To seriously delve into Margaret Atwoods Appearance, a visitor must be familiar with symbolic meaning of a reflection in the new as well as on its function as a subject of symbolisation itself integrated through the heroes, their interrelations, and faculties of head, such as storage and notion. After a great examination of reflect as a physical object in the novel, this kind of paper profits to provide an interpretation of its radical meaning. By contrast, the second portion of the essay attends to the abstract representation of mirror realizing itself throughout the relationship between the main character and her partner as well as through protagonist’s own belief of very little. The final portion of the present work aims to apply the findings made in the previous paragraphs of the analysis for the ending and title with the novel.
In their examine on the part of duality in Atwood’s works, Constance Classen and David Howes make a remark of “her frequent references to mirrors”, which can be found in a number of writer’s poetry and works of fiction [1] (par. 2). In Surfacing, the, too, turns into incorporated into the plot, thoroughly imbued with a symbolic that means. This becomes most obvious at the end with the novel since the leading part, at the peak of her nervous break down, realises that “she need to stop being inside the mirror” in order that “it no longer traps” her, for your woman comes to learning the subjective and distorted fact that the looking glass provides her with, “reflection intruding between ¦ eyes and vision” (Atwood 138). Proceeding to imagine it as “Anna’s spirit closed in the gold compact”, the narrator thereby reveals her understanding of the reflection as a instrument for contouring individuals to the social expectations (Atwood 138). Her future refusal to work with it, consequently , may be regarded as a symbol pertaining to protagonist’s protest against subduing her very own desires and may to that from the society. In retrospect, the scene turns into foreshadowed inside the episode of narrator’s self-reflection upon her life before and after the wedding while she feedback: “Woman sawn apart within a wooden cage ¦ grinning, a technique done with magnifying mirrors ¦ only with me right now there had been an accident and I arrived apart” (85). Here, the of reflect is found overtly associated with a great illusion, which usually, characteristically, the narrator perceives to be no longer working for her. It could, thus, end up being concluded that in the novel, looking glass is used since an quintessential social limitations, which the key character implicitly rejects through her attitude to the physical representation from the symbol.
Yet, this imagery of distorted actuality caused by social pressure will not limit itself to the mirrors as physical objects just. For the characters themselves serve as a reflection of one one more, as the protagonist, so that they can justify her reluctance to marry May well, points out: “He didn’t like me, it absolutely was an idea of himself he loved” (Atwood 87). It is far from, however , various other characters only but the narrator herself whom resorts to falsifying actuality, in her case, by simply rewriting her own record, creating a mirror made of her fictitious remembrances of the previous and, since character’s lack of stability progresses, manifesting itself through the nature of her apparitions as well. Commenting on the subject subject in her interview with Linda Sandler, Atwood observes: “She is obsessed with locating ghosts yet once she has found all of them she is introduced from that passion ¦ my personal character are able to see that ghosts but they aren’t see her” (qtd. in Royappa 123). This non-reciprocity of the romance between the character and her apparitions echoes the same kind of romantic relationship she keeps with the different heroes ” that of simply reflecting, which, to conclude, the narrator becomes an object for the other characters and which your woman herself areas to in the course of her pursuit of self-identification.
Nonetheless, as noted by simply Kokotailo in the essay within the form of the novel, “the entire structure falls to pieces ¦ when the narrator goes diving” into the pond, the surface of which has been previously in the book analogised to this of “the dark mirror” (par. 3, Atwood 53). Hence, among the possible informations of the name of the publication is that that alludes towards the mirroring effect of the slip of the water, and surfacing, therefore , signifies breaking of the reflection. To get the main figure, this mostly means to remove herself of her delusions by acknowledging to having fabricated her memories: “A faked album, the memories bogus as given, but a paper home was better than non-e and i also could practically live in this, Id lived in it right up until now” (Atwood 112). The next stage of her process of recovering implicates parting with all the apparitions of her useless parents or, as Burkhard Niederhoff identifies it, “to witness all their decline and to accept their particular death”in additional words, to mourn and to bury them” (72). Upon recognising the inner inconsistency of character’s perception of himself, she, therefore, becomes allowed to face to the external misrepresentations imposed on her behalf by the contemporary society, which manifests itself through her obtained ability to try looking in the reflection. The difference in her perception, as the girl sees in the mirror “a creature none animal nor human”, signifies narrator’s enduring defiance of yielding towards the prism of social lens, rejection to discern among animals and humans she gets asserted ahead of, for inches[a]nything we could do to the family pets we could perform to each other: we all practised with them first” (Atwood 149, 95). Finally, the past stage of character’s recuperation involves re-establishment of her relationship with Joe by breaking the “spurious peace” of “avoiding every single other” and choosing an actual communication, “the intercession of words” (Atwood 151).
The fake reality which the protagonist of Surfacing is exposed to consists of several levels: those created by the world are represented by the physical forms of the mirror, although those created by the narrator herself as a way of a dealing mechanism are demonstrated by the specular nature of her delusions and relationship with Joe. Because the character relates to terms with an actual state of affairs of her life, the girl begins to little by little extricate very little from the illusions, and it will require the form of re-evaluation with the distorted fact that is within the representation of the looking glass, her recollections, apparitions, and representation inside the society. It of the book, as has become suggested, serves as a symbol to get “breaking the surface”, which in turn, in its convert, might be construed as both an redensart for “floating up” (thereby leading back to the idea of surfacing) and a figurative damage of a mirror’s surface, for the protagonist, as the lady puts it: “Not to see me but to see” (Atwood 138).
[1] Such as, for example, “Tricks with Mirrors”, “The Circle game”, Alias Style, The Journals of Susanna Moodie, and Survival, which can be briefly analysed in the aforementioned Classen and Howes’s essay, “Margaret Atwood: Two-Headed Woman”.
Performs Cited:
Atwood, Margaret. Appearing. McClelland Stewart, 1972. Internet. Accessed 18 Apr. 2017.
Classen, Constance, and David Howes. “Margaret Atwood: Two-Headed Girl. ” Canadian Icon. Reached 19 Monthly interest. 2017. http://canadianicon. org/table-of-contents/margaret-atwood-two-headed-woman/
Kokotailo, Philip. “Form in Atwoods Surfacing: Toward a Synthesis of Critical Opinion. ” Studies in Canadian Literature/? tudes sobre litt? rature Canadienne, vol. 08. two, 1983. Internet. Accessed 18 Apr. 2017. https://journals. lib. unb. ca/index. php/scl/article/view/7994/9051
Niederhoff, Burkhard. “The Return in the Dead in Margaret Atwoods Surfacing and Alias Sophistication. ” Connotations, vol. 16. 1-3, 2006-2007, pp. 72. Web. Utilized 18 Interest. 2017. http://www. connotations. uni-tuebingen. de/niederhoff01613. htm
Royappa, Andrea R. C. “From Decadence to Confidence: Mapping your head of Maggie Atwood’s Protagonist in Appearing. ” Canadian Literature: An understanding, edited simply by K. Balachandran, Sarup Kids, 2007, pp. 123. Internet. Accessed 19 Apr. 2017.
