by Karin Hrošová
In the novel Surfacing, Margaret Atwood perceptively conjures Canadian wildlife by simultaneously highlighting the over-consuming and destructive postmodern society with its frivolous dilemmas and vain endeavours. This research paper analyses the piece of fiction by focusing on an independent video recording provided by the appearing camera, generating a somewhat outsider’s point of view. Random Samples, a film captured by the protagonist’s two male companions, plays the role of an indirect reporter, utilised to demonstrate the young divorcée’s exacerbating mental state while she searches for her lost father, as well as the superficial nature of today’s humanity. By erasing the Random Samples in the end, the female protagonist strives to reconnect with the wilderness, liberated of complicated human issues and worthless surfacing, with only an unspoiled drive for survival and natural reflexes to remain.
The first of the samples is filmed in the opening chapter, when Joe together with David, acting as a director, film the Bottle Villa (Atwood 4). As suggested in the introduction, Atwood manages to ridicule the present society with its flaws insightfully, and this moment provides a sufficient understanding of her efforts to depict it. In the first chapter, the author outlines consumerism and separation from nature, as well as the inner state of the nameless protagonist, represented by the house made of bottles. Rather than solely symbolising the emptiness felt after the discovery of her father’s disappearance, it may also be assumed she has lost an unborn child, as Granofsky observantly remarks: “The emptiness left in the narrator by the abortion and the emptiness of the culture around her merge in a vaguely defined causal relationship” (Granofsky 55). The mental instability of the character is therefore caused not only by the sudden mysterious departure of her father but likely by a forced abortion as well. Emotionally unavailable and surrounded by a superficial world, she metaphorically feels like an emptied bottle—as she later in the third chapter notes, “I believe that an unborn baby has its eyes open and can look out through the walls of the mother’s stomach, like a frog in a jar” (Atwood 26). The imagery of bottles constructing the villa thus serves as a precise introduction to the dynamics and themes of the entire story, such as societal criticism and post-abortion emotional numbness.
The second recorded scene involves a dismembered fish being prepared for breakfast, killed by the protagonist a day before (Atwood 63). The double meaning of text is a powerful storytelling technique. Firstly, it is yet another reference to the main lead’s abortion and the mixed feelings such procedure infers in the individual concerned. In the seventh chapter, she feels sickened because she has “killed something [the fish, indirectly the child], made it dead” (Atwood 56). The woman followingly states: “I know it’s irrational [to feel remorseful], killing certain things is all right, food and enemies, fish and mosquitos” (Atwood 56). By attempting to deny the guilt suffered, she continually worsens her psychological condition. Secondly, Atwood pursues her aim of drawing attention to human fallibility. By declaring that exterminating certain things—food and enemies, is all right, she warns about the mindset of many world leaders who disregard the needs of innocent people when triggering conflicts. This categorisation is rendered in the views of the protagonist’s brother, who believed there is “a good kind and a bad kind of everything” (Atwood 32). As Rubenstein discerns: “As a child, the narrator had distrusted her brother’s categories” (Rubenstein 390). The female lead fixated on opposing her brother’s actions, and as of today, he remains to represent her abhorred spitting image. To summarise this paragraph, by the technique of dual alluding, the story moves forward while the reader questions their own morality and perceptions, likely similar to David’s, who in the second sample wishes to film the innards of the fish rather than its alive counterpart.
It is in the fourteenth chapter that the succeeding random sample appears, primarily spotlighting the corrupted nature of humans who consider themselves superior. Before introducing the sample, it is important to understand other factors contributing to the deranged protagonist’s mental state. The central quest of the novel is to find her lost father. As Granofsky, who tries to unveil fairy-tale characteristics of the novel, suggests: “It is her own trickery or self-deception that the narrator must overcome in her confrontation with villainy … abduction, bodily injury [hers or her mother’s], a sudden disappearance [of her father], murder, all proceeding from an initial “lack” on the part of the villain” (Granofsky 56). By this lack of villainy, drawing deceptive conclusions, the protagonist begins to intensify the accusations of her surroundings and finds the civilised society at fault for everything. Acknowledging previous statements and conjectures, this paragraph can shift towards the actual scene with a piece of film. Undeniably, the third sample recorded depicts a dead heron hanging upside down with wings fallen open (Atwood 109). The protagonist comments: “The only relation they could have to a thing like that was to destroy it” (Atwood 110). The criticism seems disassociated, almost as if she already resented the whole society, determined to distance herself from their senseless bloodlust and materialism. The loss of her father catalyses this detachment as there is nothing or no one left that would convince her of the righteousness of humanity’s conceited reasoning and behaviour. For that reason, it can be summarised that both the protagonist’s emotionally wounding past and her present views are solidified in the imagery of a dead heron, warning against the corrupted nature of humans, as mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph.
Progressing further, the penultimate scene relating to the Random Samples reflects the traumatic climax of the abusive and vicious relationship Anna, the protagonist’s only female friend, shares with David; conjointly, particularly evident in the following scenes, it mirrors the nameless lead’s own unresolved psychological trauma such as trust issues, regret and grief. It is also a portrayal of superficial contemporary society, and many unfulfilled promises people give to each other when exchanging marital vows. The consequences of this incident result in the protagonist’s mental breakdown. Firstly, it all begins when she secretly observes David and Joe, his accomplice, forcing Anna to strip down and film her on the dock (Atwood 128-130). Succeeding, the troubled female lead commences to paddle towards a cliff where she finally “[breaks the] surface,” searching for father’s sought cave paintings underwater, witnessing “a dead thing,” reflecting that the lake is “filled with death” (Atwood 135-136). It was the body of her father, floating towards her. As Rubenstein speculates: “Unable to accept the shock of that discovery, her imagination collapses his image with that of the other death she has repressed: her own aborted child … [they are the] implications of the contemporary schism between flesh and spirit, secular and sacred, conscious and unconscious” (Rubenstein 394). Hence, it is necessary to recognise this, preliminary to the forthcoming events described in the next paragraph of this research paper, as an important factor altering or finalising the protagonist’s perception; and since, as she previously surmised, relating to her father’s obsession, “madness is only an amplification of what you already are” (Atwood 95), it exacerbates her already deranged and unstable mentality irrevocably. Combined with the representation of unhealthily demanding relationships, it culminates in the lead’s ultimate detestation of society and her own nervous breakdown.
Finally, the film Random Samples gets destroyed by the protagonist in the same lake she pronounces to be contaminated with death, as mentioned in the previous section. Herein, the story reaches its zenith. Driven by her hatred towards her three friends, the society as a whole and herself as a part of it, she wishes to erase the Random Samples, reflections of everything shameful and tainted in her and the lives of us all, by spiritually and physically merging with the wilderness. Principally, according to Rubenstein, it is important to notice how she previously reconnected her two separate halves, repeatedly mentioned throughout the book, by initiating savage-like intercourse with Joe, whom she refused before (Rubenstein 396). Therefore, by conceiving a metaphorical child and erasing the Random Samples, her journey is complete. Rubenstein concludes: “She vows to bear the symbolic child—who is both the released guilt of her past and the potentiality of the future—by herself, animal-like, alone, rather than strapped into the death machine that civilisation provides” (Rubenstein 396). Now feral, the protagonist confirms this stating that she is “through pretending” (Atwood 162) to be civilised. By this proclamation, she conforms to the predicament of this paragraph—by deleting the film, she irrevocably undertakes the process of natural transformation.
As follows, after erasing the Random Samples, the story’s heroine begins to emblematically erase everything inside the house as well, destroying reminiscences of her past. Allegedly, she is determined to emphasise her carnal origins: “I leave, carrying one of the wounded blankets with me, I will need it until the fur grows” (Atwood 171). Later, she enters the lake and leaves her body “floated on the surface” (Atwood 172), figuratively recreating the baptism. This serves as a reminder that she has erased the Random Samples in the same lake, where she found her father’s corpse and now, she definitely effaces her own tarnished body. She progressively moves farther away from the dwelling, immersing herself into the untamed nature of the Canadian wilderness, determined to reach a spiritual rebirth by prioritising her bestial inheritance in the form of natural reflexes. Resituating the original idea implied in this and the previous paragraph, in this sense, the last recording and consequent eradication of human corruption led to the lead’s restoration of her own natural origins.
All of the moments from the Random Samples considered, to follow the line of their apparition is a relatively evocative method of constructing a synopsis of Atwood’s perspicacious and multi-themed elaborative story-writing. Surfacing serves as an ever-remaining disclaimer on everything the postmodern society dared to enact. Emotionally drained and dealing with various disconcerting dilemmas, the young divorcée finds herself in a search not only for her lost father but also for her own sanity. Vindictive of her lost childhood, miserable present, and doomed future, she attempts to reconnect with nature, which is the only remaining stability in her life. Tackling the obstacles of her psychological conditions, she manages to perform a personal ritual of symbolic rebirth when she finally drowns the reflections of social failures, captured by the video recording, in the lake reportedly contaminated by likewise unjust and self-absorbed humanity.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Surfacing. Virago Press, 1979.
Granofsky, Ronald. “Fairy-Tale Morphology in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, vol. 23, no. 4, 1990, pp. 51–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24780545.
Rubenstein, Roberta. “‘Surfacing’: Margaret Atwood’s Journey to the Interior.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 22, no. 3, 1976, pp. 387–99. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26280240.