Narrative strategy of life story in the literature of Margaret Atwood

Naydenova Roksana Romanovna ORCID: 0000-0002-6821-3470 Postgraduate student, Department of Foreign Literature, Maxim Gorky Literature Institute 30/2 Baykalskaya str., Moscow, 107207, Russia roksa-moon@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) is a well—known modern Canadian writer and poet. During her long-term creative activity, M. Atwood has won many literary prizes and awards. Among them are two Booker Prizes, two awards from the Governor General of Canada, the Arthur C. Clarke Award and many others. To date, she is one of the main contenders for the Nobel Prize. M. Atwood began as a poet, her first collection "Double Persephone" was published in 1961. And the first novel "The Edible Woman" was published in 1969. In addition to a large prose form, the author writes short stories. The first and one of the most famous collections "Dancing Girls" was released in 1977.

The most popular book by M. Atwood to date is "The Handmaid's Tale" (1985), which was recently continued in "Testaments" (2019). In second place in fame should be placed the trilogy "Mindless Addam" ("Oryx and Crake" — 2003, "The Year of the Flood" — 2009 and "Mindless Addam" — 2013). All these works can be attributed to conceptual or philosophical fiction (speculative fiction), which originated in the field of American literature in the middle of the 20th century: "For the first time the phrase speculative fiction was used by the famous American science fiction writer Robert Hanline in 1947" ^[5].

The writer works in different directions. Among her works, one can find acute social novels, such as "Damage to the Body" (1981) or "Cat's Eye" (1988), and historical and documentary texts, for example, "She is Grace" (1996). The author is not afraid to experiment with adding elements of genre literature to books: detective stories, romance novels, etc.

Traditionally, the study of M. Atwood's work develops along three main paths: the reflection of Canadian identity in M. Atwood's work. Atwood, conceptual fiction in the work of M. Atwood and the women's question in the works of M. Atwood. All other topics are considered one way or another depending on the three main ones. The narrative in the works of M. Atwood remains beyond the scope of interest. But it was the narrative and its research (narratology) that interested the author in the first place. This can be seen in the literary works of M. Atwood, the main of which is "Negotiations with the Dead: A Writer on writing" (2002). In this book, M. Atwood describes the role of the writer as a fighter against time and mortality. His task is to capture events and people, to tell about them: "All writers must go from now to once upon a time; all must go from here to there; all must descend to where the stories are kept; all must take care not to be captured and held immobile by the past. And all must commit acts of larceny, or else of reclamation, depending how you look at it» ^[8]. That is, any literary work, according to M. Atwood, is always a story, a narrative, a narrative.

Presentation of the main material

The term "narrative" can be translated into Russian as "narrative", "story". The word "narrative" itself comes from the Latin word "narrare" — "to tell", which in turn is related to the Latin word "gnarus" — "to know". Thus, the very term "narrative" already contains the idea of knowing oneself and the world around us through narration ^[4].

The narrative came to literary criticism from historiography and became widespread in the middle of the 20th century, giving rise to many theories. Among the most significant of them: the ideas of the Russian formalists (V. Propp, B. Eichenbaum, V. Shklovsky), the dialogic theory of narrative (M. Bakhtin), the theory of "new criticism" (R.P. Blackmer), psychoanalytic theory (K. Burke), structuralist semiotic theories (R. Barth, H. White), theories of reader perception (V. Iser) and others. And today, the narrative is of interest to writers, literary critics, philosophers and sociologists. And M. Atwood is no exception here.

No matter what M. Atwood writes about, her works are always a story, a thoughtful multi—level narrative. Some of the texts have a clear, open narrative pattern at first glance, how? for example, the writer's early novel "The Edible Woman", in which the main key to understanding the narrative system lay in the change of focalization. The novel is divided into three parts. In the first and third parts, the narration is conducted in the first person, in the second — from the third. The plot revolves around the illness and healing of the main character from a mental illness: she cannot eat because she feels that she herself is a product. At the time of the exacerbation of the disease, the narration is conducted in the third person (the second part of the novel), which indicates the detachment of the heroine from her own personality. She is a victim of the consumer society — she can no longer distinguish herself from the things and products that she herself should consume.  

At the other pole, there are especially complex narrative constructions of the author, such as the novels "Comprehension" (1972), "Lady Oracle" (1976), "She is Grace", "The Blind Killer" (2000), where the narrative pattern is fully revealed only after a detailed acquaintance with the entire text: "All of the clues revealed tend at first to create greater confusion, but eventually the pattern is clear, and the end is a celebration of symmetry"^[9].

At the center for the development of narratives M. Atwood, as a rule, is the process of formation and self-development of the main character-the narrator. Most of the writer's texts are the total space of her characters. Sometimes there is only one narrator, as in the novel "Comprehension", but there may be two, as in the novel "The Blind Killer", and much more, as in the trilogy "Mad Addam". The reader looks at the world exclusively from the point of view of one or more characters. Thus, the author allows the reader to look at the same situation from the positions of different characters: "At the same time, any act of cognition through which truth becomes part of our reality is characterized by its unique position" ^[7].

 Every character in such a situation is an unreliable narrator. Since most of the writer's stories are stories of her characters about themselves, all the narrators of M. Atwood is initially interested in making a good impression on the listener or reader. The narrators of M. Atwood have very good reasons to tell the truth and lie at the same time. For example, in the novel "She is Grace", the main character Grace Marks is in prison at the time of the beginning of her story, and it depends only on the truthfulness or plausibility of her story: whether she will be released. «She finds that secrecy — her refusal to disclose — and ambiguity — her ability to construct multiple stories — provide her with a measure of power. She refuses to be fully known and, hence, fully “had”» ^[10].

The beginning of a story is the basic event of the entire narrative. It begins the journey into both the past and the present of the hero. "Any plot statement is a microstructure based on an event" ^[2]. It should be taken into account that M. Atwood does not introduce the reader first to the past of his characters, and then to the present. Two streams of time alternate with each other, creating a third space of timelessness, within which the past and present of the characters enter into a kind of dialogue that is not possible with a linear narrative. Invisible, elusive threads stretch between the character's past and present, tied to one or another insignificant detail, which becomes increasingly important as the narrative develops. For example, in the novel "Cat's Eye" one of the most important details of the work is a rare blue ball for the game, which the main character Elaine always carries with her as a talisman in childhood, loses in her youth and again accidentally finds when sorting out forgotten things in adulthood. As you can see, the key role is given to pointedly small, insignificant subjects. This is consistent with the general logic of the entire narrative by M. Atwood: really significant things never seem like that at first glance. It is only from a distance of years that one can realize their true value.

Thus, the life story of the hero unfolds on several levels of time. The first narrative layer refers to the present, in which the hero-narrator resides. The hero's everyday life is usually filled with routine. The present is characterized by stagnation, a spiritual crisis. However, outwardly it may not manifest itself, on the contrary, in the present, M. Atwood's narrators, as a rule, everything is good or at least stable. So in the novel "She is Grace", the main character in the present is preparing to get out of prison. She is supported in preparing for the appeal, she is surrounded by well-wishers. In the novel "Cat's Eye", the narrator Elaine is a famous artist in the present. In "The Blind Killer," the main character Iris, already an elderly woman, is reminiscing. As we can see, the present in the narrative drawing of the writer is, in a way, an epilogue, a finale. The stories of M. Atwood develop from the denouement to the beginning.

The second narrative layer is the past. The past dominates the present, although it occupies an outwardly secondary position in relation to it: if the hero did not begin to remember in the present, then there would be no story. This is how the reader and the hero himself gain access to the past through the present. The past is more significant, because the formation of a hero takes place in it. The characters of the writer themselves are aware of this. If it were not for the past, there would be no present — this simple thought is the hero's first step towards turning his own life into a narrative, a literary work.

In addition to the past and the present, as mentioned above, there is a third layer — the space of timelessness, where the first two streams of time merge. Due to this, the illusion of fate is created. The characters of M. Atwood begin to feel that their whole life has developed in this way, and not otherwise, only to find themselves at the point of the present. Many of the writer's narrators are influenced by prophetic dreams, predictions, and superstitions. So it seems to Grace Marks that her whole life was just a prologue to her shame, crime and subsequent punishment. Her worldview is riddled with biblical allusions. She compares her own fall to the fall of Eve. Elaine from the novel "Cat's Eye" experiences religious ecstasy as a child. She is sure that the Virgin Mary visited her. Since then, throughout her life, Elaine has been looking for that very image of the Mother of God, wishing for a repeat of the miracle. Iris is sure that she has become a victim of evil fate. The very title of the novel "The Blind Murderer" refers to the idea of fate, the case in the image of a blindfolded judge.

Fate in this situation becomes an analogue of the narrative: "Narrative, as we see, by organizing independent elements of existence into a single whole, gives meaning to human actions and organizes experiences, experiences in time, arranging events and actions into a single image or plot. This ordering is determined by a person's ideas about the world" ^[3]. The heroes of M. Atwood is convinced that their future is predetermined. Therefore, they tell the story of their lives taking into account this terrible, unknown force. Faith in fate is also a loophole for an unreliable narrator. He often resorts to disclaiming responsibility, explaining his own inaction by the intervention of chance. So Iris justifies her own blindness towards her sister with all sorts of problems of the post-war period, social stereotypes, etc.

The main goal of the hero is to tell his version of events, to justify himself. It is no accident that in the art world M. Atwood so often sees the image of the court. Let's recall, for example, "She's Grace", "Penelope" (2005) and "The Handmaid's Tale". Readers and listeners act as judges and jurors. It is extremely important for the hero that they believe him. But, sharing their memories, the heroes of M. Atwood complains about his memory quite often. Many details, details and whole episodes escape them, they think up some moments, others are replaced by eyewitness accounts. This is how Iris tells about her childhood, mother and father, relying more on the opinions and suspicions of the servants than on her own memories. Grace Marks confuses her dreams with reality. Elaine is obsessed with the ghosts of the past, which literally haunt her.

As a result, the biographies of the characters are very fragmentary. This is not a detailed, uniform and step-by-step formation, but a chain of vivid events that the narrators especially remembered. "The novel implements a narrative strategy of biography, the historical source of which can be found in the "Parallel Biographies" of Plutarch. The essence of this strategy is not that it sets out a complete biography of the hero. The novel can also present us with a relatively untethered fragment of a biography" ^[6]. But, as mentioned above, characters cannot always figure out for themselves what is important and what is not.

Only as the narrative develops does the real conflict of the work begin to emerge, cleared of all possible literary techniques. The most common of them is pseudo—intrigue, when the narrator tries to diversify the narrative about his own real life by introducing a detective or spy line into it. For example, Joanne from the novel "Lady Oracle" is allegedly being pursued by a maniac fan, and Toby from the novel "The Year of the Flood" describes his escape from a criminal authority.

But the deeper the hero plunges into his own inner world, the clearer it becomes that the intrigue he has constructed is only a cover for a real conflict, which the narrator is not ready to openly talk about: "Atwood manipulates the narrative, creating and destroying readers' expectations about the characters' images" ^[1]. As a rule, the real conflict lies beyond any social or genre conventions and almost always takes place in the head of the hero himself. So the main conflict for Joan is not the struggle with a maniac who did not exist, but the confrontation with her own fictional personalities-pseudonyms and the fear of opening up to people. And Toby's main problem is not a quarrel with a local criminal gang, which no longer remembers her, but a feeling of abandonment and uselessness.

Conclusions

Thus, the strategy of life description serves to build a multi-level narrative with several "floors" responsible for the past, the present and the space of timelessness. And also, this strategy, provided that the narrative is in the first person, helps to gradually reveal the character of the hero. M. Atwood allows his characters to analyze themselves depending on their moods and experiences. And the hero, starting with simple conventions, does not notice himself how he goes into a frank conversation with the reader. The tortuous path from false but beautiful constructions to real conflict helps the author explore the nature of consciousness and memory, which is so relevant in modern literature, philosophy and science.