The theme of death in prose by Margaret Atwood

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

Introduction

Margaret Atwood (born 1939) is a contemporary Canadian writer, poet, critic, and literary critic. She is currently one of the most widely read English-language authors in the world and Canada's most widely read author. M. Atwood is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including two Booker Prizes, the Governor General of Canada Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, and others. The author's first book is a collection of poems "Double Persephone", which was published in 1961. However, her large-scale prose brought the greatest popularity to the author. His first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969. M. Atwood also writes short stories. The first collection of short prose, Dancing Girls— was published in 1977. The most famous work of the writer remains published in 1985. "The Handmaid's Tale", which was recently continued in 2019 in "Testaments".

M. Atwood in his work turns to different directions and genres: from the novel of upbringing (the novel "Cat's Eye") to the historical detective (the novel "She is Grace"). But no matter what form the writer chooses, her works are always a narrative, a story centered on the main character, the narrator ^[1]. M. Atwood's narratives, as a rule, unfold retrospectively: from the present to the past. Together with the hero, readers travel through their memories and trace the path of his formation ^[2]. And the image of the past in the artistic world of M. Atwood is inextricably linked with the theme of death and the afterlife.

This vision of death as a movement is typical for many linguistic cultures, including the English-speaking one. However, the specific Canadian mindset leaves its mark.

The purpose of this study is to conduct an analysis: how the theme of death is revealed in the prose works of M. Atwood. The object of the research is the prose works (novels and short stories) of the writer. The subject of this study is the theme of death in M. Atwood's prose. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that this topic is poorly covered in Russian literary criticism. The research uses cultural-historical, cultural-social and narrative methods.

The main part

As many modern researchers (O. S. Tsydendambayeva ^[3], O. A. Dorzheeva ^[3], E. Sereda ^{[4, 6]}, A. R. Gioeva ^[5], K. E. Rayevskaya ^[6]) have noted, in the perception of the concept of "Death" in Russian, English, French, German and many others There is a peculiar paradox in languages. On the one hand, the category of "Death" is the opposite of the category of "Life", where the second is characterized by movement, breathing, active consciousness, and the first by immobility, the absence of all life processes and sleep consciousness. However, when describing the concept of "Death" in English, as in Russian, linguoculture, there are many euphemisms with references to movement: English to go — "to leave"; English to pass away — "to pass"; English exit — "to exit"; English cross the river — "cross the river" and others . That is, despite the initial idea of death as something immobile, the very process of dying is often associated with movement — usually a journey.

In M. Atwood's death, dying is also compared to traveling. But for the writer, this is not just a journey, but a descent. It is no coincidence that allusions and references to folklore and mythical characters who had connections with the other world occupy a special place in her works. Among them: Persephone (ancient Greek mythology), Isis (ancient Egyptian mythology), Bluebeard (European folklore), as well as the thousand-faced hero from the monomyph by J. R.R. Tolkien. Campbell's.

However, the difficulty in analyzing M. Atwood's work lies in the fact that in her works the traditional idea of the concept of "Death" for the English-speaking linguistic culture is refracted and modernized due to the special Canadian view. And here comes the question of Canadian identity.

M. V. Pimenova, in her works on conceptology, emphasizes that concepts, despite the fact that they are universal units of human consciousness (as indicated by the research of Z. D. Popova, I. A. Sternin, and others ^[7]), still have a national color ^[8]. And the topic of national identity has always been and remains extremely acute in Canada ^[9].

In many ways, the reason for this lies in the historical past of the state. Canada is a very young country with a cultural code that has not yet been fully formed. For example, there is the culture of English-speaking Canada, to which M. belongs. Atwood and other major writers: Robertson Davis, Alice Munro (the only winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature from Canada). And there is the culture of French-speaking Canada, whose center is the territory of Quebec with its capital in Montreal. And there is also the culture of the Canadian Indians, who speak the Inuktitut language. Such multiculturalism strongly influences national consciousness ^[10].

English-speaking Canadian culture is often characterized as a culture of "immigrants", in which elements of European and local Native American cultures are mixed. M. Atwood tries to create something integral from these elements in his books. And when describing death, she often refers to Native American ideas about this concept. So in the novel "Comprehension", the nameless main character (the absence of a name already indicates the universality of the image) travels from the English—speaking part of Canada to French-speaking Quebec, and from French-speaking Quebec to the Canadian wilderness, where rock carvings of ancient Indians are still preserved. In this journey, one can trace the history of Canada's formation, only presented in retrospect: from the present to the past. Having reached the "bottom" of the story, the nameless heroine finds the corpse of her own father under the cave paintings. This encounter with death for the heroine becomes a turning point in her life and opens up a new path for her. Through death, the heroine is reborn.

This is how M. Atwood, using one of the most frequently mentioned concepts — the concept of "Death" — expresses the peculiarities of Canadian identity and his own author's personality. M. Atwood herself is particularly distinguished by the fusion of the concept of "Death" and the concept of "Creativity" against the background of her fellow writers.

In her literary work "Negotiations with the Dead: A Writer about Writing" (2002), the writer compares the work of memory and the creative process with descending into the realm of the dead using the example of the travels of the protagonist of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and King Uruk from the Epic of Gilgamesh. So, according to M. Atwood, any storyteller, building his story, turns to his own memories, that is, makes a mental journey to the other world: "Gilgamesh was the first writer,— I said. "He wanted to know the secret of life and death. He went down to hell and came back. But he did not discover the secret of immortality. All he got were two stories, one about the journey and the other about the flood. So the only thing he brought with him was a couple of stories." ^[11] The same rule applies to the narrator characters of M. Atwood.

Storytellers of M. Atwood is most often people of creative professions: writers (the novel "Lady Oracle") artists (the novels "Comprehension", "Cat's Eye"), teachers (the novel "The Robber Bride"), journalists (the novel "Bodily Injury"), screenwriters and directors (the novel "The Witch's Spawn"). And at the time of the beginning of their story, each of them, as a rule, is in a state of mental crisis. All of them are middle—aged or elderly people who have succeeded in both their professional and personal lives. However, having achieved success, each of them is faced with uncertainty, uncertainty about the future. To get out of a mental crisis and move on, the narrators of M. Atwood turns to his own past in order to find the cause of his crisis and gain fresh strength.

This is how the narrator's journey begins into the world of memories, which in some cases directly equals the afterlife. For example, in "Penolopias" the main character and narrator is the legendary Queen of Ithaca and the wife of Odysseus, Penelope. At the beginning of the work, readers discover Penelope in Hades, where she spends her days among familiar shadows — Helen the Beautiful, Odysseus, Telemachus, etc. But, unlike her husband, son, and cousin, Penelope refuses to be reborn and return to the world of the living. What keeps her in the afterlife? Penelope tries to figure it out by referring to her memories. Mentally, Penelope, being already a shadow in Hades, returns to the years of her childhood and adolescence, reliving old grievances ^[12].

Similarly, the main character of the novel "The Blind Killer", Iris, seeks to heal. She begins her story at a very old age, sensing that her end is near. Iris's conscience is burdened by the early death of her younger sister Laura. And in order to purify herself and her daughter and granddaughter, the heroine turns to the past, trying to sort out old memories ^[13].

The successful artist Elaine from the novel "Cat's Eye" follows the same path. Her mental crisis begins in preparation for her first retrospective exhibition. Having reached certain heights in her profession, the heroine begins to be burdened by her success, feeling that she is "bronzing", dying as a person. The way out is to tell about the past. And, first of all, about my childhood friend Cordelia.

All three heroines from these examples turn to the past and the shadows of relatives, friends, enemies, etc. for healing. So, in order to get out of the spiritual impasse, each of the narrators of M. Atwood must first successfully negotiate with the dead.

The "Dead" in the artistic world of M. Atwood is not necessarily literally dead people. Often, the "dead" also mean the living. For example, in the novel "Cat's Eye", the "dead man" is the school friend of the main character Cordelia. Plunging into a spiritual crisis, Elaine begins to see her on the streets. She sees Cordelia in the crowd of passersby. The real Cordelia should be the same age as Elaine at the beginning of the story. But Elaine sees Cordelia in the image of a teenage girl who no longer exists. That is, in this case, the teenager Cordelia is "dead." In the present tense, an adult Cordelia has taken her place.

Also, the "dead" often include people who simply disappeared from the narrator's life. In the novel "Lady Oracle", the main character Joan, having fled to Europe, refers all her former entourage to the world of the dead. In her memories, they appear wandering on the seashore, which refers to the ancient Greek myth of Charon transporting the souls of the dead through the waters of the Styx.

But it happens when the "dead" really turn out to be dead, as in the novel "The Blind Killer" or the trilogy "Mad Addam". In the first case, the main character refers in her memoirs to her deceased younger sister. In the second, Jimmy's narrator recalls his deceased genius friend, nicknamed Crake, and his beloved, nicknamed Oryx.

By remembering, the narrator interprets the past in order to justify himself in the eyes of readers and his own. That's why all the storytellers are Atwood is lying. Sometimes they do this intentionally, reporting incorrect facts from their own biography, like Zenia from the novel The Robber Bride, or deliberately keeping silent about certain circumstances, like Iris from the novel The Blind Killer. And sometimes they do it by accident because of imperfect memory.

But all the storytellers are Atwood strives to present to the readers an interpretation of his own past that would suit them ^[14]. And to do this, they need to come to terms with the "dead" — those real people who act as minor characters in their stories.

The very process of "negotiating with the dead" resembles a detective investigation: the narrator, while telling his story, simultaneously reconstructs the chain of events that happened to him and his entourage.

As a rule, any story told by M. Atwood is the story of his relationship with a certain person, who in this case acts as a kind of muse, inspiration and dark double of the narrator. So Cordelia in the novel "Cat's Eye" plays this role for Elaine, in the novel "The Blind Killer" the younger sister of the main character, Laura, acts as the muse. Laura's very name, referring to the name of Laura, Petrarch's muse, hints at the role she plays in the story of her older sister Iris ^[15].

The task of the narrator in this case is to recreate for the reader the image of his muse, which at the same time would preserve the features of a real person from the narrator's past and at the same time would not contradict the version of the past proposed by the narrator. When this image is created, the mission can be considered completed. The narrator, like the monomyph hero J. Campbell returns from the world of memories, from the world of the dead, to the real world with renewed vigor. After finishing the story, the narrator comes out of a mental crisis.

Death in the artistic world of M. Atwood symbolizes not only the past and the world of memory. Death is also present in the present of the narrator characters. In one way or another, they constantly think about the other world or face it directly.

In the artistic world of M. Atwood death is just a thin veil that hides the world of shadows from the world of the living, and this veil can be broken at any moment ^[16]. Thus, in the author's works, the technique of fake death is very common ^[15]. For example, in the novel The Robber Bride, the main antagonist, Zenya, dies or disappears several times. So at the beginning of the novel, another funeral of Zenia takes place. The main characters — a trio of friends Tony, Haris and Roz — come to say goodbye to her. And then, while talking in a cafe, they encounter Zenia, alive and well.

In the novel Madame Oracle, the main character herself, a writer, fakes her own demise in order to start a new life. And in her books, romance novels for women in the spirit of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Joan describes the return of the protagonist's wife from the dead, etc.

But the most striking example is the journalist Rennie from the novel "Bodily Injuries", who came face to face with death — underwent cancer — and returned to life, but not entirely: during a life—saving operation, the narrator lost one breast. This encounter with the world of the dead drives Rennie into a mental crisis, which is helped by a story about the past, thanks to which the heroine regains inner integrity and begins a second life in her "renewed" appearance ^[17].

Death also often appears in the works of M. Atwood in the image of a hostile natural element. So in the story "Death by Landscape," the main character Louis tells a childhood story about her friend Lucy, who went missing while traveling by canoe. Lucy disappeared suddenly and without a trace, as if she had been taken by nature itself. Since then, Louis became interested in landscape painting and began collecting paintings by Canadian artists. In Luis's mind, her friend, the "dead muse," now lives in these landscapes.

Such a connection between wildlife and death is generally characteristic of Canadian authors. This question is M. Atwood analyzed in one of her most significant popular science books, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), suggesting that the Canadian author looks at the world through the eyes of a victim, whose tormentor can be both living beings and the elements ^[18].

Death is also present in the artistic world of M. Atwood in the form of the extraction of fossils, relics. For example, in the novel "Life before People," the drama of the three main characters-narrators unfolds against the backdrop of the halls of the paleontological museum, in which all three work. And extracting the narrators' experiences and memories for the readers' judgment resembles the process of extracting fossils from the ground and studying them.

In the story "The Swamp Man," the main character Julie is going through a relationship crisis with a married man, remembering how their romance began. Digging into unpleasant memories takes place against the background of a business trip to the extraction site of a swamp man, a man who was sacrificed to a certain deity in the ancient era. This is how the hard and dirty work of archaeologists rhymes with the equally complex and difficult process of Julie's introspection ^[19].

Despite such a diverse representation of the concept of "Death" in the works of M. Atwood, this topic is still poorly understood. Researchers of her legacy (E. P. Zharkova ^[20], M. I. Babkina ^[21], R. A. Fayzullina ^[22]), if they touch on this issue, then only from the perspective of "legal death", considering the writer's fantastic novels — first of all, "The Handmaid's Tale", "Testaments" and the trilogy "The foolish Addam." In the world of The Handmaid's Tale, Fredova's main character faces a "legal" death: she dies as a full-fledged citizen. Following the other women of the Gilead state that arose in the United States, the heroine is gradually deprived of all rights and freedoms, becoming the property of one of the commanders, a representative of the new elite. In the "Mad Addam" trilogy, the main characters also slowly die as citizens, carriers of civilization — their world is completely destroyed after a global catastrophe.

Conclusion

Death permeates the works of M. Atwood on all levels. Death, as a journey into the past, plays a structure-forming function in the construction of a retrospective narrative, which includes mandatory "negotiations with the dead." But death, like the afterlife, is also the refuge of some characters (Penelope from "Penelope", Zenia from the novel "The Robber Bride", etc.). The image of death in M. Atwood is inextricably linked with the fear of the unknown, of the untouched world of nature. But at the same time, death in the author's works often appears in the form of relics, fossils, as a reminder that any buried memory sooner or later has to be brought to the surface.