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Summary: The bridge

The narrator, Iris, recalls learning about the death of her sister, Laura, in 1945, shortly after the end of WWII. Laura dies in a car accident, and the circumstances imply that the accident may have been deliberate. Iris, however, publicly insists that the death was accidental. After learning of Laura’s death, Iris uncovers a pile of notebooks and thinks about Reenie, a woman who functioned as a substitute for her mother during her childhood.

Summary: The Toronto Star, 1945

A newspaper article from May 1945 reports on the facts surrounding the death of Laura Chase. Laura was 25 when she died. Her sister Iris, the narrator, is now identified at Mrs. Richard Griffen. The article implies that Laura’s death was accidental and calls for more stringent safety precautions.

Summary: The Blind Assassin: Perennials for the Rock Garden

The narrative moves into a story within a story, excerpting from a novel called The Blind Assassin, which was written by Laura Chase and published in 1947 (after her death.) The excerpt describes a woman hiding a photo of herself and an unnamed man. In the photo, she and the man are enjoying a picnic, and in one corner of the frame, the hand of another person is faintly visible. The woman looks at the photo frequently, implying that she has strong feelings for the man but also that their relationship is a secret one.

Summary: The hard-boiled egg

A man and a woman converse playfully, and he agrees to start telling her a science fiction story. The man sets the story on the planet Zycron. The planet is an arid plain, populated by five tribes; there is a pile of stones which is popularly believed to mark the site where a grand city once stood. The storytelling ends when the woman says that she has to leave before people start to notice her absence.

Summary: The Globe and Mail, 1947

A newspaper article describes the death of Richard Griffen, a wealthy and powerful man. The article reveals that Richard was married to Iris and that they had a ten-year-old daughter named Aimee. The article also refers to Laura’s novel having been published after her death and introduces the character of Winifred Prior, Richard’s sister. The article says that Richard died of a brain aneurysm aboard his sailboat.

Summary: The park bench

The man and the woman meet on a park bench while she is pretending to be out shopping. He continues the story, explaining that Zycron is populated by human inhabitants who would later colonize Earth. The lost city was once a beautiful and luxuriant place known as Sakiel-Norn. The city operated with a rigid class structure, divided between the aristocratic Snilfards and the plebian Ygnirods.

Summary: The Toronto Star, 1975

A newspaper article announces the death of Aimee Griffen, the daughter of Richard and Iris. Aimee had struggled with drug and alcohol addiction and died at age thirty-eight, leaving behind a four-year-old daughter named Sabrina.

Summary: The carpets

The man phones the woman and asks her to come out and meet him. Once they meet in a local park, he continues the story about Zycron. The city of Sakiel-Norn was famous for its carpets, which were woven by child slaves who typically went blind as a result of their work. After they could no longer work as carpet weavers, most of the children had to resort to working as prostitutes or assassins. The woman rebukes the man for telling her such a sad story.

Summary: The Globe and Mail, 1998

This newspaper article announces the death of Winifred Prior in February 1998. She seems to have been a wealthy woman and was active as a philanthropist throughout her life.

Summary: The lipstick heart

The man and the woman meet in a deserted area under a bridge and make love. Afterward, he continues the story. The city of Sakiel-Norn practiced child sacrifice as part of its religious system. Unwilling to sacrifice their own daughters, Snilfard families would adopt the children of slaves and raise them in preparation for sacrifice. Eventually, the families simply began donating the young girls directly to the temples, where they would be raised. Since these girls would sometimes protest their fate, it became tradition to cut out their tongues several months before they were supposed to be executed. The woman stops the story, protesting that the man is deliberately trying to upset her, but he tries to calm her down.

Summary: The Colonel Henry Parkman High School Home and School Alumni Association Bulletin

An announcement states that a high school located in Port Ticonderoga, Ontario will begin to award an annual creative writing prize in memory of Laura Chase. The funds for this prize are made possible through a donation from Winifred Prior.

Analysis: Parts I & II

The novel begins with a potentially confusing kaleidoscope of information. The reader is given brief snippets of information and must use them to piece together an understanding of some of the key plot events. It takes some time for the reader to understand that the sections featuring an unnamed man and woman beginning to pursue a romantic relationship are taken from the novel that Laura wrote, creating a story within a story, or frame narrative, structure. Because the man and the woman start to create their own story about the planet Zycron, yet another narrative is introduced. There are also narrative interruptions by short newspaper articles, which contrast with the fantastical details of the Zycron story by focusing only on seemingly objective facts. This structure of storytelling might be disorienting at first, but it encourages the reader to take a more active role in understanding the narrative. Rather than passively following a linear series of events, the reader has to critically reflect on how the different details relate to one another. This practice is especially important in a novel which will go on to warn against relying on what seems like a straightforward interpretation of events.

Iris seems to have experienced a lot of grief and loss in her life. She has lost her sister, husband, and daughter unexpectedly at relatively young ages, and these losses are introduced to the reader before we learn anything else about Iris. These deaths actually occurred over a long period between 1945 and 1975, but the narrative presents them side by side. At this stage of the novel, there is no context for anything else that happened in Iris’s life during that time period. This structure suggests that the most important events in her life, and the ones that have most shaped her as a character, are her losses. As the story unfolds, the reader will learn about many other things that happened to Iris, but the rest of the narrative leads to these tragedies which are introduced right at the start of the novel. On the surface, it may seem like Atwood reduces suspense by revealing the fates of most of the main characters at the outset of the novel, but this technique actually works to create a particular type of suspense. Readers now think they have an understanding of specific events, but these understandings will be challenged as the novel progresses, causing readers to question what they think they know.

The theme of storytelling immediately becomes an important aspect of the novel. Laura has become famous because of the publication of her novel, in contrast with Iris, who seems to draw most of her identity from relationships with others. Whenever Iris is mentioned in any of the newspaper articles, she is identified based on her relationship to other characters, which implies that she has not achieved many noteworthy accomplishments of her own. Although Laura lived for a much shorter time than Iris, she seems to live on in the imaginations of others based on the creativity and storytelling she demonstrated and the taboos she challenged. Even within the text of Laura’s novel, the act of creative storytelling is essential. During their meetings, the man and the woman could talk about anything, but they spend their limited and precious time together constructing a detailed imaginary world. Interestingly, while Laura is (seemingly) the one who wrote the novel, within the world of The Blind Assassin, she assigns the role of the creator and the artist to the male character. At this point, the woman is the more passive recipient who functions as the audience for the story.

The relationship between the man and the woman is mysterious and intriguing. Although it is possible that an author creates plot events based solely on imagination and has not necessarily personally experienced them, the plot of The Blind Assassin raises questions about what Laura herself might have experienced. It already seems clear that part of why Laura’s novel became famous is because of the intriguing circumstances surrounding her death. The plot of the novel combined with her mysterious death suggests that Laura may have had secrets which only came to light once her novel was published. The relationship between the man and the woman is clearly one that has to be kept secret. For example, she is alarmed when he phones the house to ask for her because she does not want anyone to know that they are in contact with one another. They meet in public outdoor spaces, and even the first time they make love, they are outdoors. This pattern to their meetings suggests that they are trying to “hide in plain sight.” By meeting in public places, they can actually be more anonymous and secretive about their emerging relationship.


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