CHAPTER II BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR AND THE MEANING OF THE POETRY

Transcription

1 12 CHAPTER II BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR AND THE MEANING OF THE POETRY A. Biography of The Author Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Canada in Her father was an entomologist, and Atwood spent a large portion of her early years in the wilderness of Northern Quebec. These childhood experiences fostered the metaphysical preoccupation with nature found in much of her work. At the age of seven Atwood's family moved to Toronto. She received her B.A. from the University of Toronto and M.A. from Radcliffe College (Mark Margaret Atwood (Flanaganhttp://contemporarylit.about.com/cs/authors/p/atwood.htm). Regarded as one of the Canada s finest living writers, Margaret Atwood is a poet, novelist, story writer, essayist, and environmental activist. Her books have received critical acclaim in the United States, Europe, and her native Canada, and she has received numerous literary awards, including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Governor General s Award, twice. Atwood s critical popularity is matched by her popularity with readers; her books are regularly best seller ( 12

2 13 Atwood first came to public attention as a poet in the 1960s with her collections Double Persephone (1961), winner of the E.J. Pratt Medal, and The Circle Game (1964), winner of a Governor General s award. These two books marked out the terrain her subsequent poetry has explored. Double Persephone dramatizes the contrasts between life and art, as well as natural and human creations. The Circle Game takes this opposition further, setting such human constructs as games, literature, and love against the instability of nature. Sherrill Grace, writing in Violent Duality: A Study of Margaret Atwood, identified the central tension in all of Atwood s work as the pull towards art on one hand and towards life on the other. Atwood is constantly aware of opposites self/other, subject/object, male/female, nature/man and of the need to accept and work within them, Grace explained. Linda W. Wagner, writing in The Art of Margaret Atwood: Essays in Criticism, also saw the dualistic nature of Atwood s poetry, asserting that duality is presented as separation in her work. This separation leads her characters to be isolated from one another and from the natural world, resulting in their inability to communicate, to break free of exploitative social relationships, or to understand their place in the natural order. In her early poetry, Gloria Onley wrote in the West Coast Review, Atwood is acutely aware of the problem of alienation, the need for real human communication and the establishment of genuine human community real as opposed to mechanical or manipulative; genuine as opposed to the counterfeit community of the body politic (Biography from: 13

3 14 Suffering is common for the female characters in Atwood s poems, although they are never passive victims. A selection of Atwood s poems was released as Eating Fire: Selected Poems in Showing the arc of Atwood s poetics, the volume was praised by Scotland on Sunday for its lean, symbolic, thoroughly Atwood sequel prose honed into elegant columns. Atwood s interest in women and female experience also emerges clearly in her novels, particularly in The Edible Woman (1969), Surfacing (1972), Life before Man (1979), Bodily Harm (1981), and The Handmaid s Tale (1985). Even later novels such as The Robber Bride (1993) and Alias Grace (1996) feature female characters defined by their intelligence and complexity. Atwood is known for her strong support of causes: feminism, environmentalism, social justice. In Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), Atwood discerns a uniquely Canadian literature, distinct from its American and British counterparts. Canadian literature, she argues, is primarily concerned with victims and with the victim s ability to survive unforgiving circumstances. In the way other countries or cultures focus around a unifying symbol America s frontier, England s island Canada and Canadian literature orientate around survival. Several critics find that Atwood s own work exemplifies this primary theme of Canadian literature. Her examination of destructive gender roles and her nationalistic concern over the subordinate role Canada plays to the United States are variations on the victor/victim theme. Atwood believes a writer must consciously work within his or her nation s literary tradition, and her own work closely parallels the themes she sees as common to the Canadian literary tradition. 14

4 15 B. The Meaning Of Margaret Atwood s Morning In The Burned House In giving meaning of poetry, the researcher writes the poetry itself. Then, the researcher gives the meaning of the poetry itself. In the burned house I am eating breakfast. You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast, yet here I am. The spoon which was melted scrapes against the bowl which was melted also. No one else is around. Where have they gone to, brother and sister, mother and father? Off along the shore, perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers, their dishes piled beside the sink, which is beside the woodstove with its grate and sooty kettle, every detail clear, tin cup and rippled mirror. The day is bright and song less, the lake is blue, the forest watchful. In the east a bank of cloud rises up silently like dark bread. I can see the swirls in the oilcloth, I can see the flaws in the glass, those flares where the sun hits them. I can't see my own arms and legs or know if this is a trap or blessing, 15

5 16 finding myself back here, where everything in this house has long been over, kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl, including my own body, including the body I had then, including the body I have now as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy, bare child's feet on the scorched floorboards (I can almost see) in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts and grubby yellow T-shirt holding my cindery, non-existent, radiant flesh. Incandescent. Morning In The Burned House Poetry tells about someone getting anxiety because of a calamity. He/she tells his/her calamity like as a burned house where all of the things in the house are shatteredly burned and nothing of them is left. When the calamity came up he/she is stress and, then finally they turn into anxiety, but no one who accompanies him/her. He/she is alone, without someone else who cares about him/her. When he/she gets stress and anxious because of loss of his/her beloved family, she remembers all of the nice stories with his/her family in the past. Those nice stories are drawn clearly in her/his mind. He/she feels that time has run too fast, and he/she does not suppose that his/her family will go and leave him/her alone. Therefore, he/she passes his/her days in deep sadness and alone. His/her face always seems gloomy like a dark sky which is covered by dark cloud. He/she feels that the calamity has made his/her heart hurt, and it also causes anxieties in his/her heart. 16

6 17 He/she thinks that calamity is a trap or blessing. However, finally he/she is just aware that it has happened, and it would not be back like before. He/she is aware that no one in this world who will not die. All people in this world finally will die, so is he/she. One day he/she also will die, but he/she thinks that he/she does not want to get down, he/she has to keep his/her spirit, because he/she thinks that life must go on. 17