Friday 30 September 2016

Margaret Atwood - 5 Motifs

. Environmental Issues
. Feminism
. Speculative Fiction
. Politics
. Nature/Animals

In terms of motifs and reoccurring objects/symbols, I wasn't able to find much. Not because there isn't any in Atwoods writing but because I don't have the time to go through all of her books and pick out symbols or objects that reoccur so I chose themes/ideas that reoccur instead. 
Atwoods views on nature and the environment run almost parallel through her personal life and her work. From reading her books you can tell she is a writer greatly concerned with our relationship as humans with the world around us. This lines up with the fact that she is an environmental activist and spent a lot of her childhood exploring the forests with her family. 

Although she doesn't label her writing feminist, Atwood's books usually touch on feminist issues. She often portrays female characters dominated by the patriarchy in her novels and also sheds light on women's oppression as results from patriachal ideology.  

Atwood resists the idea that her writing is science fiction and in turn describes it as speculative fiction, the difference being that science fiction is about things we cannot do yet, and speculative fiction is about things that could really happen. 

"For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do.... speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand and that takes place on Planet Earth." 



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