This theme also emerges in her thoughts about being a commercial artist.
She is conflicted about her career because she doesn't express her own authentic artistic
sensibilities but only meets the expectations of her client. She has become an expert at imitation:
"fake Walt Disney, Victorian etchings in sepia, Bavarian cookies, ersatz Eskimo for the home
market” (64).
The narrator's description of her art career leads to additional insight into the relationship between
her and Joe. In contrast to her own commercial art endeavors, Joe's "artistic" expression is to
mangle his own pottery in ways that render it useless. Her tone toward Joe is not flattering; his art
seems petulant and petty: "Every time I sell a poster design or get a new commission, he mangles
 another pot." She manages to make fun of Joe while also admiring his failure, which "has a kind of
purity" (70) compared with her willingness to compromise.
In keeping with this chapter's focus on art is the discovery of her father's drawings. They reveal the
fearful possibility that her father went insane. At face value they seem to be strange drawings
labeled with unintelligible words. The narrator puts them away, unprepared to fully face this
possibility.

Part 1, Chapter 7

 After supper the narrator digs some worms and catches a small frog to be used as fishing bait
 they all paddle out in a canoe to fish along the mainland shore. After a few failures with the worms,
the narrator hooks the frog onto David's line, which brings them success.
o David is excited, they all laugh, it makes the narrator happy

 A motorboat carrying two Americans and Claude, a man from the motel, approaches, and the
narrator decides to go back, recalling past encounters with other Americans
o they made fun of Americans “they liked everything collapsible” (81)
o “being here feels right to me for the first time and I know it’s because we are leaving
tomorrow” (82)
o she wants to brun her father’s drawings  “they are evidence of the wrong sort” (82)

his chapter displays the narrator's competence in the arts of survival. This again contrasts her struggle for
competence and power in other areas of life (such as her repeated failures with the illustrations in the
previous chapter) with her wilderness survival skills. The chapter also returns to the matter of the
narrator's discomfort about her father's drawings. Now that she suspects he might be insane, she imagines
him lurking everywhere, presenting a danger to her friends.
Of particular note is when the narrator uses the frog to catch a fish. As the narrator hooks the frog in a no-
nonsense way, Anna calls her "coldblooded” (78). The narrator has already revealed she believes Joe fell
for her because she doesn't show emotions, and she isn't sure she loves Joe. This is a character trait that is
important to notice and track throughout the book. Why does the narrator have trouble feeling or
expressing emotions?
Another interesting aspect of this frog-hooking episode is the way the narrator describes it in terms of
mystical power. She describes fishing as something you could do by "invocation" or "prayer" and the frog
as "magic." She remembers pretending the fish came willingly. She dislikes the idea of using power to
cause harm.

Part 1, Chapter 8
 The next morning as the narrator prepares the fish, David and Joe film its innards for Random
Samples

 The narrator’s brother also left and evaded tehri parents as much as the narrator did
o explores mineral rights for big international companies and he’s somewhere in the outback

 After breakfast she begins to pack up, but David says he wants to stay another week, and Joe
agrees
o Anna is not thrilled with the idea, and neither is the narrator
 o When Evans arrives David arranges for him to come back in a week while the narrator
retreats to the outhouse

o She recalls hiding from people during birthday parties and other social occasions, as well as
being the victim in other children's games (they would tie her to fences and leaver her until
an adult helped her)
 she changed school every year  “I was the one who didn’t know the local customs,
like a person from another culture” (88)
 she learned to escape, to tie knots
 same with her brother  first hje didn’t fight back because their mother was against
fighting, then he could fight back, but only if they hit him first

 These memories of childhood cause her to question the nature of memory and to review her life's
narrative to make sure it still "fits”(90)
o She senses her memory is intact until one point, the time she "left," 8(90) when it becomes
disjointed. She has a moment of panic, but when David knocks on the outhouse door she
comes back to herself.

 Later she goes for a swim and remembers jumping off the dock
o One time her brother had nearly drowned here, but their mother saved him
o As a child she had worried about where her brother would have gone if he'd died
o She also remembers diving when she was young and staring upward at the sky through the
water

Part 2, Chapter 9

 The narrator has a growing sense of uneasiness about her own past and about staying on the island
o She feels her father's presence and fears he may be in danger, and she thinks her friends
should not go off alone (96)

 She takes crumbs out to feed the birds.  Joe follows; he looks like he wants to talk
o he frowns (might be an indication he wants to talk), “speech to him was a task, a battle” (97)

 They are interrupted by David, who wants to chop wood

o David and Joe go off with an axe and a hatchet to look for firewood
o The narrator decides this is safe since they have weapons

 She and Anna go to the garden and pull weeds

o Anna asks her if she took the pill and she is surprised because its again a personal question
(she doesn’t take it anymore)
o Anna also doesn’t take it anymore, but David wants her to get back on it (cf. 100) 
irresponsible of him since she already has a blood clot in her leg
o the pill was a failure and women returned to taking condoms

 Narrator felt like an animal when she gave birth in the hospital; she wouldn’t want to have another
child because of that
 o “it was too much to go through for nothing […] they take out the baby with a fork”  like a
butcher, mechanic or technican
o she didn’t feel human and she felt completely out of control; they did with her what they
wanted to do with her
o her husband wasn’t there with her but she couldn’t remember why, but eh collected her
afterwards “it was his idea, his fault” (101)

 She remembers her parents digging the garden and her mother scaring off a bear that had raided
their food stores (cf. 99)
o their parents made the garden, the real soil was too sandy and anemic (this oblong now was
artificial)
o also remembers her brother who cut the trail the year before he left

 When Joe and David return with a log, they want to capture some shots of it for Random Samples.
Later, after everyone is in bed, the narrator hears Anna and David having sex.

This chapter begins with an observation that the neck of the body is "a lie" because it gives the impression
that the head is separate from the body. Because the neck makes the head and body seem separate, it is
possible for people to "look down at their bodies and move them around as if they were robots or
puppets" (95). This suggests the narrator feels as if she is doing this very thing—operating her body as if it
is a robot. There's a price to having your body severed from your head, however: "both of them will die”
(ibid.). She says she holds "the clues and solutions and the power" (ibid.) for her next steps, however,
suggesting she is on the cusp of an emotional or spiritual breakthrough.

Motifs of language (or lack of) and severed body parts help to develop her feelings of alienation and thus
the theme of separation versus wholeness. Combined with the missing memories of the previous chapter,
the need for wholeness—integration of past and present, head and body—has become much more urgent.
The narrator knows continued separation of these parts leads to death.
Another exchange of interest is the conversation between Anna and the narrator about being on birth
control pills. Both women have given up taking them because of serious side effects. This conversation
develops the theme of power: it addresses a societal power imbalance between men and women. Birth
control pills allow people to have sex without risking a pregnancy, but they carry health risks for the
women. Thus the pills offer greater sexual freedom, but women assume risks while the men get nothing
but benefits. Furthermore, because the system favors men, efforts to make birth control pills less risky for
women are lacking. Anna complains, "You think they'd be able to come up with something that'd work
without killing you." The narrator thinks: "Love without fear, sex without risk, that's what they wanted to
be true."

This conversation also leads to some disturbing imagery, as the narrator recalls her birth experience. They
"tie your hands down," she recalls. "They take the baby out. ... After that they fill your veins up with red
plastic” (101). In this nightmarish birth scenario, the mother, who should have the power, is stripped of
any power. Afterward the woman's blood is replaced with plastic. Plastic is artificial and does not have life
or emotion, in contrast with blood, which is associated with passion.
Part 2, Chapter 10

 Time seems to move slowly as the narrator increasingly dreads what might happen if they
encounter her father
o She wants to "get them off the island, to ... save all of them from knowledge” (105)

 David fishes, Anna reads, the narrator works on her illustrations, and Joe watches her
o Her sketch of a giant ends up looking like a football player

 Joe seems bored and unhappy

o She realizes it is unfair for her to stay with him because she gives him "unlimited supplies of
nothing” (106)  she realizes she should have ended it earlier

 The narrator proposes going to pick blueberries  the four pack a lunch, get in the canoes, and
paddle to another island, which is covered with blueberry bushes

 As they pic Joe says they should get married

o She says no: they already live together so it wouldn’t make any difference
o He says he thinks she doesn't care about him
o She insists she does care, while privately thinking about leaving him and their shared flat
o he is sad and she begins to panic
o She tells him she was married before and had a child, and she doesn't want to go through it
again
 she says it in a mechanic way
o She recalls, with distaste, the day of her wedding.
 she is scared of his rage

 Later they all eat blueberry pie and talk politics

 David, Joe, and Anna read books and old issues of National Geographic while the narrator looks for
more things in Anna and David’s room and looked through old scrapbooks

o she looks through hers and finds illustrations from magazines pasted into them (mostly
ladies)  When people asked what you wanted to be while growing up you said “a lady” or
“a mother” and that was what she wanted to be when she was young
o instead of her brother she didn’t paint war, explosions, monsters, but easter eggs
(hedonistic, stodgy, like a vision of heaven)
o Afterward she hides the scrapbooks under the mattress in her room  “I didn’t want them
spying” (116).
As this chapter begins, there is growing tension and emotional distance between Joe and the narrator.
The narrator takes the blame for this on herself, saying she overwhelms him with "nothing." Yet it should
be pointed out he isn't Prince Charming. He passively goes along with whatever David wants, spends a
good deal of time staring and sulking, and undermines her sense of herself as an artist with his mangled
pots.
The narrator's description of her wedding day is of particular importance. She describes signing the papers
at her wedding and the sights, smells, and sensations accompanying the memory. She recalls the smell of
antiseptic, her new husband saying, "It's over, feel better?" and "It's better this way," her shaking legs, and
an ache. These details do not fit well in a memory of a wedding, even one that led to an unhappy marriage.
They make far more sense when the true memory is revealed later in the book, like puzzle pieces that
finally snap together.

An interesting connection to Chapter 1 occurs in the midst of this wedding day memory. As they leave the
post office where they were married, the narrator recalls seeing a fountain with "dolphins and a cherub
with part of the face missing." In Chapter 1 the narrator notices a similarly described fountain as they enter
her childhood town: "an eighteenth-century fountain ... stone dolphins and a cherub with part of the face
missing." In Chapter 1 the narrator commented the fountain "looks like an imitation but it may be real."
Now it becomes clear why the narrator had this strange reaction. The fountain in Chapter 1 was too similar
to something in an unreliable memory to be trusted. At some level the narrator knows her mind is creating
a fiction. She just doesn't know what the reality is—not yet.

It's significant that part of the cherub's face is missing: it engages the severed body parts motif. Two other
instances of the severed body parts motif appear in this chapter: the narrator's description of coins as
metal disks with "leaves on one side and a man's head chopped off at the neck on the reverse" (108) and
images in her childhood scrapbooks of "women's dresses clipped from mail-order catalogues, no bodies in
them" (115). These underscore the narrator's profound sense of separation or disconnection from herself.

Part 2, Chapter 11

 That night Joe is sullen and refuses the narrator's sexual advances.
o At breakfast he ignores her. David and Anna wonder what's wrong

 As the narrator feeds the birds, Paul arrives at the dock in his boat accompanied by another man—
Bill Malmstrom, a member of the Detroit branch of the Wildlife Protection Association of America
o Malmstrom wants to buy the home and land as a retreat for members, bunting and fishing
 he doesn’t want to see the house because he has had his eye on it for quite some
time
 the price he offers is good (“a price that meant I could forget abouzt Quebec Folk
Tales and children’s books and everything else, at elast for a while” (120)
 narrator wants to know if he wants to change it into a motel or high-rises, but he
would more or less leave it the way it is

o The narrator says it isn't for sale at the moment  she doesn’t trust him (119)
 since she doesn’t know if her father is dead and who’s the legal owner she can’t sell
it; her dad would be furious if he came back and the house was sold

o After the two men leave, David says he thinks Malmstrom is with the CIA and was scouting
the place for a base in the coming "war"—a war in which America will try to take over
Canada for its clean water.

 Later, Anna tells the narrator David has had several affairs
 o he also compliments and flirts with other women while she is in the same room, he would
even fuck them while she is there but he does it somewhere else and tells her about it later
o He's honest about them, and when she becomes jealous, he says that jealousy is
"bourgeois." (126)
o "Really," she says, "it's just to show me he can do it and get away with it. I can’t stop him.”
(126) Anna warns the narrator David might hit on her to make Anna jealous
 he said to everyone “I like it round and firm and fully packed. Anna you’re eating too
much” (125) and talks about the narrator’s good body  he is an asshole and it
doesn’t look like real love or respect for Anna
o The narrator is disappointed Anna and David's marriage isn't as good as she thought.

After several chapters driven by the narrator's escalating internal crisis, this chapter circles back to the
theme of Canadian identity. After Bill Malmstrom leaves, David launches into a paranoid rant about
America taking over Canada for its clean water. Although David's ideas are extreme, the fact that
Malmstrom wants to purchase the land for use by Americans seems to be in the same vein. Perhaps, rather
than making war on Canada to get at its pristine natural landscape and water sources, Americans will
simply buy it, piece by piece.
Although it is only ever mentioned in passing, the narrator has assumed the role of her mother by
regularly feeding the birds, as she remembers her mother doing. This recalls her sense in Chapter 6 that
she had stepped into the role of her mother, with Anna playing the role of the narrator and the men
playing the roles of her father and brother. And even in Chapter 10, taking the three of them blueberry
picking and then making them pie casts the three friends in very childlike roles. All of these small events
contribute to the subtle transformation of the narrator into the role of her mother.
o also: weeding the garden, cooking etc.

Part 2, Chapter 12

 The narrator goes to the lake to rinse out a dirty pail, Joe is lying on the dock
o David asks narrator to come to the outhouse with him (he wants to have sex with her)

 Back in the cabin alone, the narrator again looks through the rooms: she went through shelves,
looked under the bench etc. and inside his father’s books.
o she looked again through father's mad drawings, hoping to find a will or other document
o But then she finds a letter from a researcher (Dr. Robin M. Grove) at a university thanking
her father for the tracings of the rock paintings of the area
o A few pages of a book on the topic are included.
o the narrator realizes the deranged drawings are not her father's at all, but tracings of
ancient art
o Her earlier hypothesis disproven, she concludes he is sane and therefore must just be dead
 thinks he is dead, cannot recall him,
o Notes and numbers made on the drawings seem to be locations where he'd found the rock
paintings
o She decides to visit the places, starting with White Birch Lake, which is "connected to the
main lake by a portage," or a place to carry canoes over land.
 it is a game and she “would play it with him”, it would make him “seem as less
dead” (132)  it’s like a treasure map
  Anna comes (sun burnt) in and advises the narrator to go talk to Joe, who seems upset
o the narrator tells Anna he wants to get married
 she realized she didn’t feel awful because she didn’t want to marry Joe; she didn’t
have feelings for a long time
 “his vulnerability embarrassed me, he could still feel, I should have been more
careful with him” (135)
o the narrator goes down to the dock. Joe wants her to say she loves him
o She offers him lukewarm assurance: "I want to. I do in a way."
 he believes she thinks his work is crap, she thinks he’s a loser and he is not worth it
(she envied him for his emotions, his pain)

 Back in the cabin, the narrator looks through an old photo album, trying to "tell when the change
occurred"—when she stopped feeling emotions
o She sees photos of her mother feeding the birds and of herself as a child at different ages:
"not me but the missing part of me” (137).
o But the photos do not answer her question
 she compares herself to a severed finger (not even a head), she was the detached,
terminal part and the part that could live was locked away
In this chapter the narrator finds closure to the mystery of what happened to her father. The closure is not
the kind she wants, however. She was happier in the artificial reality of not knowing. Now she feels as
though her knowledge has killed her father: "I shouldn't have tried to find out, it's killed him." However,
knowing or not knowing does not change the reality. It is significant the narrator believes on some level if
she doesn't know about a death, it didn't happen. And after finding evidence her father was not insane,
just interested in rock paintings, she determines her next step: follow in his footsteps by visiting places he
had identified as sites of the paintings. This decision seems to be a relief, and more importantly, the
narrator has found something active to do rather than passively wait. In addition, admitting her father is
dead frees her up to focus on another problem: "It was no longer his death but my own that concerned
me." Her father's fate is an external mystery. The more important one is what has happened to her
memories and emotions.
The unresolved tension between the narrator and Joe revolves around her inability to love him, or to feel
in general. It is significant that this characteristic appealed to Joe at the beginning of their relationship,
when it meant matter-of-fact, casual sex without emotional entanglements. But now that he's in love with
her, he would like her to be less cold. There's a subtle criticism of men's embrace of the sexual revolution
here. Atwood is saying men prefer casual sex from women when it is convenient. However, if they begin to
have feelings for a woman, they suddenly long for a more "traditional" situation, for instance, marriage.
Atwood, always attentive to the power imbalance between men and women, illustrates how even social
change perceived as increasing equality often favors men. This ties in with the conversation in Chapter 9
between Anna and the narrator, in which they discuss the detrimental health effects of birth control pills.

When the narrator is forced to admit her lack of feelings for Joe, she decides to search for the time when
she stopped feeling emotions by looking through the old photo albums. Although she notices the lack of
wedding pictures and recalls they had not taken any, she concludes there are "no hints or facts" to be
found in the albums—the turning point must have been after the events recorded in the photos. There is
an abundance of severed body part imagery to support her sense of separation from self. She thinks, "At
some point my neck must have closed over ... shutting me into my head." She is like a woman "sawn apart
in a wooden crate, wearing a bathing suit, smiling, a trick done with mirrors." She has come apart, she says.
"The other half, the one locked away" can live, but her present form is "the wrong half, detached,
terminal ... something minor like a severed thumb." (138)

Part 2, Chapter 13

 The next morning Joe and the narrator decide she will move out when they get back to the city

 The four set off in canoes to find the rock painting location she'd identified from her father's papers

 When they stop for lunch, they eat and discuss a variety of topics, and David makes some rude
comments in typical fashion (like housewives only watch TV and switch off their heads)

 They move on. Along the way the narrator thinks about her lack of emotions and concludes she
only has one: fear that she isn't really alive
o She remembers being anesthetized as if it were sinking down though layers of darkness,
then rising up again to daylight with no memory of what had happened.

 Around four o'clock they pass two Americans on an official-looking surveying trip, chain sawing
trees
o David expresses his dislike for Americans
o they cut off trees; narrator worried they are from government, the paper company or the
power company
 if power company they would raise the sea level again and would leave the trees to
rot

 The wind was strong, they change the course; they pull onto shore and unload the canoes, then
portage across the land. The narrator sees a dead heron hanging by a rope.
o the narrator gets the others to follow them by telling it might be interesting material for
their film
The interactions between David and Anna in this chapter show a dark side of David. He dislikes "Women's
Lib" (141) and crudely teases Anna, insulting her intelligence and asking her "how she would like to be
raped by a porcupine" (143) However, the chapter highlights a few interesting similarities between David
and the narrator. David's loud dislike of the men they pass on the way—who they take to be Americans—
echoes the narrator's own private thoughts. She, too, dislikes Americans and finds their behavior both
destructive and suspicious. Additionally, both David and the narrator are the ones who exert control over
the terms of their romantic relationships. Even the narrator's statement "I think men ought to be
superior" is more of a jab at Joe, who moves between being passive and passive-aggressive, than a
statement of the narrator's beliefs about men and women generally. David picks up on this when instead
of responding, Joe just grunts. David tells the narrator, "He'd make a great end-table lamp." Even to this
insult, Joe only gives a wan smile.
Part 2, Chapter 14

 David and Joe take some shots of the dead heron for Random Samples

 The narrator assumes the bird was killed by the Americans they had passed earlier

o Since herons aren't good for food, there is no reason to kill one  only reason: to destroy
it, to demonstrate power like people do with trophies of dead animals on the wall (severed
heads)
o you can see their footsteps like craters destroying the nature around them (negative image
of Americans)

 While fishing, the narrator recalls a childhood memory of going inside an abandoned tugboat and
seeing drawings of vaginas on the walls
o She had been shocked they were "cut off like that from the bodies that ought to have gone
with them" (153)

 David landed a bass whereas Joe let escape his

o David wants narrator to kill the fish but she wants him to do it since she showed him and
“the fish was whole, I couldn’t any more, I had no right to” (153)
o she rescues the frog (as her father said: recreation, amusement were explanations why
people fish nowadays but no excuses)
o narrator remembers how they used frog in school  killed them to look at the organs
“anything we could do to the animals we could do toe ach other” (154)

 they pass the young Americans

o David didn’t insult them but was just answering that indeed they got lots of fishes
o narrator thinks they are the kind of people who get a lot of illegal fish, who chase fish or
loons as long as they die or get into the propeller of their boat  “Senseless killing, it was a
game; after the war they’d been bored” (155)

 Later the narrator talks to Anna about David

o Anna worries David will be angry because she forgot her makeup (156)
 he wants her to look “like a young chick” otherwise he gets mad
 he punishes her if she doesn’t follow his rules but he also changes them a lot so she
never quite knows what happens “He’ll get me for it” (156)
 the way he punishes her is fucking her so hard it hurts her (or he doesn’t fuck her at
all)

o She says David "waits for excuses" to treat her badly

o The narrator says maybe Anna should leave him or get a divorce
o Anna says “he can’t stand having me love him” (157), she thinks he would sometimes like
her to die
o the narrator knows more and more who Anna really is and when she later on sings a song
she knows it is not her real voice, this cheerful voice
  Anna wear’s the narrator’s jacket
o all she can remember of her mother (the rest is blanked-out) is a story she told her and her
sister trying to build wings out of an umbrella  it failed and she broke both her ankles
jumping from the barn roof
o “the story seemed to me then chilly and sad, the failure unbearable” (157) while her mother
laughed about it

 That night in their tent the narrator thinks she could only love him like this, when he is sleeping and
not demanding anything from her (158)
o Joe tells the narrator they can just go back to the way they were before he brought up
marriage and love
o She says no, it was too late, she had already moved out (159)
o she was scared he would hit her because he got angry but he turned around

In the narrator's mind, Americans are associated with violence and destruction without cause. So the
dead heron—a bird that isn't a pest and isn't good for food—is symbolic of senseless killing and
emblematic of American behavior. This is, presumably, in contrast with the Canadian way of interacting
with nature.

The severed body parts motif takes an unusual form in this chapter. The narrator recalls the drawings of
disembodied vaginas and perhaps other sexual body parts she had seen in the old tugboat. The severed
body part images so far have focused on the head and hands—separating thought, emotion, and action,
perhaps. Given previous conversations about birth control, sex, and love, this new imagery suggests
discomfort with the idea that people have separated sex from the rest of the self. The narrator's shock at
seeing the vaginas apart from their bodies shows her longing for wholeness, especially in the sexual
realm. However, the image of disembodied vaginas is not unlike the image of people having sex with bags
over their heads—an image the narrator found somewhat comforting or appealing earlier in the novel. This
suggests mixed feelings: she longs for wholeness and integration but also finds separation comforting.
She wants to know but is also afraid of knowing.

Part 2, Chapter 15

 The next morning the four set out to film the rock paintings for Random Samples
o Although the narrator had been confident of the location of the rock painting based on her
father's notes, they do not find it – “I felt as though he had lied to me” (162) she wants to
“confront him, demand and explanation” (163)
o On the way back to their campsite, they meet and talk to the Americans,
- first she liked the thoughts of the Americans to be dead and even kill them herself
(164) and explains their “bland ignorance, heads empty as weather balloons […]
straight power” (163), also calls them “happy killers [without] conscience or piety”
(ibid.)
o thinks about countries in which animals are holy, representing an ancestor or the child of
god where they would at least feel guild for their actions
 o Then she finds out they are actually Canadians (they didn’t have a flag on their boat but a
sticker of the New York Mets baseball team one of the guys really likes)  the narrator is
angry, she had been convinced Canadians wouldn't have killed a heron for no reason
- the guys also thought the narrator and her friends were “Yanks” (164)

o for her they are still Americans  Americans spread themselves like a virus and take over
the cells of other people (Canadians turned into Americans, infected)
- if you think and talk like them you are them (165)
- asks herself “how did we get bad?”  as a child the ultimate evil for her was Hitler
even though by that time Hitler was dead and rotten
- asks “Are the Americans worse than Hitler?” (166)
- interesting: even though they behave like Americans David now wants to stay with
them and talk about basketball with them since he ahs found out they are Canadians
 only nationality matters to him not actual acts and mindset

 They pack the tents and food and portage back along the same trail they traveled before
o They pass the heron again, and the narrator feels complicit in its senseless killing: "The
trouble some people have being German ... I have being human" (167)
- these animals have no spokesperson
- she is very angry – of course there are worse things happening: wars, riots
massacres but there are usually explanations for it; the death of the heron was
causeless

 She recalls playing to be animals with her brother

o sometimes they were scared their parents (who were seen as the humans) would kill them,
but one day they were the bees and “killed” a doll
o their parents taught them killing was wrong except enemies and food

 She recalls her brother keeping small animals like frogs in jars and tin cans, sometimes leaving them
to die
o she'd let them out once and he'd been angry
o So she never did again, afraid to do it, but knowing giving in to this fear meant more would
die  “Because of my fear they were killed” (168)
o She wanted there to be peace and happiness but his now she realizes his picture was more
accurate, he was a realist
o also father was cruel to leeches: he would put them back into the fire even when they
started to crawl back towards the direction of the water (seems as if they could smell it); he
waited for their mother to look away ( she prohibited cruelty)

 The four reach the main lake, load the canoes, and set off back toward the cabin.
o it was power company workers  her country is sold or drowned, becoming a reservoir,
people land and animals are sold as a bargain

The disillusionment of finding out the men she thought were Americans are Canadians develops the theme
of Canadian identity by describing its absence. Like the birch trees in the first paragraph of the novel,
which are being slowly killed by a disease moving northward from the south, Canadian identity is also
dying from the spread of American culture northward from the south. The tendency to kill and destroy for
no good reason, symbolized by the heron, has spread from Americans to Canadians.

The narrator takes this personally, likening it to being German in the time of Hitler—a sense of shame
because of citizenship in a country or membership in a group. But the group the narrator is ashamed to be
part of is the human race. If senseless killing is the norm not only for Americans but also for Canadians,
perhaps all humans have this tendency inside them. She then concludes that passively standing by while
someone else does violence makes a person complicit in the violence. This concept is expanded on by the
memory of how she allowed her brother to intimidate her into leaving his disturbing experiments alone.

Part 2, Chapter 16

 Tomorrow Evans is coming to take them back, so the narrator's time is running out
o She checks the map of rock painting sites again and decides to check another location—a
closer one
o However, the location is underwater, so she'll have to dive to find it
o her theory why they didn’t find any paintings: some of the crosses might be places he
thought suitable for paintings but hadn’t examined yet
o if it doesn’t work out she would try some one the next “marked spots

 She puts on a sweatshirt over her bathing suit and goes down to the lake, where, unseen, she
watches as David tries to get Anna to pose naked for Random Samples  David says “Come on, we
need a naked lady with big tits and a big ass” (172)
o Anna accuses David of trying to humiliate her
o David mocks her and says, "Now just take it off like a good girl or I'll have to take it off for
you" (173) and once she took of her bikini: “Look sexy mow, move it; give us a little dance”
(174)
o She takes off her bikini, gives the middle finger, and dives into the lake
o Anna cries, she swore, she climbed up the hill into the cabin without talking to the narrator
or even looking at her (174)

 The narrator compares herself to David  they have something in common: “we are the one’s that
don’t know how to love, there is something essential missing in us, we were born that way […]
atrophy of the heart” (175)

 After Anna and Joe leave, the narrator approaches David, still on the dock
o As he fiddles with the bikini top Anna left behind, she asks why he did it
o He says, "She asks for it"
 she makes him do these things by going off with other men and not being honest
about it
 he doesn’t think she loves him, his eyes are sad rather than hostile (176)
 he thinks she actually wants to break up with him
 he says they don’t talk a lot if other people aren’t around and the narrator suggests
that they should talk
 he says she is stupid and he married a pair of boobs
  he says “I’m all for the equality of women; she just doesn’t happen to be equal”
(176)
 narrator ironically thinks about what Anna told her: their marriage works
because they’ve made an emotional commitment  they hate each other;
“that must be almost as absorbing as love” (177)
o David asks the narrator if he can join as a paddler
o The narrator takes a canoe and paddles away.

In the first paragraph of this chapter, the narrator gives a reason for her anxiety about running out of time.
Her brain is "covering over the bad things and filling the empty spaces with an embroidery of calculations
and numbers" (170). This statement both describes her attempt to find and face the truth about her
father and her attempt to find out the truth about herself. As fast as she is working to delve into these
parallel mysteries, her mind is working to keep the truth covered over. She knows she has repressed or
altered memories, and she wants to know why.

Witnessing the scene between David, Anna, and Joe causes the narrator to realize the similarity between
herself and David, which has become apparent during their stay on the island. She thinks, "We are the
ones that don't know how to love, there is something essential missing in us." The scene also helps the
narrator understand David and Anna don't have an emotional bond of love, but they do have a bond. She
thinks, "They hate each other; that must be almost as absorbing as love." She likens this to the barometer
couple from Madame and Paul's house. The wooden couple has a bond that can't be broken, but it isn't
love: it's glue. These bonds are "almost like peace," she notes.

Then she recalls her own mother and father working together to saw wood, and the two of them working
together are another version of the barometer couple. Like David and Anna and the barometer couple, her
parents had a bond. What is the nature of her parents' bond? In this symbolic image it is sawing—or
severing—a birch tree, a tree that, in the opening paragraph of the book, is the victim of a destructive
disease moving up from the south.

Part 2, Chapter 17

 The narrator paddles toward a cliff marking the location of the submerged painted rock she seeks

 She thinks about the heron, suffering and dying, and likens it to Christ—something that has died
instead of us

 When she reaches the cliff, she stands up in the canoe and looks down at the water, where she sees
her own image
o the first time she doesn’t see anything
o she repeatedly dives down and surfaces, searching for the painted rock.
o it is harder for her to remember the motions and dive since she hasn’t done it in a long time
– “like learning to walk after illness” (181)
  After several attempts, exhausted, she finally sees something
o first, she is fascinated by the fish
o Then she sees the real thing: but it isn't a painting on a rock. It is "a dark oval trailing limbs ...
something I knew about, a dead thing" (182)

 Panicking, full of fear she looks up at the bottom of the canoe and sees another canoe there. She
surfaces and hauls herself into her canoe
o The other one is Joe's—he's come looking for her
o she doesn’t want him to be there; she can barely pull herself into the canoe, trouble
breathing

 As she rests, she realizes what she saw in the lake was a vision of her own aborted fetus
o The fact of her abortion comes back to her now, along with all the invented memories she'd
layered on top of it to avoid seeing the truth—like a fake scrapbook or photo album
o She realizes all the memories of her "wedding day" are fraudulent  she had actually come
out of the abortion clinic, and the father of the child—who was not her husband—had
picked her up
 it wasn’t a clinic, but a shabby house where she got the abortion
 she knew she couldn’t go home after that but “I sent them a postcard” (184)
 she never told them about the abortion nor why she left, she wanted them
too keep their innocence, she didn’t know how to describe the evil to them
o He wanted her to get the abortion and she didn’t say no even though she could  “that
made me one of them too, a killer” (185)
o he was bewildered she didn’t want to see him again, he expected gratitude for him
arranging the appointment; other men just wouldn’t have bothered

 As Joe waits, baffled, she begins to imagine her father had marked some places on his map not
because there were rock paintings there but because he knew these were places you could learn
the truth, places where you could have "true vision ... after the failure of logic” (186)  the Indians
knew where salvation lived and marked the sacred places where you could learn the truth so her
father lead her there

 She paddles to shore and leaves her sweatshirt as an offering to the gods that were there and who
had given this place their power
o Joe follows, wanting to know what's wrong, wanting sex  he tells him “I don’t love you”
(187) but he doesn’t listen, he wants her to lay down
o She refuses him by telling him she will get pregnant (which isn’t even a lie) and he goes
away, angry.
This pivotal chapter provides the revelation both the narrator and readers have been anticipating. Instead
of going to a hospital to have a child, she had gone to an abortion clinic to have an abortion. The true
memory is painful: "I killed it. It wasn't a child but it could have been one, I didn't allow it." Many of the
disturbing details related previously in the novel now make far more sense, heightening the impression of
puzzle pieces fitting into place. This is a powerful moment in which the artificial reality falls away,
revealing reality. It is the beginning of bringing the parts of herself, which have been separated, back
together—the beginning of wholeness.
Her painful memories of her abortion experience also develop the theme of power. Like the animals in the
jars she decided not to save, the pregnancy—not a child but the possibility of one—was given up passively.
Someone else wanted it, and she agreed to go along. But rather than allowing her to relinquish
responsibility, her lack of action has made her complicit: "He made me do it ... I could have said No but I
didn't; that made me one of them too, a killer." This is essential to the narrator's developing sense of her
own agency. Power and responsibility are part of the human condition. Inaction is still a kind of action. To
be human, she will have to accept both power and its consequences.

This dual self is reflected in the imagery of the chapter. The narrator sees her image on the surface of the
water and observes it as being almost another self: "My other shape was in the water, not my reflection
but my shadow." The twinning imagery is repeated when the narrator looks up from below the surface of
the water and sees not one but two canoes: "The canoe had twinned or I was seeing double." The second
canoe is a real one, but the narrator correctly perceives her own "double vision."

Among other questions, the mystery of the fountain with the dolphins and cherub is cleared up here. Now
she realizes the real fountain is the one from her town, which her mind had inserted into the constructed,
fictional memory to give it a touch of authenticity.

The novel's title, Surfacing, has a metaphorical meaning that is concretely illustrated in this chapter. The
title references how the narrator's submerged memories come to the surface of her consciousness. In
this chapter her literal dive into the deep water can be seen as a symbolic dive into her subconscious,
where her repressed memory is stored. She encounters this memory and, as she swims upward and
surfaces, she brings the memory up with her. The water becomes a symbol of her subconscious mind, and
the dive represents the emotional work she does to bring the painful memory into the light and begin to
heal.

Part 2, Chapter 18

 When the narrator returns to the cabin, it is empty and feels unfamiliar
o She sits on a swing outside and thinks about the affair that led to her pregnancy
 he gave her a plain gold ring (opener for motel doors)
 they had sex with a condom
 for him she was anyone, “but for me he was unique” (190) because she had her first
sex with him and learned from him, “I worshipped him” (ibid.)
 he had the affair to prove he was still young – “he didn’t want our relationship to
influence anything; it was to be kept separate from life” (190)
 he told her he loved her
 one night she locked herself into the bathroom and turned on the water of the
bathtub and he cried probably afraid she would kill herself (he tells her about his
family, his wife and children)

o She is grateful her father left her the puzzle of his drawings and map markings to solve, for it
was a gift that led her to the sacred place
 o But now she feels she will not be complete until she has found a gift from her mother
 her dad gave her knowledge “his were the god for the head” (195), but there were
more gods than his

 She walks along a trail, thinking about this, when David approaches her
o He wants sex. He aggressively grabs her, and she twists away and tells him she doesn’t want
to get pregnant
o Then he tells her Joe is having sex with Anna right now, so it would be retaliation for the two
of them to do the same (a duty, an obligation, justice  geometrical sex, David needed her
for an abstract principle (194))
o She still refuses  thinks he isn’t true, second-hand American was spreading over him

 At dinner she realizes Anna had sex with Joe because it is her way of maintaining power in her
marriage
o Anna and David's marriage is like a competition they are locked into: "If she ever
surrendered the balance of power would be broken and he would go elsewhere" (196)


 The narrator reveals to Anna and Joe that David approached her for sex and she refused him
o David accuses her of hating men, but she thinks, "It wasn't the men I hated, it was the
Americans, the human beings, men and women both” (197)
o She thinks it would be nice to make humans vanish so there would be more room for the
animals
o When she doesn't respond to David's accusation, Anna asks her mockingly if she's going to
answer
o She says no  "she really is inhuman," Anna says.

The narrator is in a precarious state. On the one hand she is beginning to regain wholeness. Her feeling
that the cabin is unfamiliar, she explains, is because of the previous separation of herself into two halves.
One half has been living in the cabin for a week, while the other hasn't been there in a long time: "The half
of me that had begun to return was not yet used to it." These indications of returning wholeness are
positive signs. But on the other hand, there is a great deal of emotional work to be done before the
narrator is restored to sanity. She has developed new spiritual beliefs about the lake and delusions about
her parents' intentions to leave her gifts that will guide her and make her "completed."
On top of the very personal issues she is facing—coping with painful memories and estranged family
relationships—she also faces external challenges from her three companions. This internal/external
parallelism is evident throughout the novel. For example, as she tries to solve the mystery of her father's
disappearance, she is also solving the mystery of her fragmented memory and lack of emotion. Here sexual
conflict and power games among the four companions provide the external struggle mirroring her internal
struggle. She sees the bond between David and Anna as a balancing of power, and she needs to find a
similar balance within herself. The logical mind and the part that goes beyond logic have to come into
equilibrium.
The seeds of her next big challenge can be found in her internal response to David's accusation. While she
doesn't say anything aloud, she does think about whether or not she hates men. Her conclusion is she
hates Americans and also humans in general. This seems like two overlapping categories, but a closer look
brings out the difference. "Americans" is a group she does not identify with, and furthermore it is
representative of a culture she sees as being toxic to nature and to Canadian culture and identity.
Americanness seems to spread like a disease, evident in the killing of the heron by the group of Canadians.
However, humans are a group she does belong to. And to be fair the humans in the novel—past and
present—have few redeeming qualities. Aside from Paul and Madame, they are mocking, violent,
destructive, manipulative, unloving, and self-centered. Given this crowd of poor examples of humanity and
the narrator's desire to avoid complicity in humanity's sins, perhaps it is not surprising she begins to
identify with the animals. As Anna notes, she is "inhuman" (197) To the narrator, this is a compliment.
However, she is human, and to be fully whole she will need to reconcile herself to this identity.

Part 2, Chapter 19

 After supper, the narrator searches for the gift from her mother
o When she enters her own room she senses "power, in my hands and running along my
arms" (199)
o She is certain the gift is in the scrapbooks she's hidden

 Her search is interrupted by the arrival of four men: Claude, Paul, and two game wardens. They
have come to report some Americans found her father's body while fishing hooking the body by
mistake
o David relays the news
o body was unrecognizable, but Paul recognized the closes
o he has a scull fracture so he might have fallen off a cliff
o the body had been diving so they don’t know where exactly it has happened
o he has a big camera around his neck, they assume the weight kept him down otherwise the
body would have been found earlier

o She believes David and Anna are making it up to hurt her

 she thinks David cleverly thought quickly and made it up in a short time (clever to
have guessed the missing camera)
 even when David asks if she wanted to talk to the wardens she thinks it’s a lie and
sone or later David will have to confess that (201)
 she pretends to believe him and also invents lies about his funeral

 After they leave and she resumes her search

 She finally finds the "gift": a childhood drawing she drew herself = a woman with a baby in her belly
standing by a man with horns and a tail (202)  “My mothers gift was there for me, I could look”
(202)
o "The baby was myself before I was born, the man was God," (202) she recalls
o She knows the others think she isn't grieving correctly: she should be "filled with death"
(203)
o But she feels the opposite: "Nothing has died, everything is alive, everything is waiting to
become alive" (203)
 she sees the lines of her hand coming together again  she starts to become whole
again
In this chapter the narrator fully breaks from reality. She has a growing suspicion of her friends, who now
seem to be her enemies. She is full of delusions about her parents intentionally leaving her clues, or "gifts,"
as guidance. Her mind is facilitating this delusion by giving her interpretable sensations. For example, she
has a feeling of power in her hands and arms, a certainty about her father's intentions in leaving her his
drawings, and the sense her mother's gift is "something out of place." Like a child she draws connections
between things that are not connected—assigning meaning to things that are not meant to convey
meaning. This echoes the idea behind Random Samples. The film is simply video footage of random things
placed together, with a vague sense that meaning, or art, will emerge. In both cases proximity may be
easily mistaken for true connection. The nature of the mind is to connect and make meaning out of
symbols (language) and events (cause end effect) that are next to each other.
Yet the items the narrator chooses to fixate on carry meaning for the reader because they give insight into
her thought process. There's a clear connection between the narrator's experience and the drawing. She
is facing pain related to her parents' deaths and at the same time facing pain from her abortion experience.
She has to integrate her identity as a child with her feelings about motherhood. In addition, the drawing
shows her as a baby, still in the womb but sitting up and looking out. This suggests the narrator feels she is
ready to be "born"; that is, become an individual who has agency. The God figure's tail and horns are
viewed from an evolutionary standpoint rather than a religious one ("if the Devil was allowed a tail and
horns, God needed them also, they were advantages"). This adds to the narrator's growing sense of being
more at home in the animal world than the human one.

Part 3, Chapter 20

 That night when Joe comes to bed, the narrator initiates sex
o But she doesn't want to make love in the bed because of the other chemical smells, so she
pulls Joe outside
 she connects strongly with nature, like an animals, pretends to be able to see in the
dark and have “tentacle feet” (208)
 she wants Joe to grow more fur (209)  wants him to look like a real animal

o They have sex on the damp, chilly ground in the moonlight

 Joe tells her he loves her
 she wants to do it fast, “animals don’t have pleasure” (209) and says “it is the right
season” ( 209) to have a baby

o As they make love the narrator feels forgiven: "I can feel my lost child surfacing within me,
forgiving me, rising from the lake” (209)
o She wants to get pregnant, have the baby without medical intervention like an animal, and
raise it without language
 she thinks of it like an animal: “I’ll lick it off and bite the cord […] it will be covered
with shining fur, a god” (209)
The narrator's sense of herself as an animal, and of humans as animals who have abandoned their natural
state, dominates the imagery of this chapter. She rejects the "chemically treated hides" (208) (clothing and
bedding) and wants to have sex outside, like an animal. When Joe undresses, she perceives it as taking off
"his human skin." To the narrator, human has begun to mean artificial, and animal equates with natural.
Part of the narrator's remedy for her feelings of loss because of the abortion is to get pregnant again, and
so having sex with Joe is more about this goal than about the relationship. She is confident she will become
pregnant, and she feels as though this absolves her from deciding not to carry the other pregnancy. She
even has a sense the "lost child" and the potential new one are two halves that come together: "The two
halves clasp, interlocking like fingers." Whether or not she actually becomes pregnant from this coupling is
irrelevant. She has found a way to let the potential of one pregnancy become part of the potential of a new
one, whether that happens now or in the future.

Part 3, Chapter 21

 The next morning, Joe wants to make love again, but the narrator isn't interested

 After breakfast, as they pack up to leave, they talk about Random Samples
o Anna points out they didn't take any footage of the narrator, and David thinks it would be
good to have her have sex with someone (like himself or even both guys) on camera
o Narrator realizes Anna is nothing but an imitation (214)
o The men go to put one of the canoes away.

 The narrator takes all the film and throws it into the lake
 When she sees the men coming back, she gets in the other canoe and paddles away
o Anna tells them what happened (215) – “She dumped out your film”
o She can see David trying to salvage his film and Joe running along the shore calling to her
o She hides as Evans comes to take the others away, thinking about the baby she is certain is
growing inside her
 she calls the creature a “plant-animal” (217)
o She watches them leave. She's alone by herself and it is what she wanted
 she is curious if they just discard her or at least try to find her (218)  they shout for
her, but she keeps hiding, for her “they are all Americans now” (219)
 “I tried for all these years to be civilized but I’m not and I’m through pretending”
(218)
This chapter shows the narrator taking action to fight what she sees as artificial and unnatural. Thus it
engages the power theme as well as the natural versus artificial theme. She exercises her power of action
by destroying the Random Samples film. Although many of the images on the film may be disturbing to the
narrator—such as the dead heron—it is likely Anna's humiliating nude scene is what she most wants to
destroy, exercising her power as a woman on behalf of another woman's victimization. She wants to
protect Anna, even though Anna represents an unnatural image of womanhood the narrator despises.
Anna in her makeup is "an imitation of a woman who is also an imitation." She sees Anna as a victim of
society's expectations of womanhood: "Nothing goes in, nothing comes out. She takes her clothes off or
puts them on."

Part 3, Chapter 22

 The others locked the doors as they left; the narrator breaks a window to get in

 Inside she cleans up the glass, looks into magazine, eats peaches and then takes a nap
o After waking up hungry she goes to the garden and begins crying
o She's angry at her parents for choosing to die and leave her alone  she is accusing them
(223)
o She realizes if she prays, she can bring them back (223) and they can come out from
wherever they are hiding
  Later, on a visit to the outhouse and then in her bed, she is overwhelmed by various fears: "The
fear arrives like waves, like footfalls, it has no center" (225)
o the power she thought she had gotten through her experience in the lake was gone,
exhausted (224)
o thinks the house will defend her but she cannot close the four broken windowpanes

 She becomes convinced her parents are trying to get to her, but she doesn't "know any longer who
they are; however they come back they won't be the same" (226)

As the narrator begins to process her parents' deaths, she goes through some very typical emotions, in
particular anger at them for abandoning her. Anger against someone who has died, including feelings of
abandonment, is a common reaction, even in a person who has remained tethered to reality (as the
narrator has not). She has moved into a state where her emotional gut reaction dictates her reality. Just
as she believes her parents "chose" to leave her, she believes she can bring them back by wanting it to be
so: "I willed it, I called to them, that they should arrive is logical" (226). In her mind she and her parents
have the power to determine life and death. Even if the power the narrator feels is not real, it is important
she feels powerful rather than passive. While her mind is out of control, her emotional self seems to be
making progress.

Part 3, Chapter 23

 The next morning as she begins to brush her hair, she feels a "surge of fear," like power, in her hand
o She realizes brushing her hair and looking in the mirror are now forbidden activities
o She turns the mirror toward the wall so her soul will not be trapped in it, and thinks about
"Anna's soul closed in the gold compact" (227)

 As she exits through the window, the fear suddenly lifts and she realizes there "must be rules:
places I'm permitted to be, other places I'm not" (228)
o she thinks she should have let her parents in, maybe it was the only chance they gave her
o she wants to figure out what they want

 She intends to pay attention to the signs so she can learn what is forbidden
o Most enclosures are forbidden, as is the dock.

 She also believes sacrifices are required of her: her paintings, her fake wedding ring, scrapbooks,
bedding, dishes, and the like
o She burns her work or otherwise destroys all of these (pencils etc.)
o “I have to clear a space” (230)  after that she leaves the space

 she cleans herself in the lake and leaves her clothes for “the gods” (231) as if the gods would
demand that of her as a sacrifice – waits for fur to grow
o all the food from the house is forbidden, metal tins etc.

 she finds food and makes a lair (Höhle) out of leaves and sticks, where she curls up and sleeps
o she thinks she’s pregnant – “the blood egg I carry” (230)
o food: from the garden (cabbage, carrots, peas etc.) she also gnaws at a beet but she isn’t
strong enough yet (231)
 o she kicks earth over hear feces like an animal (231)

The "wavery yellowish mirror" described in Chapter 5 has been an aspect of the narrator's daily life
throughout the book. Each day she and Anna brush their hair in front of it; in Chapter 10 the narrator
sweeps up a pile of dark and light hair from the floor. Each day Anna puts her makeup on in front of it so
David will not see her natural face. The doubling of the self that occurs in the mirror is an image that helps
develop the theme of separation versus wholeness. The mirror is also associated with the artificial image
women feel they must present to the world: made up, suntanned, dressed or undressed depending on the
viewer's desire, as in a magazine.
In her current state this artificial aspect of mirrors is expressed in more disturbing language. She feels
mirrors trap women's souls and she must stop looking in them: "I look for the last time at my distorted
glass face. ... Not to see myself but to see." Her rejection of the mirror is the rejection of the artificial self.
Yet the narrator takes this rejection to extremes, retreating from the artificial but also from the human
self. She enters a feral (verwildert) state, living life as an animal—an innocent state. This retreat from her
humanity is a descent into deep water. She will spend time in this deep water before her eventual
surfacing.

Part 3, Chapter 24

 In the morning the narrator wakes up in her lair

 She finds she is now forbidden to go through the gate into the garden, so she forages for food

o she thinks she can only talk to them if she approaches the condition they have entered
which means “they could not pass in to houses or cages, they can only move in the spaces
between them” (234)
o she is hungry: edible plants, some edible mushrooms you can eat raw, some raspberries
o saved the deadly white mushroom until she is ready “till I’m immune” (235)

 She envisions the baby growing inside her like the drawing she made of herself as a baby  she has
to provide food
o She feels other changes happen; she has pain in her stomach, her vision is different, and she
is transparent
o She has become one with the animals and trees  “I am a tree learning”, “I am not an
animal or a tree, I am the thing in which the animals move and grow, I am a place”

 In a little while she feels separate from the animals and trees again
 As she returns to the cabin, she has a vision of her mother standing in front of it and feeding the
birds  But as she approaches, full of fear, her mother disappears
 The narrator thinks her mother has become one of the blue jays she was feeding.

This chapter focuses on transformations—those the narrator is undergoing and those she must accept.
Although the transformations are delusions, they represent important areas of emotional healing and
recovered wholeness. Her growing fetus, real or imagined, looks like the drawing she made of herself as a
child. This connects her identity as a childbearing woman and mother to her memories of own mother, and
it connects the lost pregnancy with a new one. Her vision transforms, representing her new perspective
and shifted sense of sight or insight. She transforms into an animal, representing her rejection of the
artifice women are expected to conform to as well as of the human tendency to abuse power.
In addition, the transformation the narrator sees her mother undergo, from human to bird, represents her
acceptance that her mother is dead. From Chapter 1 the narrator has been uncomfortable with the way
things have changed since childhood. Now she has to face and accept the changes.

Part 3, Chapter 25

 The narrator wakes up the next morning to the sound of a powerboat

o she thinks it might be the police looking for her or men hunting for her, maybe tourists pr
sightseers
o maybe Americans  the war has started (invasion)
 she’s afraid they hit her and hang her up by the feet from a tree like they did with
the bird

 There are five men in it

o Two climb the hill to the cabin and go inside
 she cannot understand language anymore only grunts  either they speak English or
French but she cannot tell
o She's not sure who they are
 One of them shouts as he finds her clothes  she asks herself if it might be Joe
o She has to laugh very loud when she thinks they might think she drowned herself and they
hear her
 She calls them “the humans” (240) and excludes herself from that race
o She runs and hides, and they eventually leave
 she licks her scratches (she was hiding from them) “no fur yet on my skin, it’s too
early” (241)

 When she returns and walks back toward the cabin, she is bleeding and limping, but she feels the
paths are forbidden to her, so she walks beside the path

 As she approaches the garden, she sees what she thinks is her father
o She says “he realized he was an intruder” (242) with everything eh has done, how he
interfered with nature (house, garden, dock, paths through the woods etc.)

o But when he turns toward her, she has other thoughts: "Although it isn't my father it is what
my father has become” (243)  it is “the thing you meet when you’ve stayed here too long
alone” (243)

 She has a vision of a fish jumping from the water, transforming into a painted fish, then back into a
real fish

 As she goes over to the fence, she sees footprints

 o She thinks they are made by whatever was standing there
o Then she realizes they are her own footprints.

The transformations seen in Chapter 24 continue. The narrator envisions herself as the dead heron, a
victim of senseless violence: "They will shoot me ... hang me up by the feet from a tree" (239) Also like in
Chapter 24, in which she saw her mother transform, in this chapter she sees what her father "has
become." Her father changed, too. She must face it, and so in her delusion she does face it, quite literally.
The fact that the footprints of the figure she saw end up being her own footprints suggests she must face
and accept the change in herself as well. The transformation of the real fish into an artificial fish and back
to a real fish suggests the narrator, too, can regain her natural self.

Part 3, Chapter 26

 The narrator makes a new lair—more hidden—to sleep in

o As she sleeps, she dreams of her parents paddling a canoe
o When she wakes up, she knows "they have gone finally" (245)
o "The rules are over" (245) and she can go anywhere
o She feels certain her parents had been there and they spoke to her "in the other language"

 She goes into the cabin and eats a few beans from a tin
o She knows her parents wanted her “to prefer life, I owe them that” (245)
o She asks herself “did I do that?” (246) seeing all the broken items and the mess

 She thinks about her "fake husband" more clearly than before, realizing he was just a "normal man"

 She considers what to do next—stay? Go back to the city?

o maybe the men just wanted to war her that they’ll raise the water level
o she cannot stay there forever, not enough food; the garden won’t last

o Then she thinks about her parents and what forces shaped them—why her father chose to
live isolated from the world, what private pain her mother must have been dealing with
(pain and isolation – 247)
 her father was protecting them and himself in a poor country
 she realizes her parents belong to themselves, she got over their death

 She goes to the mirror, turns it outward again, and looks at herself: "a creature neither animal nor
human, furless" (248)
o She decides she is "a natural woman ... a new kind of centerfold” (ibid.)

The narrator begins to surface in this chapter—to return to sanity after her submersion in delusion. This
takes several forms.
She recognizes the need to live, not just for herself but for the love of her parents: "To prefer life, I owe
them that" (245) She decides having "someone to speak to and words that can be understood: their
definition of sanity" is not the worst fate. She puts all of the difficult events of her life in proportion. Her
lover wasn't evil, he was just "a normal man, middle-aged, second-rate, selfish and kind in the average
proportions" (246). Her father was "protecting both us and himself, in the midst of war and in a poor
country” (247).
She confronts her power—not the delusional power she felt before but her real power as a human being.
She sees the destruction and thinks, "Junk on the floor, things broken, did I do that?" Yes, she did. People
can destroy as well as build.
She refuses to be artificial. She is "only a natural woman" with a "face dirt-caked and streaked, skin grimed
and scabby, hair like a frayed bathmat" not a "tanned body on a beach with washed hair waving like
scarves" (248).

Part 3, Chapter 27

 The narrator resolves to "refuse to be a victim" and to "give up the old belief" that she is
"powerless" (249)
o “withdrawing is no longer possible, and the alternative is death” (249)
o she re-enters her own time
o but brings with her the baby  she knows it’s not certain (250)

 She gets dressed and goes to the garden

o She sees Paul and Joe arrive by boat and watches as Joe steps out of the boat and calls out
to her

 She realizes if she goes with him, they will need to talk—to use the "intercession of words" (250) to
live with one another
o she knows they have to talk and also know it might end in failure “more or less painfully”
(250f.); he may have been sent as a trick
o She decides she can trust him (he is only half-formed (251), but still she waits, surrounded
by the undemanding trees, as he calls again