Literary Criticisms

The use of language is used everyday as an effective communication tool. The style of communicating is also the personalized expression of a person's use of language. Margaret Atwood is a writer who uses language effectively as a writer, building stories on paper. Her style of writing varies between the science fiction and dystopian genres. She writes of a setting that “is comparable to reality on Earth” but is stretched to an extreme level of crisis. Atwood’s work is certain to make her readers question their reality. Her dystopian novel Oryx and Crake was inspired by scientific magazines. Her readings of the generic experiments posed her a question about the extinction of humankind. According to her, "aspects of reality that we can already achieve or are on the verge of being able to achieve must serve as the inspiration for science fiction and fantasy. As a result, the growth of human organs in pigs had already begun when I wrote Oryx and Crake. They had come close to success before, but now they have." 

Atwood’s work is known for her portrayal of the world through a woman's perspective, which is shown even in her first work of fiction, The Edible Women (1989). In The Handmaid’s Tale the main character, Offred, uses her right of language in order to change the corrupt world she is forced to live in. All of the choices Atwood makes when writing are deliberate in order to portray the meaning she wants to get across. Atwood feels that language is a political tool, and she works to use it effectively. The influence of language is shown in her works using interactions between characters, inter thoughts, and the corrupt political nature in order to bring attention toward the importance of feminism.  

(Developed from Rajeshwari, S. and S. Meenakshi's literary criticism “Margaret Atwood’s Language Aspects in The Handmaid’s Tale)

The female protagonists of Margaret Atwood who begin in Atwood’s novels with trust in society's patriarchy, such as marriage, family, and friendships. However, as the protagonist continues through the novel they start to see that the women’s role in society isn’t for them. They learn to “become creative, find their own values, take control of their lives, and explore their own talents” in order for them to find who they truly are. Each novel of Atwood has a common theme on the journey of an individual woman finding their true self by breaking through social constructs and experiencing the freeing feeling of feminism. 

Feminism in Atwood’s work is important for her protagonists. The women in her writings are able to convey to readers the women’s necessity to become independent and feel the courage to survive and reshape societal standards. The protagonist of The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred begins to reshape her own world. Her hope allows her to imagine a new, better world with an optimistic view. She says, "Here is a different story, a better one. . . . This is what I'd like to tell.” Many of Atwood’s protagonists had to suffer and experience emotional and physical pain in order to find the strength and bravery to be able to fight for their self preservation. Ultimately, Margaret Atwood writes many stories in a story of a victim who becomes a survivor, proving to her readers that everyone has the talent and strength to become who they want to be and reject any societal standards that suppress our given right of “human spirit”. 

(Developed from Patricia F. Goldblatt's literary criticism "Reconstructing Margaret Atwood's Protagonist") 

The duality that is within Margaret Atwood’s poems hold multiple meanings, including the men, that readers may miss if they don’t read clearly. The men are represented as both a “healer/killer” or a “rescuer/pervert” to the antagonist's point of view. Atwood frequents the subject between the duplicity of men because she values the importance of the act of recognizing the difference between the complex person is not as major as it may seem.  In order to allow the creative world to live naturally there must be a new way of thinking; finding a inbetween within the opposition. 

Atwood in her poems is portrayed with language that works chronologically. In the collection of poetry, Power Politics, Atwood writes, “ you fit into me/like a hook into an eye”. The line is representative of sexual assault, the hook violating the “security and complacency” of the reader. The duplicity of the juxtaposition between the metaphor to the “metonymy” gives readers a feeling of unfamiliarity.  In conclusion, Atwood uses duality to portray multiple meanings within her literary elements she uses such as characterization, illustration, and metaphors.

(Developed from Sherrill E. Grace's literary criticism "Margaret Atwood and the Poetics of Duplicity")

Margaret Atwood published her novel Lady Oracle in 1976. Lady Oracle follows the story of Joan Foster, “an unhappy and psychologically fragmented writer of gothic romances who finds herself haunted by ghosts, fantasies, and visions as she attempts to escape her former life by faking her own drowning”. Atwood describes the novel as an “anti-Gothic” story that address’s social politics with supernatural and gothic elements that show the perspective and effects of the social construct that women are expected to follow that hold back their identity and creativity.  

Atwood writes of Joan’s shifting personal identity where after faking her suicide is left not herself, but also not as the person she chooses to identify as (her deceased aunt, Louisa Delcourt), making her feel more than a ghost than alive. Joan uses Louisa Delcourt’s name for her creativity, even going so far as to publish poetry titled Lady Oracle. The popularity of the book makes Joan feel as if a doppelgünger: “It was as if someone with my name were out there in the real world, impersonating me, saying things I'd never said but which appeared in the newspapers, doing things for which I had to take the consequences, my dark twin, mirror reflection.” Throughout the novel ghosts appear each of them, Joan feels connected to each such as the Fat Lady in Pink apparition that seemed to reflect the role of “her childhood chubbiness and adolescent weight gain played in her self-perception”. The apparitions and visions she experiences are used to reveal the threats to her mind. 

The year Lady Oracle was published, 1976, in North Dakota the first marital rape law was passed giving women the right to refuse their husband. In 1977, Canada passed the Canadian Human RIghts Act that banned “sex discrimination in public life and required equal pay for equal work”. Margaret Atwood being from Canada and present in the activist community felt the strength of the feminist movement as they saw the new laws. Margaret Atwood’s work of Lady Oracle and many others help push for the idea of women to find the strengthening feeling of feminism. 

(Developed from Carrie Laben's literary criticisms “Lady Oracle”)