attitude by margaret essay summary

Attitude by Margaret Atwood

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I am of course overjoyed to be here today in the role of ceremonial object. There is more than the usual amount of satisfaction in receiving an honorary degree from the university that helped to form one’s erstwhile callow and ignorant mind into the thing of dubious splendor that it is today; whose professors put up with so many overdue term papers, and struggled to read one’s handwriting, of which ‘interesting’ is the best that has been said; at which one failed to learn Anglo-Saxon and somehow missed Bibliography entirely, a severe error which I trust no one present here today has committed; and at which one underwent excruciating agonies not only of soul but of body, later traced to having drunk too much coffee in the bowels of Wymilwood.

It is to Victoria College that I can attribute the fact that Bell Canada, Oxford University Press and McClelland and Stewart all failed to hire me in the summer of ‘63, on the grounds that I was a) overqualified and b) couldn’t type, thus producing in me that state of joblessness, angst and cosmic depression which everyone knows is indispensable for novelists and poets, although nobody has ever claimed the same for geologists, dentists or chartered accountants. It is also due to Victoria College, incarnated in the person of Northrop Frye, that I didn’t run away to England to become a waitress, live in a garret, write masterpieces and get tuberculosis. He thought I might have more spare time for creation if I ran away to Boston, lived in a stupor, wrote footnotes and got anxiety attacks, that is, if I went to Graduate School, and he was right. So, for all the benefits conferred upon me by my Alma Mater, where they taught me that the truth would make me free but failed to warn me of the kind of trouble I’d get into by trying to tell it – I remain duly grateful.

But everything has its price. No sooner had I tossed off a graceful reply to the letter inviting me to be present today than I began to realize the exorbitance of what was expected of me. I was going to have to come up with something to say, to a graduating class in 1983, year of the Ph.D. taxi driver, when young people have unemployment the way they used to have ugly blackheads; something presumably useful, wise, filled with resonance and overview, helpful, encouraging and optimistic. After all, you are being launched – though ever since I experienced the process, I’ve wondered why “convocation” is the name for it. “Ejection” would be better. Even in the best of times, it’s more or less like being pushed over a cliff, and these are not the best of times. In case you haven’t figured it out already, I’m here to tell you that it’s an armpit out there. As for your university degree, there are definitely going to be days when you will feel that you’ve been given a refrigerator and sent to the middle of a jungle, where there are no three-pronged grounded plugholes.

Not only that, the year will come when you will wake up in the middle of the night and realize that the people you went to school with are in positions of power, and may soon actually be running things. If there’s anything more calculated to thick men’s blood with cold, it’s that. After all, you know how much they didn’t know then, and, given yourself as an example, you can’t assume they know a great deal more now. “We’re all doomed,” you will think. (For example: Brian Mulroney is only a year older than I am.) You may feel that the only thing to do when you’ve reached this stage is to take up nail-biting, mantras, or jogging, all of which would be recognized by animal behavior specialists as substitution activities, like scratching, which are resorted to in moments of unresolved conflict. But we’ll get around to some positive thinking in a moment.

“What shall I tell them!” I thought, breaking out into a cold sweat, as I tossed and turned night after night. (Lest you leap to indulge in Calvinistic guilt at the idea of having been the proximate cause of my discomfort, let me hasten to add that I was on a boat. The tossing and turning was par for the course, and the cold sweat can be cured by Gravol). For a while I toyed with the idea of paraphrasing Kurt Vonnegut, who told one graduating class, “Everything is going to become unbelievably worse and will never get better again,” and walked off the stage. But that’s the American style: boom or bust. A Canadian would be more apt to say, “things may be pretty mediocre but let’s at least try to hold the line.”

Then I thought that maybe I could say a few words on the subject of a liberal arts education, and how it prepares you for life. But sober reflection led me to the conclusion that this topic too was a washout; for, as you will soon discover, a liberal arts education doesn’t exactly prepare you for life. A preparation-for-life curriculum would not consist of courses on Victorian Thought and French Romanticism, but of things like How to Cope With Marital Breakdown, Getting More for your Footwear Dollar, Dealing With Stress, and How To Keep Your Fingernails from Breaking Off by Always Filing Them Towards the Center; in other words, it would read like the contents page of Homemakers Magazine, which is why Homemakers Magazine is so widely read, even by me. Or, for boys, Forbes or The Economist , and Improving Your Place in the Power Hierarchy by Choosing the Right Suit. (Dark blue with a faint white pinstripe, not too far apart, in case you’re interested.)

Or maybe, I thought, I should expose glaring errors in the educational system, or compile a list of things I was taught which are palpably not true. For instance, in high school I made the mistake of taking Home Economics instead of Typing – we thought, in those days, that if you took the commercial course most of your eyebrows would come off and would have to be drawn on with a pencil for the rest of your life – where I was told that every meal should consist of a brown thing, a white thing, a yellow thing and a green thing; that it was not right to lick the spoon while cooking; and that the inside of a dress seam was as important as the outside. All three of these ideas are false and should be discarded immediately by anyone who still holds them.

Nor did anyone have the foresight to inform me that the best thing I could do for myself as a writer would be back and wrist exercises. No one has yet done a study of this, but they will, and when they start excavating and measuring the spines and arm bones of the skeletons of famous writers of the past I am sure they will find that those who wrote the longest novels, such as Dickens and Melville, also had the thickest wrists. The real reason that Emily Dickinson stuck to lyric poems with relatively few stanzas is that she had spindly fingers. You may scoff, but future research will prove me right.

But I then thought, I shouldn’t talk about writing. Few of this graduating class will wish to be writers, and those that do should by no means be encouraged. Weave a circle round them thrice, and close your eyes holy dread, because who needs the competition? What with the proliferation of Creative Writing courses, a mushroom of recent growth all but unknown in my youth, we will soon have a state of affairs in which everybody writes and nobody reads, the exact reverse of the way things were when I was composing dolorous verses in a rented cupboard on Charles Street in the early sixties.

Or maybe, I thought, I should relate to them a little known fact of shocking import, which they will remember vividly when they have all but forgotten the rest of this speech. For example: nobody ever tells you, but did you know that when you have a baby your hair falls out? Not all of it, and not all at once, but it does fall out. It has something to do with a zinc imbalance. The good news is that it does grow back in. This only applies to girls. With boys, it falls out whether you have a baby or not, and it never grows back in; but even then there is hope. In a pinch, you can resort to quotation, a commodity which a liberal arts education teaches you to treat with respect, and I offer the following: “God only made a few perfect heads, and the rest lie covered with hair.”

Which illustrates the following point: when faced with the inevitable, you always have a choice. You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it. As I learned during my liberal arts education, any symbol can have, in the imaginative context, two versions, a positive and a negative. Blood can either be the gift of life or what comes out of you when you cut your wrists in the bathtub. Or, somewhat less drastically, if you spill your milk you’re left with a glass which is either half empty or half full.

Which brings us to the hidden agenda of this speech. What you are being ejected into today is a world that is both half empty and half full. On the one hand, the biosphere is rotting away. The raindrops that keep falling on your head are also killing the fish, the trees, the animals, and, if they keep being as acid as they are now, they’ll eventually do away with things a lot closer to home, such as crops, front lawns and your digestive tract. Nature is no longer what surrounds us, we surround it, and the switch has not been for the better. On the other hand, unlike the ancient Egyptians, we as a civilization know what mistakes we are making and we also have the technology to stop making them; all that is lacking is the will.

Another example: on the one hand, we ourselves live daily with the threat of annihilation. We’re just a computer button and a few minutes away from it, and the gap between us and it is narrowing every day. We secretly think in terms not of “If the Bomb Drops” but of “When the Bomb Drops”, and it’s understandable if we sometimes let ourselves slide into a mental state of powerlessness and consequent apathy. On the other hand, the catastrophe that threatens us as a species, and most other species as well, is not unpredictable and uncontrollable, like the eruption of the volcano that destroyed Pompeii. If it occurs, we can die with the dubious satisfaction of knowing that the death of the world was a man-made and therefore preventable event, and that the failure to prevent it was a failure of human will.

This is the kind of world we find ourselves in, and it’s not pleasant. Faced with facts this depressing, the question of the economy – or how many of us in this country can afford two cars doesn’t really loom too large, but you’d never know it from reading the papers. Things are in fact a lot worse elsewhere, where expectations center not on cars and houses and jobs but on the next elusive meal. That’s part of the down side. The up side, here and now, is that this is still more or less a democracy; you don’t get shot or tortured yet for expressing an opinion, and politicians, motivated as they may be by greed and the lust for power, are nevertheless or because of this, still swayed by public opinion. The issues raised in any election are issues perceived by those who want power to be of importance to those in a position to confer it upon them. In other words, if enough people show by the issues they raise and by the way they’re willing to vote that they want changes made, then change becomes possible. You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality.

Try it and see.

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Attitude by Margaret Atwood -Explanation

Attitude by margaret atwood, the university of toronto, toronto, canada.

Central message of the article .. In so many ways, even after nearly four decades of this speech by Margaret Atwood, the deficiencies of the curriculum, the uncertainties that new graduates face, and the possible panacea for the trauma of a hard landing in the real world remain valid to day. It is widely acknowledged that the curriculum is not in sync with the demands of real life. The universities offer little help to their passing-out graduates in seamlessly transitioning to the harsh competitive world. Ill-prepared, and ill-trained, the students find it daunting to take up gainful jobs, or follow their passions while earning a minimal income. The sense of void, and the feeling being unwanted by the society can break a fresh graduate. The world appears to be unresponsive, indifferent, and utterly un-accommodating. The young men and women can’t do anything to change the reality. So, it is futile to break your head against a stone wall. The best survival technic would, therefore, be to change your attitude to reality and accept its harshness un-grudgingly. After this re-calibration of mind is done, stoicism will develop. It will enable the young man or woman to discover ways to make a living, or follow their passion. Gradually, life will unfold its benign self, and the hardships will fade away. This principle of accepting reality and changing one’s attitude to it is the mantra for all fresh graduates coming out in any stream , from any university.

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The address…

Explanation … Margaret Atwood was invited to speak on the occasion of commemoration ceremony for graduate students in the University of Toronto, Canada. At the beginning of her address, she recalled the academic pressure that virtually proved to be back-breaking. Loads and loads of homework drove her to drink excessive caffeine in the Wymilwood cafe. Far from helping her, it brought her more misery. She recounts with horror how she had to memorize the complete bibliography in course of studying Anglo-Saxon literature. On the whole, the life in the university was too traumatic to endure.

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Explanation .. She studied in Victoria College. In the fag end of her studies, she applied for a job in three companies — Bell Canada, Oxford University Press, and McClelland and Stewart. Sadly for her, none of the three employers fit her suitable for a job. They disqualified her saying that she was over-qualified for the job, or she didn’t know typing. The failure to land a job made her dejected and despondent. Her self confidence was shattered, and she began to feel symptoms of depression. But, she realized that most novelists go through such agony before they write a stellar book. Displaying some dry humor, she wonders why such a period of angst is a prerequisite for the writing profession, and not for other professions like that of a dentist, geologist, or chartered accountant.

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During the time she was afflicted by depression, and anxiety, she decided to draw inspiration from Northrop Frye, the renowned Canadian novelist and literary critic. He was then in Victoria College. She didn’t escape to England and take up mundane jobs like that of a waitress, live in a single room cottage and write a masterpiece, and finally get tuberculosis. One can discern her sense of humor in this line.

Nothrop Frye suggested to her to go to Boston, and enroll in a graduate school there. This way, she could get enough free time to do her small-time literary work. But, that was hardly an inspiring idea for her. Ruefully, she states that Victoria College had given her the right education, but hadn’t prepared her for the risks of landing in a void after formally ending her studies.

But everything has its price. No sooner had I tossed off a graceful reply to the letter inviting me to be present the same day, than I began to realize the exorbitance of what was expected of me. I was going to have to come up with something to say, “You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.” to a graduating class in 1983, year of the Ph.D. taxi driver, when young people have unemployment the way they used to have ugly blackheads; something presumably useful, wise, filled with resonance and overview, helpful, encouraging and optimistic. After all, you are being launched – though ever since I experienced the process, I’ve wondered why “convocation” is the name for it. “Ejection” would be better. Even in the best of times, it’s more or less like being pushed over a cliff, and these are not the best of times. In case you haven’t figured it out already, I’m here to tell you that it’s an armpit out there. As for your university degree, there are definitely going to be days when you will feel that you’ve been given a refrigerator and sent to the middle of a jungle, where there are no three-pronged grounded plugholes.

Explanation … Margaret Atwood finished her Ph.D. She was asked to be present for the Convocation in which she was to be awarded the Doctorate degree. That was an exhilarating moment, but after that, what she could do? There was no clue for the life after Ph. D. In dry humor, she says that the Convocation day is in fact the Ejection Day. This is because the student had nothing to do in the campus and had to leave.

She knew the reality. She was facing a large uncertain, unsympathetic, and uncooperative world. She knew she couldn’t change the world, but she could change herself to suit the world. She decided to try.

She knew the predicament other students like her were facing. No job meant no peace and no happiness. The trauma robbed them of a sense of dignity and self-possession.

She too felt such trauma and void. But, she refused to be cowed down by the hard times she was facing. She decided to turn the table on such distress. She planned to put the helplessness to good use, by doing something novel and creative. The challenge she had to face was daunting. It was like being sent to a forest with a refrigerator. There is no power supply in the village, and so, no matter how one tried, the fridge can’t be used. So, landing the large cold dark world armed with a doctorate was pointless, because the world doesn’t on-board a university graduate automatically. One has to attune the world to listen to you and take notice of you. That was the challenge.

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Explanation …. What was more frustrating for a graduate student is to think how their schoolmate was doing so well in life in other jobs, despite being of the same level of intellect. Such thoughts makes one feel more miserable. To escape such depressing thoughts, one could do jogging, nail-biting etc. Specialists call such activities as ‘substitution activities’. Having said all these, Margaret Atwood decides to change her track to something positive.

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Then I thought that maybe I could say a few words on the subject of a liberal arts education, and how it prepares you for life. But sober reflection led me to the conclusion that this topic too was a washout; for, as you will soon discover, a liberal arts education doesn’t exactly prepare you for life. A preparation-for-life curriculum would not consist of courses on Victorian Thought and French Romanticism, but of things like How to Cope With Marital Breakdown, Getting More for your Footwear Dollar, Dealing With Stress, and How To Keep Your Fingernails from Breaking Off by Always Filing Them Towards the Center; in other words, it would read like the contents page of Homemakers Magazine , which is why Homemakers Magazine is so widely read, even by me. Or, for boys, Forbes or The Economist , and Improving Your Place in the Power Hierarchy by Choosing the Right Suit. (Dark blue with a faint white pinstripe, not too far apart, in case you’re interested.)

Explanation …. Margaret Atwood recalls a dream she saw. In it, she finds herself on a boat that sways from side to side as it moves on. The author finds the situation very unsettling. She feels like vomiting, but has Gravol (the nausea depressant) handy with her. She gets up, and toys with the idea of paraphrasing the works of Kurt Vonnegut. On one occasion, he had forewarned his students saying that incredibly hard times were going to come. Saying this, he had walked off the stage. That was a typical American approach – boom and bust. On the other hand, Canadians are more resilient. They wouldn’t rush to make a judgment during hard times. They would prefer to wait it out.

After a while, she thought of choosing Liberal education and its use in our lives as the theme of her speech. But, she soon realized that Liberal Education was also a sterile subject. It never prepares the student to face post-campus life. Topics like Victorian Thought and French Romanticism form part of the curriculum of liberal education. She wondered what could the relevance of such knowledge that are rooted in so distant a corner of history.

‘Liberal education must deal with skills that are needed in our daily lives,’ she reasoned. Day-to-day problems such as How to Cope With Marital Breakdown, Getting More for your Footwear Dollar, Dealing With Stress, and How To Keep Your Fingernails from Breaking Off by Always Filing Them Towards the Center etc. should be taught to the students. Good humouredly, she mentioned the Homemaker’s magazine, which she said she reads. The topics of Liberal Education should look similar to the Content page of this magazine. The boys could read magazines like Forbes, The Economist etc. to augment their knowledge needed to boost their careers. Again, she becomes a little humorous, and talks about the skill needed for selecting the best office suit.

After a while, she thought about talking about the inadequacies and fallacies built into the school curriculum. She could tell her audience how during her school days she was advised not to prefer Home Economics over Commercial topics like Typing. It was said that girls who opted for typing jobs risked losing their eyebrow hairs. Later, she realized it was pure nonsense.

Another idea that was taught was an ideal meal should have a brown item, a white item, a green item and a yellow item. It was also told that a cook must not lick the spoon while testing food. In the same way, it was taught that the inside cloth of a dress is as important as the outside one. All these suggestions are fallacious and should be discarded.

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Explanation …Another dry humor from the author. She says no one told her about the great benefit of being an author. It was the back and wrist exercise that a writer does while writing. She light-heartedly claims that great authors like Dickens and Melville had strong wrists. Exhuming their graves would prove that the skeletons showed thick and wide wrists. On the other hand, Emily Dickinson wrote short poems because she had tender wrists.

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Explanation .. Margaret Atwood then weighed the idea of speaking about writing, but gave it up. She knew very few among the students will opt for writing as a career. Encouraging students to adopt writing as a profession is not a wise thing to do, she thought. The competition among new upcoming writers is fierce, so pushing students to this arena is not fair. She knew there are far too many centers that offer Creative Writing courses. At this rate, there would be more writers than readers!. In her young days, no of readers was very big compared to that of writers. She remembered how she used to write pensive poems in her small rented room in Charles Street.

Explanation .. Again the speaker wants to drive home her point using a trivial example. She told how it was believed that a woman rearing a baby loses hair apparently due to zinc imbalance, but the hair grows again the same place. In case of men, hair falls, but does not grow again. With some sarcasm, she cites a quotation liberal education teacher often cite. It is, “God only made a few perfect heads, and the rest lie covered with hair.” In effect, it implies that bald people are in fact gifted, and lesser ones have plenty of hair on their head.

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Explanation …Now, Margaret Atwood comes to the gist of her speech, that sounds like a sermon. She says, adversity comes, but it also holds a small door ajar. When the reality hits you very hard, let the doom not overwhelm you. Change yourself to condition it to the challenges of reality. It may be a daunting task at the beginning, but you will soon find that the harsh reality does not gnaw at you anymore. The change in your attitude will make the harsh reality much more bearable.

She recounts her experience when she was a student of liberal arts. Any symbol can have two diametrically opposite interpretations – one positive, and another negative. She cites the case of blood. It can be the life-sustaining gift of God, or it can be something that oozes out of your injury. Another example – When milk is spilled, the glass can be made to stand erect again. The glass, now, can be described as either half empty or half full.

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Explanation .. Now, she expounds what she has all along been trying to tell the students. When they pass out of the university, they will confront the world that may appear hostile. But, it is certain that some opportunity, somewhere, will be hiding.

As an example, she talks about the raindrops that fall on our head. It nourishes us in many ways. The same rain drops can be acidic in nature. Such rain is destructive in its nature. It kills the flora and fauna on earth. Acid rain destroys crops and all other forms of vegetation. When unchecked, such acid rain can enter our body and blight it irreversibly. Acid rain is a symptom of aggressive exploitation of Nature’s resources. The greed and ruthlessness of the modern man makes him blind to such dangers. The ancient Egyptians knew how to conserve Nature, but the modern man ignores the damage he does to the environment.

Explanation … We live in an age fraught with various threats of mass extinction. The nuclear or biological war can be triggered in minutes, thanks to the pervasive computer networks. With each passing day, the reaction time between a trigger and the cataclysm that follows is becoming shorter and shorter. With such threat hanging on us so perilously, we feel resigned to our fate. We assume that we have nothing to reverse the danger, so we watch helplessly. If such a catastrophe really comes to pass, we will just throw up our hands in despair, because we will realize that we did nothing to preempt it.

Try it and see.

Explanation .. We live in a world bedeviled by so many odd things. We are aware of the economic problems our country faces, and its crippling effect on our well-being. Unfortunately, the newspapers don’t discuss such things. However, looking not very far off, we will discover that there are lands where people don’t get bare enough food to eat. This is the darker side of our collective existence. There is still some redeeming feature in this scenario. Democracy prevails in so many lands. People can air their views without any fear of reprisal by the rulers. Politicians are sensitive to public opinion, because returning to power is so important for them. Public grievances are freely given vent to during election campaigns.

If people in sufficiently large numbers highlight their issues, and demand succor in a well-thought way, there is no way elected politicians will be able to ignore them.

Lastly, the speaker reiterates her stand that we may not be able to change the reality, but by calibrating our attitude, we can alter reality. She asks us to try it.

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Questions…

What lessons Margaret Atwood’s famous speech holds for the young men and women just finishing their studies in India?
Do you feel this speech offers any solution to the hordes of Africans heading towards Europe and America using perilous sea routes? Discuss the matter from your own standpoint.

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Thanks for this explanation this was really very helpful can u please send the explanation for on being ideal chapter.

I can write it, but please give me the author’s name, and the book’s name.

author’s name is the same as given…and the book’s name is ‘contemplations-a collection of essays’.

Can you chat with me for a while, or Whatsapp me in 7899690072? I have one clarification to ask.

Thank you. Much helpful.

Nice to hear this.

Thank you for such a nifty explaination of this essay. Can you also write on “My visions for India” by APJ abdul kalam? Like how can it inspire a person?

By 9pm Feb 4

I am going to write it now. Can you give me the word limit?

My Vision for India by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam is no more, but his face, his words, and his childlike simplicity remain etched in our psyche. He was an unassuming man who grew up in a family rooted to abiding human values. God had blessed him with a sharp scientific mind, but he was a deeply spiritual man. He was a true liberal, and a teacher par excellence. Being in the midst of inquisitive students gave him best comfort. He taught science with intense passion, and he worked in laboratory like a soul possessed. As a teacher and a mentor, he exuded magnetic harm, and a never-say-die spirit. He implored his students to experiment with new ideas, and learn from failures. The mystery of his success as an inspirer lay in the way he practiced what he preached. Simple in attire, frugal in his food, and modest in his claims, he could lay claim to a place in the heart of millions of Indians. His charm was his gargantuan appetite for knowledge, and his determination not to do or say anything immoral. Dr. Kalam was delivering a lecture in IIT, Hyderabad. The bright young students before him gave wings to his imaginative mind. He spoke at length about India’s ancient heritage, the first war of freedom fought in 1857, and the years after independence. Looking back at our half century of freedom, he felt happy. India, to a large measure, has lifted millions of its citizens out of poverty, consolidated its democratic institutions, and made impressive strides in science and technology. But, he bemoans how we lack civic sense, expect the government to deliver everything to us, and never volunteer to dirty our hands for social work, and look up to ‘foreign’ goods and services as something far better than our indigenous ones. Dr. Kalam implores us to feel good about freedom, shed our tendency to perceive ourselves as a second-rate power. He calls upon the young folks to make India mighty, both in economics and military. Asserting our place in the global table of great powers would make other nations to sit up and take notice of us. A timid, sulking nation seldom commands respect. Our ingrained inferiority complex pains Dr. Kalam. The penchant of the media to highlight everything that is ugly, and poor in our country filled him with anguish. The media must show the myriad good things we do, and the great heights we have reached in many branches of knowledge. He gives a clarion call to the young students to make the best use of the opportunities in hand, and never whine about things around us. Only through confidence and concerted action, the youngsters can make their nation great, he asserts. ————————————END————————-

Thank you for this answer.

Thank you for this wonderful essay it helped me realize the value of my life and also helped to control myself. Thank you so much.

Randomly Random Thoughts

A writer and an engineer in progress!

My take on “Attitude by Margaret Atwood”

Simply beautiful. If you are not familiar with this wonderful speech of Margaret Atwood on Attitude, which was given to a group of graduates of University of Toronto during commencement ceremony in 1983, you should read it here now. Do know that the reading of or listening to her speech is not required for you to read (or skim) the rest of this blog post. I merely recommend it just so I would like you all to feel as inspired and motivated like I get each and every time I read or skim through it.

Here is a quote that represents the essence of Margaret Atwood’s speech:

You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see. – Margaret Atwood during commencement ceremony for graduates of University of Toronto in 1983

How do people come up with such inspiring and motivating sentences? What goes on their mind when they pen them? What were they thinking? Where were they at the time? Do they just come to them as naturally as one breathes or takes days to get them down to that level of perfection?

Her words are true. No matter how bad life gets, it is up to us as to how we choose to react to those uncomfortable and painful moments. As Margaret Atwood says in her speech, every single matter has two sides, positive and negative. It is entirely dependent upon our goals, values, experiences, and attitude to either side with the negative side or the positive side of the issue we might be dealing with now or later in the future. I am not sure whether the following saying is universal; however, in India, we have a saying somewhat as follows: “Everything happens for our own good.” Is any one of you familiar with this? I was listening to this spiritual discourse given by a religious leader the other day and the person giving the discourse told us about a moral story that illustrates both Atwood’s speech and the aforementioned saying. The story is as follows:

There were once a king and his advisor. They used to have long discussions over various topics. The advisor is such an optimistic guy as he always manages to find positivity in everything. Even if he were to encounter an accident, he would undoubtedly find some bright side to it. He would always find one way or another to bring up the idea of divine providence into every conversation he engages in with anyone. He connects every event, be it small or significant, to God. As the king likes outings, he invited the advisor for hunting in a forest. The advisor was given a rifle for hunting. Do keep in mind that our sweet advisor never before handled a rife up until that moment! And so, he fumbled and fumbled with the rifle to get used to the weight of it in his hands. At some point during all that fumbling, he, inadvertently, shot the rifle, which was pointing at the king at that precise moment. The king screamed in pain! The rifle shot one of the king’s fingers off! Event then, the advisor kept saying that it all happened for our own good to the king at which point the king became frustrated and said, “You stupid person! Are you blind? Can’t you see that I am injured and bleeding? Can’t you feel my pain? How can you say that this all happened for my own good when ,obviously, I am in excruciating pain? How can you expect me to forgive you? You are rejoicing my agony and suffering, aren’t you?” Without even wanting to listen to the advisor’s apologies, he put our dear advisor in prison with an indefinite sentence.The king slowly, but surely, recovered from the injury. One day, as usual, he went for an outing to an unknown place, where he met a hideous giant. This particular giant that the king came across likes to eat human beings. The king became panic-stricken at such an encounter!! The giant has this habit of inspecting his “merchandise” before feasting on them. He asked the king, “Oh human being, are you whole? Any body parts missing?” To this, the frightened king was not able to form any words. But the giant was impatient and growled, “Oh you, are you deaf or what? Didn’t you hear me asking you a question?” This time, our poor king said, “N-n–no sir! I have a finger missing due to an uneventful hunting experience. The giant then said, “How sad for me!! I do not eat men that have their body parts missing. I will have to find another human being.” With that, the giant left. The king then thought of the advisor that he put in the jail. Now he realizes the value of being optimistic. He hastily returned to his village and proceeded to release the advisor. The king, upon releasing the advisor, apologized to him, relayed his encounter with the giant, and happily shared his enlightenment. The advisor then said, “Oh king! I am so happy for you! See? I kept telling you that everything happens for our own good. Everything has a positive side if you choose to look at it. And, being in jail also did some good for me.” At this point, the perplexed king asked, “Oh intelligent one, how can you think of your time spent in jail as pleasant? Please explain you reasoning.” The advisor said, “Oh king, so simple. If I was not in jail, you would have asked me to accompany you on that outing of yours. Then we both would have encountered that giant. After learning that you have a finger missing, he would have moved on to me. He would have devoured me right then and there as all my body parts are intact.” After hearing this, the king was amazed by the ever unrelenting optimism of his advisor. Since then, the king learned to accept everything in his life with optimism and enjoyed the rest of his tranquil life.

As you can see, the attitude that we choose to be in is entirely dependent upon us. You can either choose to see the glass as half empty or half full. If it is the latter that you choose, then you will have no issues with anything that you might encounter in life. If you cannot change an inevitable event, then it is better to accept it and work around it rather than waste your energy over being sad and depressed about it. You are the only person that has control over your feelings and attitude. No one else but you can initiate the necessary change to live your life as happily and blissfully as possible. You are in charge of your life. Take control. It is your life so make it work for you. If you happen to run into troubles, do not choose to escape them but rather face them with determination and self confidence. There is nothing that you cannot do as a human being. Other creatures living alongside us on this Earth are incapable of reasoning, unlike us. Do not let some bad events define the way you choose to live or face problems for the rest of your life. That is not you. You are much stronger and courageous than that sort of life. Let us not let problems scar our lives but rather wear them as proud accessories on us. Make them add meaning to your life, not make your life a meaningless one on this Earth.

Let us all try Atwood’s tip and see how it goes for us.

Pomegranate Lover

“The Female Body,” by Margaret Atwood

“The Female Body,” by Margaret Atwood, appeared in MQR’s Fall 1990 issue.

“… entirely devoted to the subject of ‘The Female Body.’ Knowing how well you have written on this topic … this capacious topic …”

I agree, it’s a hot topic. But only one? Look around, there’s a wide range. Take my own, for instance. I get up in the morning. My topic feels like hell. I sprinkle it with water, brush parts of it, rub it with towels, powder it, add lubricant. I dump in the fuel and away goes my topic, my topical topic, my controversial topic, my capacious topic, my limping topic, my nearsighted topic, my topic with back problems, my badly-behaved topic, my vulgar topic, my outrageous topic, my aging topic, my topic that is out of the question and anyway still can’t spell, in its oversized coat and worn winter boots, scuttling along the sidewalk as if it were flesh and blood, hunting for what’s out there, an avocado, an alderman, an adjective, hungry as ever.

The basic Female Body comes with the following accessories: garter belt, panti-girdle, crinoline, camisole, bustle, brassiere, stomacher, chemise, virgin zone, spike heels, nose ring, veil, kid gloves, fish-net stockings, fichu, bandeau, Merry Widow, weepers, chokers, barrettes, bangles, beads, lorgnette, feather boa, basic black, compact, Lycra stretch one-piece with modesty panel, designer peignoir, flannel nightie, lace teddy, bed, head.

The Female Body is made of transparent plastic and lights up when you plug it in. You press a button to illuminate the different systems. The Circulatory System is red, for the heart and arteries, purple for the veins; the Respiratory System is blue; the Lymphatic System is yellow; the Digestive System is green, with liver and kidneys in aqua. The nerves are done in orange and the brain is pink. The skeleton, as you might expect, is white.

The Reproductive System is optional, and can be removed. It comes with or without a miniature embryo. Parental judgement can thereby by exercised. We do not wish to frighten or offend.

[continue reading…]

Lead image: Bonnard, Pierre. “La Grande Baignoire (Nu).” 1937–1939. Oil on canvas. Private collection.

“letter from tehran: beyond the brink” by christopher thornton.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s Happy Endings

Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s Happy Endings

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 25, 2021

An innovative and oft-anthologized story that demonstrates the arbitrariness of any author’s choice of an ending, “Happy Endings” offers six different endings from which the reader may choose. “Happy Endings” was first published in the Canadian collection Murder in the Dark (1983) and then became available in the United States in Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994). Intentionally written in only 1,500 words, the story contains little plot, little character development, and little motivation. Readers, however, should not be deceived: Margaret Atwood is, according to the critic Reingard M. Nischik, “a chronicler of our times, exposing and warning, disturbing and comforting, opening up chasms of meaning as soon as she closes them, and challenging us to question conventions and face up to hitherto unarticulated truths” (159). “Happy Endings” is a story about writing a story, with thoughtful advice to both readers and would-be writers. In this unusual tale she demonstrates why “who and what” are insuff cient; the reader must ask (and the writer must supply) “how and why.” In addition to analyzing the appropriateness of the six endings, the reader might profit from comparing “Happy Endings” to Robert Coover’ s “The Babysitter,” in which the author offers several possibilities of what happens to the babysitter, leaving the decision to the reader’s imagination; and Akira Kurosawa’s 1951 film Roshomon , which depicts the rape of a bride and the murder of her husband through various eyewitness accounts; it demonstrates the near-impossibility of arriving at the actual “truth” of the events.

Atwood’s technique differs from that of Coover and Kurosawa, however, in that she fl eshes out nothing: Indeed, the six possible endings to the story of John and Mary are written as a skeletal outline. She opens with the words, “John and Mary meet. What happens next? If you want a happy ending, try A.” (1).

In A, John and Mary live a richly fulfilling life in terms of careers, sex life, children, vacations, and retirement, until they die. In Ending B, however, Mary loves John but he does not return her love, instead using and abusing her in classical doormat fashion. When Mary learns of John’s affair with Madge, she commits suicide, John marries Madge, and we are told to move to Ending A. In Ending C, John is an older man married to Madge and the father of two children. He falls for the 22-year-old Mary, but when he finds her in the arms of James, he shoots all three of them. Madge marries a man named Fred and proceeds to Ending A. In Ending D, Fred and Madge are the sole survivors of a tidal wave, and, despite the loss of their home, they are grateful to have survived the calamity that killed thousands and continue to Ending A.

Ending E follows Fred to his death of a “bad heart.” Madge soldiers on with charity and volunteer work in Ending A, until she dies of cancer—or, if the reader prefers, becomes guilt-ridden or begins bird-watching. Finally, for those who find Endings A through E “too bourgeois,” Atwood suggests making John and Mary spies and revolutionaries. Still, though, they will end up at Ending A because, after all, “this is Canada” (3). The only authentic ending, says Atwood, is this one: “ John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die. ” As the critic Nathalie Cooke points out, “For Atwood, writing is a fascinating but dark art—one where shadows lurk, not only in the subject matter . . . but also in the author’s role as a double being, and in the writing process itself, in which the writer must not only face the darkness, but learn to see in and through it” (19). As Atwood suggests to the readers at the conclusion of “Happy Endings,” that process is achieved by understanding motivation through asking “how” and “why.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY Cooke, Nathalie. Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. Nischik, Reingard M. “Margaret Atwood’s Short Stories and Shorter Fictions.” In The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood, edited by Coral Ann Howells, 145– 160. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

The Thinker

an Essay Blog

On Margaret Atwood’s “The Female Body”

In 1990, Margaret Atwood wrote a semi-autobiographical piece in response to a letter from the Michigan Quarterly Review. Using the witticisms, ironic humor and autobiographical excerpts which characterize her uniquely poignant style of writing, she introduces a collage of seven definitions for the female form. Rife with feminism and sarcastic metaphor, this jaunt into various points on the social inequality of the sexes brings to light many hypocrisies held against the “weaker sex” today.

Section 1: Margaret Atwood, the Human Female

Atwood begins her foray into The Female Body by metaphorically describing a subject close to home – her own body. She refers to it, ironically, as her “topic,” implying the impetus for the writing piece as well as beginning the process of objectifying The Female Body – a centralized theme throughout the vignettes. I imagine Atwood mentally preparing herself to write the piece as she performs her daily toilet , describing, “I sprinkle it with water, brush parts of it, rub it with towels, powder it, add lubricant (490).” This humorous introduction to the feminine flows into a deeper, darker account of her personal struggle with her own body. The adjectives for her female form become upsetting: “my limping topic, my nearsighted topic, my topic with back problems, my badly behaved topic, my aging topic (490).” She draws you in to empathetic and complicit thinking. By these devices, she, or the female form, becomes the protagonist, and you want her to win.

The section closes, interestingly, with an almost flippant dismissal of her body, giving it an assonant string of noun descriptors, including “an avocado, an alderman” and “an adjective (490).” This is delivered almost by way of apology for the earlier, darker complaints, easing off of a brutally honest and difficult viewpoint to provide a safer, more comfortable place for the reader to land.

Section 2: On Undies and PJs

The next paragraph delves into the female wardrobe. Intimate apparel and other stereotypically female items are paraded across the page in a seemingly hodge-podge fashion: “Garter belt, panti-girdle, crinoline, camisole, bustle,” and “brassiere,” are held up against “virgin zone, spike heels, nose ring, veil” and “kid gloves” for examination. The section is given end-punctuation, quite inexplicably with “lace teddy, bed, head (490).”

The only clue to the inclusion of these out-of-place, final items is understood from the first words of the paragraph, which I had to re-read several times to fully gather their meaning: “The basic Female Body comes with the following accessories… (490)” I understood, then, after combining this opening statement with the not-so-subtle tone of antipathy from the previous section, that Atwood was illuminating how society tends to objectify women, as though they were mainly of importance due to their sexuality. She tells us here that the basic Female Body comes equipped with lingerie and a bed, for your pleasure, and lest we forget, a head , as well. The fact that the head is listed last, after bed , does all but put it in bold caps under the ironic pose of deference. This reminds me of the trick of whispering, rather than shouting, when you truly want someone to pay attention to what you’re saying.

Section 3: The Female Body, by Fisher Price™

Next, according to Atwood, “The Female Body is made of transparent plastic and lights up when you plug it in (491).” This phrase is rife with sexual metaphor. The major anatomical systems of the body in this model are color-coded, except for the reproductive system, which is optional. Likewise, it “comes with or without a miniature embryo (491).” This is further demonstration, through hyperbole, of the objectification of women in society through sexism, in which a woman’s reproductive system is “optional,” according to a man’s preference. Her parts are not, as nature would have them, intended for procreation, but rather a potential nuisance to be dealt with and removed.

With the mention of the optional miniature embryo, Atwood is careful to note that “parental judgement (491)” should be exercised, to avoid potential fright or offense. At this, I had to ask Atwood and myself: Does this mean to say that femininity is offensive? The answer that came glaring back at me, through the essay’s example, was yes . The inherent beauty and implied sexuality of the female form is considered offensive to many.

Section 4: On Barbies

Here, a conversation between Atwood’s parents is transcribed as heard by her younger self. They are debating the admission of a Barbie doll into the house. As Atwood’s mother defends the doll, her father vehemently objects to its presence in the house. The language used between her parents gives the reader some insight as to the nature of her upbringing, which is apparently intellectual, nurturing, and honest in character. The section closes with a Barbie “whizzing down the stairs, thrown like a dart (491),” tattooed, mutilated and discarded by the young, and already sexuality-savvy, child version of Margaret. It is evident that from a very early age, she was able to reject society’s purported ideal female physicality and that she experienced feelings of disgust to the point of being compelled to mutilate and defile the doll. From this we may also infer that the author’s viewpoint on these matters is the product of many years’ consideration, and is a matter quite close to her heart.

Section 5: Knockers and Nut Crackers

To further dehumanize and objectify the feminine, the fifth section lists the myriad uses for The Female Body, such as “door-knocker, bottle-opener, a clock with a ticking belly” and “nutcracker (491).”

“Just squeeze the brass legs together and out comes your nut (492).”

This particular phrase conjures more than one vision in my mind, the mildest of which is a metaphor for childbirth.

Atwood takes a more positive approach then, and glorifies the female form’s abilities, extolling its purported talents for bearing torches, lifting victorious wreaths and raising aloft “a ring of neon stars (492).” This allusion to the Statue of Liberty and other iconic artwork could be interpreted as proof of the history of using women and female bodies as icons for glory. Atwood seems to say here; our beauty has not always been taken for granted . This suggestion is followed directly by examples of the exploitation of the female form in modern commercialism: “It sells cars beer, shaving lotion, cigarettes,”

“It does not merely sell, it is sold (492).”

In one swift move, Atwood denounces the exploitation of underdressed, under-aged models so commonly found in popular sales campaigns. She concludes this section with a wry, and distinctly uncomfortable assertion, declaring that it’s fortunate that The Female Body is a renewable resource, because these “shoddy goods” “wear out so quickly (492).” It seems she is aware of the way women have lost their innate value through this dehumanization of them and capitalization on their beauty.

Section 6: Sex.

This is the shortest section of all seven. Her opening sentiment “One and one equals another one (492),” seems to indicate the self-perpetuating nature in cycle of sex. Children have children, who in turn have other children. It’s inevitable, she says, and pathetic: “Pair-bonding is stronger in geese (492).”

The final paragraph closes the section a bit strangely, stating “Snails do it differently. They’re hermaphrodites, and work in threes (492).” At times like this, I yearn for illustrations to make sense of what the author wishes to convey. It could be some of Atwood’s characteristic artistic meandering. My only distinct impression was that this may have been a bit of wishful thinking on her part.

I believe this section is the shortest one because Atwood felt that much of what she might have said about the topic of sex already goes without saying. Also, isn’t sex the main factor that she claims has contributed to the downfall of our gender? It would follow, then, that she would avoid inadvertently contributing to that detestable, sex-crazed facet of society by contributing to it in her essay.

Section 7: Why Mars Needs Venus

In the final, and longest section of her essay, Atwood really gets to the meat of her argument. Beginning in the form of a casually academic narrative, she delivers a description of the female brain. It’s interesting to note that Atwood neglected to capitalize the noun form of “the female brain.”

Like the previous discourse on feminine accessories, Atwood saves her poignant whispers on the female brain for last. She tells us flippantly how “handy” this female brain is, complete with “old popular songs and bad dreams (492).” The sarcasm is thick here, especially in her comparison of the male and female brains. She asserts that the entire trouble with the male brain, and, consequently why they are so sad, thinking “of themselves as orphans cast adrift (493),” is that their lack of a proper corpus callosum to connect the right and left hemispheres of their brain causes them to think too objectively.

She claims that whereas a man is merely goal-oriented, a woman, by virtue of her increased ability for “neural pathways” to “flow one to the other,” is better equipped to listen. “She listens in (492).” As frustrating as this may seem to the “stringless” male, “cast adrift” into the “deep void (493)” of existence, he cannot bear to have her away from him.

This is where Atwood ventures off and enters into a story-like cadence that closes the piece with an emotional account of a man’s fear in losing The Female Body.

“Look! It shines in the gloom, far ahead, a vision of wholeness, ripeness… like a watery moon, shimmering in its egg of light (493).” I admire the way Atwood defies conventional composition methods, redefining the sentence and its components for more effective and evocative prose. She then ridicules the male, and his need for trapping the female, like Cinderella or Rapunzel, saying, “Catch it. Put it in a pumpkin, in a high tower (493).”

“Quick stick a leash on it, a lock, a chain, some pain… so it can never get away from you again (493).” In these harsh sentences, Atwood is protesting the conventions of monogamous commitment and marriage, as well as all the ownership that they traditionally entail. She points out, also, the paradoxical nature of this need on a man’s part for the woman who exceeds and exacerbates him. This, in turn, leads to the understanding of why women were made to be manipulated for man’s pleasure and objectified by society in the first place: Men were afraid to be alone, and in the face of a complicated enigma, opted for a simple solution by means of containing her.

True to form, Margaret Atwood’s “The Female Body” delivers truth without compunction. Her distinct formula of contrast, irony and humor illuminate a difficult topic in an amusing way. Her refreshing views on feminism are delivered in a way that is more palatable – and more fun – than a more direct assigning of guilt in the battle between the sexes without really compromising the sense of depth that the subject matter deserves.

I strive to emulate Atwood’s style of (for lack of a better term) poetic prose, which uses words in new ways to evoke emotion and give meaning to phrases more effectively than conventional forms. I like to think of myself as a free-thinker in terms of finding new ways of using the same old words to convey my unique take on the world, and Margaret Atwood is certainly one who doesn’t mind bending the rules of word-smithing to accomplish her literary prowess. This makes her, in my mind, a master worth emulating.

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