Rereading Atwoods Surfacing :: Atwood Surfacing Essays

Rereading Atwoods Surfacing   The class touched on a multitude of divergent subjects during the class time for the second discussion of the novel, Surfacing. These discussions were much deeper than the previous maven, request questions on motivation and symbolism rather than plot and language. Two of the close popular subjects were characterization and the validity of the cashier and the information she gives the reader. Other topics were discussed including religion, the domestic fowl motif that has appeared throughout our readings this semester, and the narrators artistic frustration among many others.   To begin with one of the most prominent subjects, the class discussed character-ization at length. Many students wondered what the narrators friends added to the story, whether they were symbolic of something, reflections of the narrators characteristics, or representatives of other individuals. Daniel suggested that the narrator was projecting the identi ties of her parents onto her friends. For instance, David was representative of the narrators brother (fascist bruiser yanks) with his militancy and Joe was the narrators father, capable of love and close to her heart. Erin echoed this idea, saying that Anna was representative of the narrators scram who concealed all of her pain and unhappiness throughout the story. Other students, though, had dissimilar ideas. Stephanie thought that the narrators friends were symbolic, Joe as nature, David as the city, and Anna as the icky things about creation a girl. As these were discussed, other ideas surfaced and the narrators brother was thought to represent shogunate while her mother, like Joe, represented nature. Judy expanded on this, saying that David was mayhap representative of the narrators previous lover. All of these ideas were well backed and well stated, deviation each individual student to decide which characters represented who or what.   some other topic t hat was discussed at length was the narrator herself. In Forum II, Mandy began by questioning the narrators humanness and what, exactly, constitutes being human. The discussion picked up these thoughts and began to question whether the narrator was actually domesticated or wild. She cooks and cleans for the others, taking care of them basically the unscathed time, but it was argued that she seemed to be hardly one predisposed to subservience.