Surfacing (novel)

infobox Book |
name = Surfacing
title_orig =
translator =


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author = Margaret Atwood
illustrator =
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country = Canada
language = English
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genre = Fiction
publisher =
release_date = 1972
media_type = Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
pages =
isbn =
preceded_by = The Edible Woman
followed_by = Lady Oracle

"Surfacing" is the second published novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1972. It has been called a companion novel to Atwood's collection of poems, "Power Politics" [Howells, Coral Ann. "The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood (Cambridge Companions to Literature)" : 49] , which was written the previous year and deals with complementary issues.

The novel, grappling with notions of national and gendered identity, anticipated rising concerns about conservation and preservation and the emergence of Canadian nationalism.Cooke, Nathalie. "Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion" : 52] The mouthpiece for feelings of nationalism is extremist David, who claims Canada would be better without the "fascist pig Yanks" and suggests they be driven from the country by attack beavers.Page 56]

Plot introduction

The book tells the story of a woman who returns to her hometown in Canada to find her missing father. Accompanied by her lover and another married couple, the unnamed protagonist meets her past in her childhood house, recalling events and feelings, while trying to find clues for her father's mysterious disappearance. Little by little, the past overtakes her and drives her into the realm of wildness and madness.

Themes

eparation

Separation is a major theme of "Surfacing". This is established in the first chapter, when the 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. [Fraser, Wayne. " [http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0313267499?p=S047&checkSum=ItIfskTiaXF4I5xRjK3L7l%2F4UhcVEWeTNn2tlRcOXoM%3D The Dominion of Women: The Personal and the Political in Canadian Women's Literature (Contributions in Women's Studies)] " : 126] The narrator also feels disconnected from the people around her, equating human interaction with that of animals. For example, while overhearing David and Anna make love, the narrator thinks "of an animal at the moment the trap closes". [Atwood, Margaret. "Surfacing" : 76]

Madness

Another theme is madness. The protagonist's mental reasoning deteriorates sharply, as the story unfolds from initial signs of mental health issues to a full-blown psychosis. Because Atwood has written in the first person, we are told much of the narrative through monologues, and experience events through the thoughts of the protagonist. This allows for a very detailed and personal portrayal of a mind 'undoing itself'. Although there are nuances in the protagonist's thoughts that suggest mental problems in early chapters, the narrative takes a decisive plunge on page 67. At this point we learn that the protagonist has had a severe trauma in her early adult life, as she sits trying to piece together her past: "then static, like a jumped track". This discovery that she is unable to identify any strong narrative themes in her own memories causes her substantial worry. She finds that she cannot trust her own thoughts, for instance she interrupts her own thinking with a retort: "That's a lie..." This inability to 'know which is the right thought' is profoundly psychotic and from that point on the narrative and the thought processes of the protagonist become disturbingly uncoordinated. She has false memories of her father as a werewolf and her mother feeding jays: the intersection of fairy tales with daily life demonstrate the fragmentation of the narrator's mind. [Wilson, Sharon Rose. "Margaret Atwood's Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics" : 97]

Feminism

Feminism, a theme in many of Atwood's novels, is explored through the perspective of the female narrative, exposing the ways women are marginalized in their professional and private lives.Page 53]

Language and the Return to Nature

Atwood’s protagonist is never named in the novel and is therefore often referred to by critics as “the surfacer”. The character undergoes a significant metamorphosis during the novel and apparently seeks to discard her identity as a human and to assume that of an animal. The surfacer travels with her partner, Joe, and another couple, David and Anna; journeying from the city into the wilderness in which she grew up. Whilst the trip is ostensibly undertaken in order for the surfacer to investigate the disappearance of her father, it is clear that her reasons are in fact even more personal, and not yet obvious even to her.

Throughout the novel, the surfacer reveals a deep-seated distrust of language, which she refers to as being something she “couldn’t use because it wasn’t mine” . Furthermore, she reveals her attitude to language when she asserts that “ [i] f you look like them and talk like them and think like them then you are them […] you speak their language, a language is everything you do” (p. 123) – she is talking, ostensibly, about Americans, but the sentiment may equally be applied to all of humanity. Only humans use language so to discard your humanity you must discard your language. Unfortunately, this reasoning seems to be flawed. In reality, language is the means by which humans seek to describe and make sense of their environment. It has been argued that, outside of language, there is literally nothing – no environment. Whilst it would be an exaggeration to say that our entire understanding of the world is derived from language, it is nevertheless the most important means by which we derive the largest part of our understanding.

Language, to the surfacer, often appears alien. When refusing to have sex with Anna’s partner, David, for instance, she searches for “a vocabulary that would work” (p. 146) in order to deter him. It is clear that the use of language is not entirely natural to her. This may be explained, partly, by the fact that she has grown up in rural Canada, in an area in which both the English and French languages are spoken. As an exclusively English speaker, the surfacer “discovered people could say words that would go into my ears meaning nothing” (p. 5). This could go some way towards explaining why the character appears to have difficulty in reconciling herself with her world. She apparently lacks, or at least sees the limitations of, the vital school of language.The surfacer seems to realise that language is not an effective tool in the her quest, and appears to conclude that the best way to comprehend nature is to abandon language altogether, and become more animal-like. Atwood’s protagonist therefore seeks enlightenment through some kind of closer and more direct communication with - or submergence into - the natural world.

As the surfacer begins to dispense with language, regarding it as a barrier to understanding, it appears that she attempts to break down the barrier between words and objects, asserting that “the animals learned to eat without nouns” (p. 144), and “the animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word?” (p. 175). This is the clearest indication that she now sees no distinction between words and objects. Christian theology holds that, at the time of the creation, there was indeed no separation between objects and their signifiers. The word literally – in every sense – was the object and the two were inseparable, thus the book of John tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” . It is only after humanity’s fall from grace in the garden of Eden that the two become separated. In effect, humans are separated from a deep understanding of the world by language. It seems, however, that the surfacer seeks to gain enlightenment by reuniting the two, or at least by disregarding their separation, and returning to an animal-like state.

The surfacer seems to feel the wilderness beginning to inhabit her: “the creature in me, plant-animal, sends out filaments in me” (p. 162). This passage is highly reminiscent of another Atwood piece, the poem ‘Departure from the Bush’, from The Journals of Susanna Moodie, in which the central character comes to belong to her environment and is said to be “crept in upon by green” . However, the transformation of the Susanna Moodie character takes place slowly, and in an unforced way, over a period of years, whereas the surfacer seems to be making a conscious attempt to metamorphosise, and whereas the Moodie character’s transformation, controlled by nature, appears welcome and successful, the surfacer’s forced metamorphosis is less so. Prior to her transformation, it becomes clear that Atwood’s protagonist is, in fact, trying to come to terms with an earlier decision to abort her unborn child. She begins to believe, however, that nothing truly dies, and that death is simply a part of life, and that death fuels life: ““I remember the heron; by now it will be insects, frogs, fish, other herons.” (p. 175) Rather than see the heron as dead, she regards it as being alive: transferred to the other creatures that it has fed, and she appears to seek such a transformation for herself. She also refuses to accept the death of her father, and later meets, apparently, his spirit. “I see now that although it isn’t my father it is what my father has become. I knew he wasn’t dead” (p. 181). It is clear that, through her own metamorphosis, the surfacer seeks to overcome death, for the sake of her aborted baby.

The surfacer insists that she and Joe go outside to have sex, saying that inside is “not the place”(p. 154). She imagines him, and herself, as animals. He “unzips his human skin”, but “needs to grow fur”, whilst she uses her “tentacled feet and free hand [to] scent out the way” (p. 155). As they have sex (“it’s the right season”) she feels her lost child is “forgiving” her (p. 156). She knows she will become pregnant, and imagines giving birth in an animalesque way, “licking blood from the cord the blood returning to the ground as it is supposed to” (p .156) She now abandons her human existence and imagines she will “grow fur on my skin” (p. 156). However, the conception of a new baby seems to offer healing. The surfacer has gone through a cycle of grief, and eventually arrives at the final stage: acceptance. The process is mirrored in her observation of a fish:

From a lake a fish jumps
An idea of a fish jumps
A fish jumps, carved wooden fish with dots painted on the sides,
no, antlered fish thing drawn in red on cliffstone, protecting spirit.
It hangs in the air suspended, flesh turned to icon, he has changed
again, returned to the water. How many shapes can he take.
I watch it for an hour or so; then it drops and softens, the circles
widen, it becomes an ordinary fish again

(p. 181)

This episode in which she watches the fish and it seems to take on many representations of itself – all of which must necessarily be human inventions – seems to mirror her own journey. The fish has travelled through many different forms, but in the end it remains – or returns to being – a fish. Likewise, she has been through many transformations but ultimately becomes an ordinary human again. This marks the point at which she seems ready to return to civilisation. “The word games, the winning and losing games are finished” (p. 185), she declares, and ultimately she finds a reason to live – her new baby “If I die, it dies” (p. 185). She realises that each new birth is a new opportunity for humanity. “It might be the first one; the first true human” (p. 185), and so her pregnancy provides her with a reason to live and a renewed purpose. Finally, it seems, she understands that humans can only make sense of the world in our own natural way – and that the tool which humans use to gain understanding is language.

Allusions to other works

"Surfacing" echoes the structure of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road", as the narrator travels by car back to her childhood home.Page 54]

Reception and Reviews

In her essay "Margaret Atwood: Beyond Victimhood", Marge Piercy was skeptical of the narrator's abrupt declaration of love for Joe at the end of the novel, saying it did not stop the narrator from being a victim: by choosing a man who opts to be a loser, "how does "she" stop being a loser?" [Howells, Coral Ann. "The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood (Cambridge Companions to Literature)" : 46-50]

External links

* [http://surfacing.rjcheadle.com/ On: Margaret Atwood's 'Surfacing'] by Richard Cheadle
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=175 Margaret Atwood] at the Literary Encyclopedia
* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,1045537,00.html After Nature] , an article by Jill Dawson

References