Key Facts
full title ·
Surfacing
author · Margaret Atwood
type of work · Novel
genre · Psychological thriller; mystery; feminist tract; postcolonial novel;
environmental tract
language · English
time and place written · 1972, Canada
date of first publication · 1972
publisher · McClelland & Stewart
narrator · The unnamed narrator of the novel is also its chief protagonist. She is
an artist who goes in search of her missing father. The novel is written
entirely from the narrator's perspective, detailing events as they occur while
flashing back to events past.
point of view · Atwood re-creates the narrator's raw, unfiltered psychology by
including the narrator's observations and memories as they occur. The narrator
speaks in the first person and does not address a specific audience. Her voice
is objective in that it only relates what the other characters say and do, but
it is subjective in that she interprets the psychology behind other characters'
actions. The narrator is unreliable because she relates memories only to change
or deny them.
tone · The narrator has an anxious, tense tone. She is also paranoid,
introverted, wise, educated, and cynically humorous.
tense · The narrator writes in the present tense, but events in the present
trigger past memories.
setting (time) · The present (1970s)
setting (place) · A remote island in Quebec
protagonist · The narrator
major conflict · The narrator reexamines her place in society, feeling alienated by
ideals of marriage and religion that fail to suit her.
rising action · The narrator's search for her father, memories of her mother,
confrontation of her past, observations of her companions, and reaction to
American encroachments on the wilderness all promote in her an emotional
numbness.
climax · While diving, the narrator experiences a vision of her aborted baby
that releases several repressed memories.
falling action · The narrator abandons her friends and undergoes a psychological madness
in which she regresses to a childlike state and literally lives like an
animal.
themes · Language as power; the total alienation of women
motifs · American expansion; the power
symbols · The barometer; frogs; the hanged heron; makeup; the ring
foreshadowing · Joe's fiddling with the narrator's ring foreshadows his later demand
for marriage. The narrator's belief that her brother must have had visions after
drowning foreshadows her own vision when she nearly drowns. The narrator
imagines her father hiding from a search party and ends up hiding in exactly the
way she had imagined. The narrator's constant ruminations on language foreshadow
her later search for a primal language.
