70 pages • 2 hours read
Margaret AtwoodThe Blind Assassin
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Language and the Nature of Reality
Questions about truth are central to The Blind Assassin, in part because the novel is full of liars: Richard, Winifred, and Iris herself, who lies not only to her fellow characters but also to her readers. On the face of it, then, the plot of the novel seems geared toward separating reality from fiction and exposing the truth. As she draws nearer to her conclusion, for instance, Iris talks about the pleasures of watching other people "spill the beans," implying that in reading her story, we are waiting for the same payoff (448). And as promised, Iris's memoirdoes in fact end with a series of revelations: that Richard sexually abused Laura, that she herself wrote the novel-within-a-novel, and that Sabrina is Alex's granddaughter, for example.
On the whole, however, Atwood's novel makes it clear that there are no easy distinctions separating truth from falsehood or fantasy from reality. The structure of the novel alone blurs the lines between fact and fiction: the story of the blind assassin and the girl is also the story of the unnamed lovers, which is itself the story of Iris and Alex (but perhaps also, metaphorically, Laura and Alex). What's more, the title of Iris's novel is the same as the title of the novel we ourselves are reading, implying that our own reality is also part of this series of nested stories. The running motif of myth and science-fiction, meanwhile, presents a further challenge to the idea that the "real world" exists separately from fiction. Port Ticonderoga—the mundane setting of much of the novel—is home to Avilion, which takes its name from Arthurian legend and is therefore not so different from the fantastic palaces of fictional Sakiel-Norn (which, for its part, is inspired by the Hittites and other historical civilizations).
This question of what constitutes truth or reality is also a pressing issue for the characters within the novel, and not only because they so frequently encounter deception of various kinds. The constant friction between Iris and Laura is, to some extent, a conflict between two competing understandings of truth, as well as the relationship between reality and language. Laura, the more idealistic of the two, reads the world mostly in terms of what Iris calls "forms"; she sees people, things, and events as symbols corresponding to unchanging, higher truths (45). In keeping with this, her understanding of language is quite rigid; words, for her, have a fixed relationship to an objective (though sometimes metaphysical) reality.Iris, by contrast, is more of a realist, which in some ways leads her to see the truth in more fluid terms. Unlike Laura, she factors in the role that individual perspective plays in shaping our interpretation of the world, and she views words simply as an imperfect "currency" for interacting with other people, rather than as something with objective or intrinsic meaning (441).
Where the novel itself comes down on these issues is debatable. Its structure, as well as its interest in the writing process, tends to support the idea that truth and reality are things people construct through language rather than absolute facts. Speaking about her novel, for instance, Iris describes, "writing…what I remembered, and also what I imagined, which is also the truth" (512). Still, Atwood acknowledges that this process of "writing" reality can have dangerous consequences; when Laura is wrongfully sent to BellaVista, for instance, Iris describes her as being "trapped in another fantasy…which was not hers at all but those of the people around her" (440).
Fate and History
There is a strong sense of inevitability in The Blind Assassin, although fate in the supernatural sense doesn't play a large role. Instead, Atwood portrays different historical forces as so powerful that they override personal agency. Family history, for instance, coupled with the expectations of others, becomes a kind of destiny for the Chase sisters: "[a]nd so Laura and I were brought up by [Adelia]. We grew up inside her house; that is to say, inside her conception of herself. And inside her conception of who we ought to be, but weren't. As she was dead by then, we couldn't argue" (62). The former glory of the Chase family continues to burden the girls as they grow up, ultimately contributing to Iris's disastrous marriage to Richard; Laura's suggestion that they could instead get jobs and support themselves is simply unthinkable to Iris after having lived so long in the Chase family shadow.
On a broader level, societal structures like class function similarly, shaping people's lives even before they are born. When the unnamed woman protests that social stratification "isn't her fault," the man responds, "[n]or mine either. Let's say we're stuck with the sins of the fathers" (23). With each generation inheriting the "sins" of those that preceded them, history takes on a circular quality, with the same patterns of exploitation recurring time and time again. Even attempts to break the cycle play out in similarly destructive ways; the People of Joy, for instance, kill even the victims of Sakiel-Norn's regime because they view the entire society as tainted:
"[t]o kill even those whose proposed deaths are the reason for this killing may not seem just, but for the People of Joy it isn't guilt or innocence that determines such things, it's whether or not you've been tainted, and as far as the People of Joy are concerned everyone in a tainted city is as tainted as everyone else" (118).
The destruction of Sakiel-Norn also points to the impersonal nature of fate; at a very basic level, history destroys the good and evil alike for the simple reason that everyone ultimately dies. In this sense, history is itself a kind of blind assassin, as Iris hints in her discussion of "young girls with a talent for self-immolation":
[w]here does the urge come from? Does it begin with defiance, and if so, of what? Of the great leaden suffocating order of things, the great spike-wheeled chariot, the blind tyrants, the blind gods? Are these girls reckless enough or arrogant enough to think that they can stop such things in their tracks by offering themselves up on some theoretical altar, or is it a kind of testifying? (433).
The above passage also suggests two ways of responding to the inhuman and inevitable nature of history: offer oneself up as a sacrifice in the hope of changing the "order of things" (as Laura does) or simply "commemorat[e]…wounds endured" (as Iris does) (508). Remembering carries its own risks, however, since it can perpetuate a cycle of revenge: in Sakiel-Norn, for instance, the male children of toppled regimes are killed for fear that they would remember and, ultimately, retaliate. For this reason, the novel ultimately suggests that the best way to deal with history is to both remember it and forget it, as Iris does when she publishes an account of her affair with Alex while deliberately obscuring key facts about it.
The Relationship Between the Self and Others
Identity and interpersonal relationships are complex issues inThe Blind Assassin. To a certain extent, the novel seems to suggest that it is impossible to truly know another person, at least in the sense of understanding their inner world.Although characters are constantly attempting to imagine their way inside one another's perspectives, they typically remain locked inside their own. Laura in particular resists all attempts at interpretation, with Iris ultimately suggesting that any knowledge she has of her sister is just a projection of her own thoughts and feelings: "[s]he was with me all the time, but I couldn't look at her. I could only feel the shape of her presence: a hollow shape, filled with my own imaginings" (441). There is therefore a sense of desperation around many of the characters' attempts to connect with one another. Iris, for instance, describes her relationship to her readers as a "black line: a thread thrown onto the empty page, into the empty air" (474).
At the same time, however, The Blind Assassin also portrays the boundaries between different people as highly porous. This is clearest in Atwood's treatment of the novel-within-a-novel, which Iris says can shift back and forth in meaning to be about either Chase sister. In other cases—particularly in the context of male-female relationships—the blurring together of identities can be threatening. The unnamed man, for instance, concocts a story about an alien who "assimilates" his human partner during sex, or (in a later version of the story" "inject[s] himself into her" (279).Nevertheless, this kind of interaction can also be attractive, as the unnamed woman notes: "[s]he goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out, enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immolation is what she wants, however briefly. To exist without boundaries" (261).
These questions about where and how to separate ourselves from others also play out on a societal level. Both Iris's narrative and the story of Sakiel-Norn juxtapose stories of private life with a broader, public narrative.Generally speaking, the public and private spheres prove difficult to disentangle, often because they parallel one another. The public tragedy of WWII, for instance, is also a private tragedy for Iris, who loses her lover. In other cases, however, the personal and the public come into conflict with one another: individuals sacrifice the common good for their own private happiness, as when the assassin and the girl trade information about Sakiel-Norn for passage to the mountains. Whether this kind of trade is morally justifiable is an open question, but the novel suggests that it may be unavoidable anyway, simply because it is so difficult to know how our actions will impact others.
The Limits of Happiness
In Judeo-Christian tradition, God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden after they eat from the "Tree of Knowledge." In The Blind Assassin, Atwood plays with this idea, linking paradise and knowledge in different ways throughout the book. To a certain extent, Iris endorses the view that happiness and knowledge are incompatible, describing ignorance as a protective force:
[i]f you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed…You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again (517–518).
Because happiness in The Blind Assassin so often comes at a cost (either to the self or to others), it's only our blindness that allows us to temporarily experience pleasure. In the long run, however, Iris suggests that this is no solution, perhaps because the deepest emotions we experience require and demand knowledge: "Most of us will…choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive: love or grief or despair is what drives us on" (494).
As a result, happiness is necessarily transient in The Blind Assassin. When the unnamed woman asks her lover why he tells her only sad stories, he responds, "[t]aken to its logical conclusion, every story is sad, because at the end everyone dies" (349). When she continues to press him, arguing that there can be "happy parts in between," he comes up with the story of Aa'A and the Peach Women—a warning about the horror of being trapped in paradise (349).In fact, the story suggests that suffering is a necessary part of pleasure, if only because it provides contrast; the men in the story view the Peach Women with suspicion, because their imperviousness to physical pain and death perhaps means that their "ecstasy" was also "a put-on show" (355). Relatedly, Laura says at one point that "[i]t frightens people when you're too happy," implying that there is something horrible or unnatural about complete happiness (336).
Class and Gender
Although they often appear in connection with other themes, class and gender are important topics in the novel in and of themselves.Exploitation along both lines occurs throughout the novel, and Atwood suggests that a similar underlying violence is at play in each case; Richard's abusive treatment of his wife goes hand-in-hand with the hard line he takes on workers' rights, because, as Iris says, "[h]e preferred conquest to cooperation, in every area of life" (371).
As upper-class women, however, Iris and Laura occupy a strange position in society. Although their private lives are marred by violence and sexual exploitation, their class privilege makes them objects of envy and suspicion, limiting their ability to engage with what Laura calls the "real world" (327).The workers' suspicionmay of course be warranted; Iris, for instance, is a little too comfortable with the luxury clothes and perfumes she enjoys as Richard's wife. Laura, however, constantly attempts to bridge the class divide, though with little success:
I began to see, a little, what the attraction of Sunnyside must have been for her. It was other people—those people who had always been and who would continue to be other, insofar as Laura was concerned…[s]he longed, in some way, to join them. But she never could (377).
Gender, meanwhile, seems to present an even more insurmountable barrier. The most loving romantic relationship in the novel is the one between the unnamed characters in Iris's novel, but even their interactions are littered with misunderstandings. This becomes particularly clear in the story about the Peach Women, when the man appears to condemn the women for conforming to male expectations:
[t]hey were completely shameless, or without shame, whichever. On cue they would display the most whorish behavior. Slut was hardly the word for them. Or they could become shy and prudish, cringing, modest; they would even weep and scream—that too was on order…Will and Boyd found this exciting, but after a while it began to irritate (354).
Ultimately, then, the novel casts a critical eye on both class and gender relations, suggesting that the same oppressive patterns will continue to repeat themselves unless people find a way to communicate across these social divides.
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By Margaret Atwood
