The Blind Assassin Close-Read, Volume II

I'm participating in The Atlantic's 1book140 read-a-long of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin this month. The following is the second of a series of posts close-reading sections of the novel. If you somehow found your way here through 1book140, welcome. It's nice to have you
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I so enjoyed writing about the first sentence of The Blind Assassin that I am going to take a shot at discussing another smallish piece of the novel, this time from Part III.

Let's set the stage: Iris is visiting her family's grave-site, some fifty years after her sister's death. She describes the monument:

The Chase family monument is hard to miss, it's taller than everything else. There are two angels, white marble, Victorian, sentimental but quite well done as these things go, on a large stone cube with scrolled corners. The first angel is standing, her head bowed to the side in an attitude of mourning, one hand placed tenderly on the shoulder of the second one. The second kneels, leaning against the other's thigh, gazing straight ahead, cradling a sheaf of lilies. Their bodies are decorous, the contours shrouded in the folds of softly draped, impenetrable material, but you can tell they're female. And rain is taking its toll of them: their once-keen eyes are blurred now, softened and porous, as if they have cataracts. But perhaps that's my own vision going.

Alright, there's more backstory about the monument in the next paragraph, but let's stop here for a moment. Last time, I wrote about why first sentences are a particularly good place to stop and smell the roses a little as you read. This passage is an example of another way-station, which is ekphrasis. Ekphrasis is the narrative description of a work of visual art. (The greatest example in Western literature is Homer's description of Achilles' Shield in Book XVII of The Iliad, the most well-known one is in Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," where he describes, well, the urn.)

Why is looking at ekphrasis interesting? Couple of reasons. First, it is hyper-mimetic: not only does the writer have to describe the work of art, they also create the work of art. These are moments when a language artist is dipping into other art forms. Another reason is what ekphrasis does to the narrative time of the novel; it slows it down dramatically, even stops it. The closest cross-medium comparison is to a still-life, where precision, vision, and execution are at a premium. The writer is saying "hey, stop and pay attention to this, even though it has nothing to do with plot." For the close-reader, this is more inviting than cold pizza after a 2-for-1 night at the pub.

So, what's going on with this description of the Chase family monument?

1.  We have to remember that this is Iris narrating, not Atwood herself, so really this ekphrasis is Iris' vision, even as Atwood is staging it. Atwood is showing us what Iris is seeing, not what she would see herself or what we might notice ourselves. So, perhaps it's best to think of Atwood telling us something about how Iris sees as much as it is Iris telling us something directly.

2. Physical description tends to work structurally, so paying attention to how the description is built is important. Here we begin with the size ("taller than anything else") and then quality ("well done as these things go"). If the monument is a symbol of the Chase family, then the reading here is pretty simple: their family's story is bigger and more interesting than the average family's story. Or at least that's the way Iris sees it. One of these descriptions is empirical, "taller" is not up for debate. But the qualitative description certainly is. As cool as Iris' narration has been, here we get a small glimpse of how she understands her family history.

2. The most prominent feature is the pair of angels, and their parallel to Iris and Laura seems obvious. What is not obvious, however, is what exactly beyond two women the angels are saying about Iris and Laura. My sense is that the standing angel is Iris; it is in the "attitude of mourning" and standing, which suggests she is grieving. The phrase "attitude of mourning" is telling; is the angel mourning or just performing an attitude of mourning? At this point in the novel, Iris' attitude toward Laura and her death is still somewhat of a mystery. This angel is both turning away and touching the second angel, which suggest an ambivalence. Does she want to turn away but cannot fully? Or does she want to remain in contact but is forced to move away? At the very least, it is an enigmatic move and Iris is nothing if not a mystery here.

The second angel would then be Laura, the kneeling and sheaf of lilies (which often represent innocence) combined with the stare into the distance suggests youth and remove. She is the one being left kneeling, who is now looking away from the living.

3. The appearance of the angels is telling as well: "Their bodies are decorous, the contours shrouded in the folds of softly draped, impenetrable material, but you can tell they're female." There is an incongruity in describing "bodies" as "decorous," as "decorous" implies restraint and civility. How exactly can a body be "civil"? A similar incongruity occurs in the description of the clothing, which is both "softly draped" and "impenetrable" (Churchill's image of the "iron curtain" comes to mind.) The overall effect here combines frailty with strength, the physical with the emotional, and the overt with the mysterious.

4. The last sentence here about time and vision seems the most crucial. Of all the sculpted details that would be subject to corrosion, Iris (note the ocular reference inherent in her name) sees the blurred eyes and connects their aging with her own. I think a connection to memory is present, for what is memory but our seeing of the past? That time makes our memory "softer" and more "porous" means that our lived experience changes even after we have lived it, and our relationship to what has happened to us is in flux. And even the monuments, both sculptural and textual, we build in commemoration can never fully preserve the commemorated.
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There are other meanings to be gleaned from this passage, I am sure. And the next paragraph adds a layer of personal history to Iris' description that is worth incorporating into an analysis of this paragraph, but this is probably enough from me now.

What else do you see in this paragraph? What did I get wrong or miss?
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The Close-Read: The First Sentence of The Blind Assassin

I'm participating in The Atlantic's 1book140 read-a-long of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin this month. The following is the first of what I hope will be a series of posts close-reading sections of the novel. If you somehow found your way here through 1book140, welcome. It's nice to have you.
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A good first sentence can teach you how to read a novel. It can tell you what the novel cares about and what you should watch for. The best first sentences are gem-like: a product of compression and value.

The problem with this though is that first sentences are just that: first. You don't know anything about the novel yet and race through the first paragraphs and pages just to get your bearings, to figure out who is who and what exactly the hell is going on. So most readers read the first sentence purely pragmatically as a step toward getting comfortable with the work.

This isn't wrong of course and some first sentences don't warrant much attention. But many of them do and the rewards of looking at them closely can enrich the subsequent experience of the novel. (A professor of mine once said that when we started reading a novel, we should read the first sentence and then shut the book for awhile, letting that sentence percolate and prepare us to read the rest. I have found this wonderfully generative. So let it be clear that at this point I have read only the first sentence of The Blind Assassin).

Alright, so let's take a look at the first line of The Blind Assassin:

Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off a bridge.

Some observations:

1. Without reading any farther, Atwood tells us a great deal about what we're in for. The subject of the sentence is "sister," so even if the predicate were not so juicy, this places the novel squarely in the domestic. The force of the main clause, though, might distract from the strangeness of the opening modifier. "Ten days" is an oddly specific amount of time after "the war ended." This specificity leads me to think that there is a connection between the war and its end and the sister's plunge, though no causal relation is indicated. Perhaps the disjunction between the scope of war and this intimate detail of family history creates the tension. The process of the novel will be to explain, and thus alleviate, that suspense.

2. And what war is this? Not too many clues here, though in late 20th Century English prose, you usually won't lose your money betting on World War II. Also, assuming for the moment that this took place in an industrialized country, it's been pretty hard to drive a car off a bridge for the last few decades, what with all the annoying safety regulations and all. So if that's a fair guess, then this happened in a time when cars were relatively accessible and before road safety became a concern. (That, or there was something wrong with the bridge.) Pretty thin evidence, to be sure, so we'll have to wait and see how this one pans out.

3. There's plenty to be said, though, about the sister. Well, not her exactly, but her car and the manner of demise. First, "drove" indicates an amount of agency that suggests this was not an accident. Had Atwood wanted to lead us toward foul-play or a mishap, I doubt she would have chosen "drove," and perhaps not even the active voice. The narrator's sister willingly went off a bridge. What we want to know now is why. More on this in a bit.

4. The other notable word choice here is the indefinite article "a": the sister drove "a" car off a bridge. We can guess that is was not her car; standard description would use the possessive to indicate ownership or affiliation. Whose car this is or how she came to be driving it is now also on the table.

5. As it turns out, the trajectory of the car with sister inside is not the most interesting thing about this sentence; this action is over at the moment of description. We want to know how this odd (not just the action itself, but the details as well) fate came to pass. This tells us something else about the novel; it is about the past. Not only is the sentence in the narrative past tense, but the narrator herself knows this history. So unless we flash forward to the present of the narrator's time, this is a novel about memory.

Here's what we have so far: war, memory, family, violence, and mystery. You could do worse to pull readers in.

6. This is extra-textual and so not strictly close-reading (forgive me Professor Atkins, wherever you are hounding earnest undergraduates), but this sentence reminds me of another first sentence: "When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."

Recognize it? Yup, To Kill a Mockingbird.

7. Not only is the structure parallel, a temporal marker followed by violent act with vague origin, but the thematic concerns also overlap (really all but war). Comparing To Kill a Mockingbird's first line to The Blind Assassin's also strengthens the case for seeing "my sister drove" as meaningful. Here, Jem's injury is clearly not of his own doing. And like in The Blind Assassin, the temporal marker is unusual--that Scout says "nearly thirteen" rather than "twelve" turns out to be meaningful, as To Kill a Mockingbird is very much a coming-of-age/disillusionment story.

8. First sentences and paragraphs are also especially important in first person narratives because they tell us something signficant about the narrator's relationship to the story they are telling. How invested are they in it?How much time has passed? Is this language that they might actually saying? Or is it the kind of first person narration with no imaginable actual speech act? The colloquial "got his arm broke" in To Kill a Mockingbird suggest that this is speech. In The Blind Assassin, the narrator's relationship to the action seems cold, or at least somewhat removed from the trauma described. The specificity and impersonality of the time (we might expect something about ages rather than this historical time) are more clinical than emotional. Maybe clinical is too strong, but the narrator does seem to be at some remove.

9. This last point isn't about The Blind Assassin directly. I got thinking about the evolution of first sentences in literature. This one feels modern, as much about intrigue as it is about art, without being experimental or otherwise jarring. It has a story-teller quality to it (if you were going to write a one-sentence story, this would be a good effort). In contrast, the novel's greatest century, the 18th, saw authors start broadly and drill down from there ("It is a truth universally acknowledged," "It was the best of times," "All happy families are alike," and so on). The standard opening now works the other way, using a detail as a wedge to introduce the story. Contemporary authors (massive generalization warning) seem to put a premium on keeping the reader off-balance at the start, rather than hold their hand. I suspect part of this is fashion, but another part might be the novelist's unwillingness to make the bold statement or sweeping proclamation. (Thanks a lot, culture wars).
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Alright, I think that's all I have on this. On to the second sentence! Kidding, kidding. I'm sure I'll make it through the next paragraph at least...
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Amazon | Powell's Books | Shop Independent Bookstores