Margaret Atwood's tone in her writing is most commonly known because of its sharpness, wit, and incisive commentary. She frequently uses satire and irony to assess the societal norms and power structures taking place. Atwood often uses dark humor in order to highlight the unfortunate happenings of the world she depicts. Despite her sarcastic and ironic tone, Atwood displays empathy for her characters, by capturing the complexity of human emotions and relationships.
Margaret Atwood is a known author for her diverse speakers within her work, each having their own unique perspectives and voices with their own stories to tell. Through these speakers Atwood explores her topics of dystopian worlds, feminism, nature, and identities and tells their stories. Atwood's works most often have a female protagonist who is challenged by societal norms and expectations that a woman faces, giving her stories a feminist interest. Atwood's speakers are an important element of her storytelling, offering her readers a voice to engage with her thought-provoking themes and narratives.
Margaret Atwood has explored a wide, diverse range of topics in her writing throughout her career. The topics Atwood focuses on are dystopian worlds, feminism, nature, and identity that portray the story she wants to tell.
Margaret Atwood's plot and structure are created by their complexity and depth. Atwood's plots are full of twists and turns, which keep her readers engaged until the very end. She often employs foreshadowing to develop her stories with meaning and depth. Atwood's writing is continued with her sense of pacing and tension, as she builds suspense and intrigue to the narratives she writes.
I remember how life used to be. I remember the sound of laughter. I remember the warmth of sunlight.
That was all before. Before the destruction and terror that reigns over my body now.
It was such a beautiful day. I had slept in till eleven allowing myself to rest after the week of fun. We were to pack at noon and head back to our apartment in Toronto. We had gone camping in the wilderness. The forest was dense and the river was cold, but that hadn’t stopped us from enjoying the untouched soil. Bare, stricken from the touch of modern society that had a habit of ruining raw nature. At night the forest was so dark that the stars guided you, each step led by a far away light in the sky. When the fire was lit we would sit for dinner, it casted dark, red shadows on our faces and the smoke twisted around us and we would laugh at our childish fears of the darkness around us. The fire had contrasted our dark surroundings, branching out into the whispering pines and rustles of leaves making him look as if he was glowing red.
I should’ve known then. A sign of warning.
Ares was the love of my life. My first and last. I never knew what he was capable of. If anything, I doubted him. He was the kind of guy who never confronted anyone when upset, you had to guess. Which became a “fun” guessing game, I’m still unsure of what I did wrong today. He grew up with a hard childhood. Ares’s parents never cared or listened; they hadn’t even came to our wedding. Despite our long relationship, I hadn’t met them once. He said they didn’t care about him so they didn’t care about me. At first I was hurt, but after hearing how much they abused him as a kid, I don’t want to meet them either. I know this is why the way he is. Non-confrontational, quiet, caring, and so smart. He would always sneak behind me and I never would notice. Funny now when I think of it.
Under the harsh glare of the sun, the river started to lose its charm, taking on a sinister demeanor. The current was at a high, making it harder to push through the now murky water. The depths below the canoe, the mysteries unseen of.
The mystery I became.
Ares hadn’t cried. He hadn’t even flinched as he dropped my body into the water.
He strangled me to death when I was using the fire to boil water for tea. The flames continued to flicker as he handled my body, tying weights so I fell into the depths. The fire burned wildly without me there. The soil remained untouched. The birds continued to chirp, but my life ceased to exist.
“You always loved the wilderness.” Ares whispered as I sunk to the bottom.
The unique perspective of the speaker within the excerpt introduces a first person perspective, commonly shown in Atwood’s works. The sarcasm of the narrator displays the complexity of her emotions of the event of the tragedy that took place. I also specifically spent time on this in order to give the story a tone of mystery because the narrator could only reveal what she wanted to up until the ending.
I only introduced two characters to the excerpt to keep it driven to the plot. In Margaret Atwood’s work, the main characters also often follow having a man and a woman as the main characters. I gave the name Ares for the villain because of the meaning, greek god of war, this symbolizes the violence he is capable of. I left the main protagonist unnamed to represent the consequences of Ares, dead, without a soul.
I picked the setting of wilderness in Canada because of Atwood’s common theme of writing within the two places she enjoys the most. The setting in the excerpt also set the tone of the story. When describing the contrast between the fire and the dark forest to foreshadow the darkness within Ares. When I revealed the narrator's death I described the forest continuing on as if she wasn't even there with the “birds continued to chirp” and the firing burning wildly without her there.
Margaret Atwood
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