The Blind Assassin

"Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for, when they scrawl their names in the snow."

Language is central to The Blind Assassin; it is one of the only ways in which characters can access one another's perspectives, and it is also the medium people use to construct their versions of reality. In this passage, however, Iris raises the possibility of a different use for language. Her memoir, she says, may not communicate anything to anyone or even "mean" anything in the usual sense; instead, it may function simply as a kind of marker of her existence. This is in keeping with Iris's ultimate description of her novel as a "memorial," but it also suggests another way of thinking about the motif of muteness, since there is a sense of futility around all of Iris's attempts at storytelling.

"When she was little, Laura used to say the angels were meant to be us, the two of us. I told her this couldn't be true, because the angels were put there by our grandmother before we were born. But Laura never paid much attention to that kind of reasoning. She was more interested in forms—in what things were in themselves, not what they weren't. She wanted essences."

Besides speaking to Laura's personality, the above passage is a good example of the novel's interest in the nature of truth. There are certain literal facts about the Chase family monument—for instance, the date it was built—but there may also be metaphorical truths that take precedence. Laura cares more about these symbolic "forms" than physical reality. This perspective arguably aligns her with the world of literature and language, since (within the novel itself) objects like the angels do carry symbolic meanings that are more important than their literal meaning.

"Among other things, Adelia went in for sculpture. There were two stone sphinxes flanking the conservatory—Laura and I used to climb up on their backs—and a capering faun leering from behind a stone bench, with pointed ears and a huge grape leaf scrolled across his private parts like a badge of office; and seated beside the lily pond there was a nymph, a modest girl with small adolescent breasts and a rope of marble hair over one shoulder, one foot dipping tentatively into the water. We used to eat apples beside her, and watch the goldfish nibbling at her toes."

Though most obvious in the story-within-a-story-within-a-story, figures from myth and fantasy also populate real life in Atwood's novel. The statues at Avilion have particular symbolic significance, with the "leering" faun foreshadowing the predatory behavior of various male characters. The nymph, meanwhile, ties into the motif of water, while also anticipating certain elements of Laura's characterization and plotline—most notably, the youth and naiveté that make her sexually desirable to Richard. Finally, sphinxes are mythological creatures who ask riddles of travelers before letting them pass. Their inclusion, then, both reflects Atwood's interest in different kinds of thresholds or gatewaysand lays the groundwork for her depiction of the People of Joy, who require that travelers present (rather than solve) riddles.

"Reenie would say—when I was being recalcitrant—that I had a hard nature and she knew where I got it from. Laura on the other hand was my mother's child…But appearances are deceptive. I could never have driven off a bridge. My father could have. My mother couldn't."

The above passage offers important insights into both Iris and Laura's characters. On the face of it, Laura's dramatic suicide seems at odds with her dreaminess and sensitivity; that kind of decisiveness seems more like a quality Iris would possess. Here, however, Iris suggests that Laura's softness actually masks a steely and inflexible personality that contrasts with Iris's own pragmatism and adaptability.This paradox echoes the novel's broader treatment of idealism and realism. Given that reality is often unpleasant, realism might seem the "harder" worldview at first glance. By casting everything in terms of absolutes, however, idealism paves the way for uncompromising actions.

"But I had no words to express this, my disagreement with my mother's version of things. I didn't know I was about to be left with her idea of me; with her idea of my goodness pinned onto me like a badge, and no chance to throw it back at her."

In this passage, Atwood ties together themes of both fate and perspective. Shortly before she dies, Liliana Chase reminds Iris to take care of her younger sister, saying that she knows Iris tries to be good. Iris herself doesn't feel that this is true, but her mother's opinion of her takes on added force in the wake of her death, shaping the way Iris acts for years to come.Liliana's beliefs about her daughter, in other words, become another kind of burdensome family legacy.

"The Servant of Rejoicing rides ahead, his heart pure, his brow furrowed, his eyes burning. Over his shoulders is a rough leather cloak, on his head is the badge of office, a red conical hat. Behind him are his followers, eyeteeth bared. Herbivores flee before them, scavengers follow, wolves lope alongside."

Late in the novel, Iris warns that justice—seemingly a force for good—can actually be cruel because of its "blindness." The story the man tells about Sakiel-Norn makes a similar point, because the barbarians who destroy the city do so indiscriminately, killing both the oppressors and the oppressed.In this passage, Atwood alludes to their violence using the motif of carnivorousness, drawing attention to the nomads' "eyeteeth" (canines). This portrayal of justice also underscores Atwood's broader point about the impersonal nature of history, which—in the end—destroys everyone and everything.

"'It'll happen to you one day too,' I said to Laura. 'When you're my age. It's a thing that happens to girls.'

Laura was indignant. She refused to believe it. As with so much else, she was convinced that an exception would be made in her case."

This passage takes place immediately after Iris has her first period, and reinforces the novel's depiction of the female body as vulnerable; Atwood portrays women's bodies as open to both intrusions (as in sexual assault) and outpourings (as in childbirth or menstruation).Laura's "indignation" therefore seems to signal resentment of her own physicality, which is in keeping with her bent toward spirituality. Her belief that "an exception" will be made for her also reflects her idealism, but in a different way. Later in the novel, Iris talks about people who think they can overcome the "order of things"—particularly suffering and death—through single-minded conviction. Laura very much falls into this category, which explains why she thinks she will be exempt from unpleasant realities no matter what Iris tells her.

"But then it came to me that who I really am is a person who doesn't need to know who he really is, in the usual sense. What does it mean, anyway—family background and so forth? People use it mostly as an excuse for their own snobbery, or else their failings. I'm free of the temptation, that's all. I'm free of the strings."

Alex's status as an orphan singles him out in a novel that is very concerned with family history. Ultimately, however, Iris will tell Sabrina that she should view her grandfather's mysterious background as a blessing, and this passage helps explain why. Because family history acts as a kind of destiny in The Blind Assassin, ignorance of that history frees Alex to act according to his own desires and—in some sense—to define his own identity.

"[Winifred] had on a green ensemble—not a pastel green but a vibrant green, almost flagrant. (When chlorophyll chewing gum came into fashion two decades later, it was that colour.) She had green alligator shoes to match. They were glossy, rubbery, slightly wet-looking, like lily pads, and I thought I had never seen such exquisite, unusual shoes. Her hat was the same shade—a round swirl of green fabric, balanced on her head like a poisonous cake."

Throughout The Blind Assassin, Atwood uses color to aid in characterization. Winifred, for instance, often dresses in vivid green, which hints at her underlying viciousness. The connection is particularly clear in this passage, where the color takes on reptilian or snake-like qualities; Winifred's shoes are made from alligator skin, and Iris describes the shade of her hat as "poisonous."

"She'll be wearing a fur coat. He'll despise her for it, he'll ask her to keep it on. Fur all the way through."

This passage speaks to the complicated relationships that exists between the unnamed lovers (and likely their real-life counterparts, as well). As Iris portrays him, the man finds his lover's social status both off-putting and alluring. A self-described socialist, he's opposed on principle to her wealth, but he can't help but find the visible signs of it desirable. This tension, along with similar tensions surrounding gender, create a love-hate dynamic in the couple's interactions.  

"I was worried that Richard was finding the experience of our marriage—by which I meant the part of it that took place in the dark and could not be spoken about—as disappointing as I did…I concealed this anxiety of mine as well as I could, and took frequent baths: I felt I was becoming addled inside, like an egg."

Unlike her experiences with Alex, the sex Iris has as Richard's wife is unfulfilling and ultimately abusive. Although Richard has not become physically violent by this early point in the marriage, there is still a sense of transgression in Iris's account of their relationship; Iris's comment about being "addled inside" hints that she experiences sex with Richard as a violation not only of her body but also of her mind. This passage thus fits into a broader pattern of sexual exploitation in the novel, foreshadowing the eventual revelation that Richard raped Laura.

"Laura did not thank [Richard]. She stared at his forehead, with the cultivated blankness she had once used on Mr. Erskine, and I saw we were in for trouble."

Characters in The Blind Assassin often have difficulty accessing one another's inner worlds, but they also sometimes use this difficulty to their advantage. Laura and Iris in particular protect themselves by perfecting a blank look that totally forecloses the possibility of mutual understanding. The passage also subtly foreshadows Richard's abuse of Laura by linking him to Mr. Erskine, who molested her when she was a young girl.

"I looked at myself in the mirror, wondering, What is it about me? What is it that is so besotting? The mirror was full-length: in it I tried to catch the back view of myself, but of course you never can. You can never see yourself the way you are to someone else—to a man looking at you, from behind, when you don't know—because in a mirror your own head is always cranked around over your shoulder. A coy, inviting pose. You can hold up another mirror to see the back view, but then what you see is what so many painters have loved to paint—Woman Looking In Mirror, said to be an allegory of vanity."

In addition to further developing questions about how we engage with other people's perspectives, this passage links that debate to the theme of gender relations. Iris's attempts to physically view herself the way her husband does prove just as futile as her attempts to understand his inner world; like the unnamed woman in her novel who constantly imagines her lover imagining her, Iris simply ends up looking at herself. At the same time, however, external perspectives shape what she sees according to male ideas about female vanity. Ultimately, then, it is very difficult (if not impossible) for Iris to see either the "real" her or her husband's "real" ideas about her; multiple layers of gender roles and expectations get in the way. 

"I thought I could live like a mouse in the castle of the tigers, by creeping around out of sight inside the walls; by staying quiet, by keeping my head down. No: I give myself too much credit. I didn't see the danger. I didn't even know they were tigers. Worse: I didn't know I might become a tiger myself."

The above passage draws on several motifs central to the novel—muteness, blindness, and carnivorousness—to underscore its claims about exploitation. In retrospect, Iris says, Laura saw the dangers of living with Richard and Winifred more clearly than she herself did. This may partly reflect the sisters' different personalities, but it also points to Iris's fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of "predatory" behavior. Iris attempts to use silence defensively, not only to avoid drawing her husband's attention to herself, but also perhaps because she believes she can avoid becoming complicit by staying passive anduninvolved. This, however, turns out to be untrue: living around "tigers" ultimately makes her into a predator as well.

"'I saw Alex Thomas the other day,' [Laura] said.

I turned away quickly, adjusted my veil in the mirror. It was a fairly poor effect, the green satin: some Hollywood vamp in a desert movie. I comforted myself with the thought that everyone else would look equally faux. 'Alex Thomas? Really?' I said. I should have displayed more surprise."

Atwood very subtly hints at Iris's unreliability as a narrator in several places throughout the novel. Here, for instance, it is clear in retrospect that Iris turns away "quickly" to avoid giving away something about her affair with Alex. Iris is so skilled at deflection, however, that a first-time reader might be taken in. Her description of her veil, for instance, is likely to distract us as well as Laura, making alternate readings of the exchange possible; if we didn't know for a fact about the affair, we might interpret Iris's regret at not showing more surprise simply as part of a sisterly effort to humor Laura's infatuation.

"When you hit the women, no blood came out, only juice. When you hit them harder, they dissolved into sweet mushy pulp, which pretty soon became another Peach Woman. They didn't appear to experience pain, as such, and Will and Boyd began to wonder whether they experienced pleasure either."

The Planet Aa'A is a place of complete harmony and happiness, but the absence of suffering actually seems threatening to the humans who end up there. The above passage, for instance, implies that our understanding of pleasure actually depends on a contrasting concept of suffering, which perhaps explains why Will and Boyd try to inflict pain on the Peach Women. Of course, the violence described here also intersects with the novel's interest in gender relations. Atwood implies that Richard's abusive behavior stems from a desire to completely understand and possess his female victims. Laura in particular, however, continues to frustrate his efforts to get inside her mind, placing him in a position similar to that of the men in the story: "It seemed to me that he'd come to regard Laura as a puzzle, one that it was now his business to solve…[h]e wanted to get Laura under his thumb, he wanted her neck under his foot, however lightly placed. But Laura didn't have that kind of neck. So after each of his attempts he was left standing with one leg in the air, like a bear-hunter posing in a picture from which the slain bear has vanished" (381).

"I look back over what I've written and I know it's wrong, not because of what I've set down, but because of what I've omitted. What isn't there has a presence, like the absence of light.

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn't necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labelled bones."

By withholding information about her affair with Alex, Iris makes herself unreliable as a narrator. Assuming she is not simply being self-serving, however, the above passage suggests one way of thinking about her decision to keep key details to herself. According to Iris, simply relaying the facts of what happened would not "get you the truth," perhaps because truth also involves silences and omissions ("What isn't there has a presence"). Given that the nature of truth is a central theme in Atwood's novel, it is worth considering whether Iris's unreliability (as well as the book's other structural quirks) actually facilitates "truthfulness" in some way.

"None of this happens, of course. Or it does happen, but not so you would notice. It happens in another dimension of space."

The idea of things happening "in another dimension of space" recurs several times in The Blind Assassin; Iris, for instance, describes "should" as "a futile word…[i]t belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space" (428). In this passage, however, the attitude is a bit more complex. As the woman thinks about what might have happened if she had left her husband for her lover, the tone is clearly wistful. The passage, however, suggests that these events do happen in a certain sense, if not in a "noticeable" way. In fact, we could see the book itself—or at least the passages describing this alternate history—as the "dimension of space" where the woman and her lover end up together. The excerpt, then, speaks to the theme of different versions of reality, and the role that language plays in constructing them.

"What went wrong? Who did this?

The old woman.

What.

L'histoire, cette vieille dame exaltée and menteuse.

He shines like tin. His eyes are vertical slits. He isn't what she remembers. Everything that made him singular has been burned away.”

Although the entire dream sequence surrounding Sakiel-Norn's destruction is important, this passage stands out for particular mention. For one thing, it is the clearest indication that history itself is a kind of "blind assassin" in the novel: when the woman asks who set the city on fire, he responds, "[h]istory, that lying and excitable old woman." This in turn helps explain the alarming appearance of the man in the final paragraph, which the woman describes as being stripped of everything that made him a unique person. The movement of history does not respect individual identity or individual happiness; in fact, it destroys them through vast, impersonal social forces and (ultimately) death itself.

"I've failed to convey Richard, in any rounded sense. He remains a cardboard cutout. I know that. I can't truly describe him, I can't get a precise focus: he's blurred, like the face in some wet, discarded newspaper. Even at the time he appeared to me smaller than life, although larger than life as well. It came from his having too much money, too much presence in the world—you were tempted to expect more from him than was there, and so what was average in him seemed like deficiency. He was ruthless, but not like a lion; more like a sort of large rodent. He tunnelled underground; he killed things by chewing off their roots."

Other than perhaps Laura, the character Iris says she has the most consistent trouble grasping is Richard. In Richard's case, however, Iris suggests that the problem is that there is less to understand than one might expect; he is not particularly intelligent, charming, or handsome. Even as a predator, he is unremarkable—a "large rodent" rather than a "lion."In some ways, however, Richard's "averageness" makes him all the more dangerous, because it seems to feed into his desire for power over other people.

"My fingers itched with spite. I knew what had happened next. I'd pushed her off."

The above passage takes place moments before Iris tells Laura the truth about her affair with Alex, but it refers back to an incident from the sisters' childhood: Iris, annoyed that Laura wasn't more upset about their mother's death, pushed her off the ledge she was sitting on. The fact that that memory resurfaces here suggests that Iris's role in Laura's death was preordained, particularly because Iris's description of the moment almost reads as though she is simply following a script. 

"Perhaps this is what happened to Laura—pushed her quite literally over the edge. The words she had relied on, building her house of cards on them, believing them solid, had flipped over and shown her their hollow centres, and then skittered away from her like so much waste paper.

God. Trust. Sacrifice. Justice.

Faith. Hope. Love.

Not to mention sister. Well, yes. There's always that."

Although The Blind Assassin is in many ways about language (and, more specifically, how we use language to create reality), Iris is ultimately fairly cynical about language's power. She describes it, for instance, as a "currency…with meanings we've agreed on," which suggests that language's meaning is purely a matter of social convention (441). By contrast, Laura views words as corresponding to higher, absolute truths, which Iris here suggests was her downfall; she couldn't reconcile herself to the "hollowness" of her faith in (among other things) her own sister.

"The picture is of happiness, the story not. Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road."

The above passage closes Iris's noveland marks the culmination of Atwood's consideration of happiness as a theme.Referring back to the glass dome surrounding Aa'A, the passage depicts lasting happiness as in some sense incompatible with life; we can't recapture paradise once we've learned more about the world, but we also can't linger in that state ofhappiness and expect to lead a full life. True "paradise," Iris suggests, would require that nothing ever change, because change and the passage of time inevitably lead to loss. Without these "stories" or "journeys," however, it is not clear what would make life meaningful.