The Blind Assassin Blog 1

For this week’s AP lit blog assignment I wanted to look at the complex themes and structure of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Blind Assassin. The novel is basically an autobiography of Iris Chase, it follows her dysfunctional childhood and goes through the hardship and trauma that Iris and her sister, Laura, had through after their mother passed away. While trailing into Iris’s strange past, a novel within a novel is intertwined within the plot, The Blind Assassin is a novel that Iris had published but gave her sister credit for writing it, it is about two unnamed lovers who meet in secret and come up with a science fiction tale that describes the life and events on a distant planet where the people engage unusual acts. As the novel progresses there is a growth within Iris as she finishes up her life story, she starts writing about her life with unanswered questions and as she comes to her death many of those answers are answered, but one thing that stuck in my mind was what made Iris different from all the other characters?  I was also curious to if Iris is such a strong character why is she consumed into everybody else’s problems and why does she let herself be sucked into so much corruption?

Following in the archetypal themes of the past few weeks Iris is most characterized as the cow boy archetype.  She is only interested in her duty: but there are sooo many duties that she takes into account when she looks back on her life. She is forced for fulfill gender duties, social duties, and marital duties but never really acknowledges her own individual duties that she owes to herself. The cause she is fighting for is to keep her sister safe; after her mother dies Iris becomes the mother figure for Laura. Many of the social and cultural aspects of this time lead Iris to astray from her real duty to her sister. As a stronger character in the novel I think the Iris shows strength when fulfilling each duty but each of the strengths that she shows leads to her ultimate weakness which causes her to lose most of what she wants. This also supports that she is the cow boy archetype.

I also wanted to take a look at Laura who is also a very strong character in the novel, but unfortunately I think she ends up being a product of her time period. Laura never truly evolves from being a child, a lot like Iris she is searching for explanations to her questions, but she never really gets them. One of Laura’s most memorial events in my mind is when she throws herself into the frozen river, and once Iris rescues her she tells Iris that she was sacrificing herself to bring back her mother and Iris tells her that life doesn’t work like that. This event alludes to Laura’s death being a suicide, but it also shows kind of a devotion to make her family happy. She knows that she is burden on Iris but what is her main goal in the novel?