Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts
65 pages • 2-hour read
Margaret AtwoodBook of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination and illness.
Pen Names and Personas
Atwood’s memoir uses the various names and personas she has assumed over the years as a motif. For instance, Atwood’s recollections of her reputation as “Peggy Nature” to the campers reveal a distinct facet of her personality that readers may not know about, developing the theme of Negotiating Writers’ Many Selves. She explains that she became “Peggy Nature” at camp since she went by her first nickname, “Peggy,” and was assigned the last name “Nature” because this was her area of expertise. She writes proudly, “Once Peggy Nature, always Peggy Nature […] Peggy Nature is one of my disguises” (136). That said, while her role as “Peggy Nature” was to teach biology, not literature, she later drew on her experience at camp in her writing. She fondly remembers her Peggy Nature persona in her poem “Snake Woman,” which is based on her memories of catching snakes at camp to prank the children and counselors. This transmutation of “Peggy Nature” into “Snake Woman” shows Atwood finding ways to integrate the various roles she has inhabited into a cohesive identity while also Transforming Real-Life Experience into Fiction.
A particular subset of personas facilitates Atwood’s exploration of Confronting Sexism as a Female Author. By revealing her initial decision to publish her poetry under the pen name of M. E. Atwood, the author adds to her discussion of sexist bias, which she says was pervasive and obvious; “everyone knew” male writers’ work would be more respected than their female counterparts. According to Atwood, even successful women writers’ work has been trivialized historically. She writes, “There was Walt Whitman and then there was Emily Dickinson. There was Tennyson and then there was Christina Rossetti. Major. Minor” (141). Using a more masculine pen name could help women writers avoid this unfair judgment but also entailed working within the confines of an unjust system. Atwood’s eventual decision to publish under her full name thus marks a turning point in the narrative by highlighting her increasing determination to confront sexism directly.
Apollo and Hermes
In Atwood’s work, the Greek gods of art, Apollo and Hermes, are symbols of different aspects of the writer’s creative process, adding depth to Atwood’s theme of writers’ many selves. Atwood claims that both gods—or qualities—contribute to creative labors. Apollo, being a musician, is representative of writers’ need for “structure and harmony” in their work (xviii). Meanwhile, Hermes, a trickster god with a sense of humor and access to the underworld, is representative of writers’ more anarchic and unpredictable creative energies; when writers “invoke Hermes, opener of doors, […] there is no guarantee about what might lie behind that door” (xix). The author portrays both Apollonian and Hermaean traits as highly necessary to creative work, with each complementing the other. She explains, “That the two gods are joined at the hip is evident in their mythic origin stories: it was Hermes who made Apollo’s lyre in the first place. Most cultures have a version of this duality, since both form and energy are needed for any work of art” (xix). Atwood’s portrayal of Apollo and Hermes as different, but ultimately interdependent and connected, aspects of creativity helps dramatize her argument that creative people contain many “selves.”
Birds
A deep appreciation of nature runs throughout Book of Lives. Atwood spent much of her childhood in the woods of Ontario and Quebec, where her father, an entomologist, encouraged her curiosity about the natural world. More than insects, however, it is birds that embody this fascination and love, functioning as a motif related to the memoir’s exploration of identity and the forces that shape it.
As an adult, Atwood began birdwatching with her husband, and the activity helped them connect to both one another and their past. Atwood’s account of how Graeme picked up the hobby implicitly serves as an origin story for her, as well:
This bird [a red-tailed hawk that dove at him] was a guide for him—a doorway back into a world he had loved as a child. The great northern forest, the wolves howling in the distance, the calls of loons, the hooting of owls, the wind in the trees, the waves on the shore (317).
The world Atwood describes here is the same one she grew up in, suggesting that birds and birdwatching helped her revisit her childhood self and experiences amid her increasing celebrity. Later passages underscore the link between birdwatching and an identity utterly separate from her public persona. Describing how someone asked her whether she was Margaret Atwood during spring migration, she explains that she responded, “Not today,” and reflects: “‘Being famous—even a little famous, as I was then—shouldn’t be a twenty-four-hour occupation […] I don’t usually say ‘Not today,’ but spring migration is sacrosanct” (380). Finally, while discussing her husband’s dementia, she recounts him remarking, “I no longer know the names of the birds […] But then, they don’t know my name either” (536). Birding here becomes a form of mutual recognition that does not hinge on reputation or even on language, affirming the deepest parts of Graeme’s identity.
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