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Summary: Carnivore stories

The woman meets the man. They have been having an affair for months. She tells him that she has to tell him something, but it is not clear to the reader what she discloses or even if she ends up saying anything. She also tells him that she has come up with a continuation of the Zycron story. She explains that the assassin offers the People of Joy information about how to get into the city. In exchange, he and the maiden can go to a desolate place which is rumored to be dangerous but where the people are actually very benevolent. They can join this new society and live in peace. The man counters with an alternate story: the assassin and the maiden barter entrance to the city for a chance to escape, but they end up wandering and endangered in the wilderness.

The man and the woman take a break from storytelling and she tells him that she is going away for a month on a famous new ship.

Summary: Mayfair, 1936

A society announcement describes the elegance and beauty the wealthy individuals sailing aboard the Queen Mary.

Summary: Peach Women of Aa‘A

Aboard the ship, the woman reminisces about her time with the man. Once, at her request, he told her a story about an alternate world where two male explorers found themselves surrounded by women who could seemingly meet their every need. However, they eventually came to find their life of luxury and plenitude stifling.

Summary: The Mail and Empire, 1936

A newspaper article reports on Richard making a speech that warned about the dangers posed by civil unrest in Spain and urged Canada to stay out of the conflict.

Summary: The Top Hat Grill

To the woman’s surprise, she and the man meet in a small diner. He tells her that he has a bit of money from selling one of his science fiction stories, and then he announces that he has gotten a fake passport and is going to be travelling to Spain to fight in the civil war. The woman tells him that when he returns, she will leave her husband. The man urges her to leave her husband now so that he won’t be tormented while he is in Europe, but she convinces him that she doesn’t have any money or any skills to make her own way in the world.

Summary: The laundry

In the present-day narrative, it is now March, and elderly Iris becomes increasingly frail and ill. She thinks back to the spring of 1936 as she tried to navigate the tense atmosphere between Richard and Laura. In 1936, Richard plans to launch a career in politics and is very concerned with the outward appearance of his life. He has become physically abusive toward Iris, making sure that the bruises are never visible.

Summary: The ashtray

In the present day, the doctor indicates that Iris’s health is worsening. She reminisces about April 1936, when Laura is expelled from school for expressing unorthodox religious opinions and political views. In 1936, Iris also finds out that Laura has been skipping school a lot and is concerned about what she might be doing with that time. In May, Richard, Iris, Laura, and Winifred sail to England and then return to New York on the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary. Despite the luxury of their surroundings, Laura is clearly unhappy.

Summary: The man with his head on fire

After returning from the voyage, the family heads to Avilion. Richard tries to get into Laura’s good graces. However, both Laura and Iris are horrified to learn that Richard has let Reenie go and hired new servants instead. Wandering the house, Iris and Laura reminisce about their unhappy childhoods.

Summary: The Water Nixie

Iris and Laura go to visit Reenie and her new baby, who will grow up to be Myra. Iris thinks that Reenie is acting strangely, and she wonders whether it could be possible that Norval was the father of Reenie’s baby. Time passes slowly and uneasily. Richard is pleased by the news that civil war has broken out in Spain, hoping it will have positive economic implications. The day before they leave Avilion, Iris notices that Laura and Richard have gone sailing together, which is unusual. Iris hopes this means that their relationship might be thawing out.

Summary: The chestnut tree

Present-day Iris wakes from a nightmare about Richard. Something about the memories cause her great distress.

Analysis: Parts VIII & IX

The affair between the man and the woman grows increasingly tense as pressures of the outside world intervene, symbolic of the gap between public appearances and private matters. The woman finds it more and more difficult to maintain the freedom to regularly and secretly meet with the man. The woman’s announcement that she will be going away for a month confirms that this character could be based on the experiences of either Laura or Iris since both of them sailed aboard the Queen Mary on her maiden voyage in May 1936. Atwood uses events from the historical record to add realism to her plot, but also to speculate on the private emotional lives of people from the past, which often go unrecorded. Atwood’s speculation thus invites readers to reflect on the gaps between the known and the unknown in the historical record.

The woman’s voyage further highlights the class and ideological differences between the man and the woman, which are about to pull them apart. While she is sailing in great luxury, he is preparing to go and participate in a political conflict. The Spanish Civil War raged between 1936 and 1939 as a conflict between the left-leaning Spanish Republic and a much more conservative faction led by General Francisco Franco. The war functions as microcosm of a wider conflict between different economic classes and between radical and conservative ideologies. The outbreak of the conflict means that the man can finally get out of the country and stop hiding, but he will also be exposed to grave danger.

The depth of the love between the man and the woman is shown through their hopes of someday reestablishing their relationship. The man admits that he is jealous and wants the woman to leave her husband. Nonetheless, the woman does not think she would be capable of living independently and defers getting divorced. This detail strongly suggests that the plot of The Blind Assassin is drawn from an affair between Iris and Alex, not Alex and Laura. Laura was never married, whereas if Iris had been having an affair, she would have needed to hide this affair from Richard. The woman’s hesitation about leaving her husband also aligns with Iris’s previous behavior, as she has repeatedly hesitated to leave Richard because of the potential scandal and financial consequences.

The Zycron narrative continues to be a source of insight into the relationship between the man and the woman and reflective of their personal struggles and growth. Significantly, the woman takes a more active role in the storytelling and inserts her own interpretation of the plot. The moment when the woman starts to take an active creative role shows how the affair has liberated and transformed her. Because she has asserted her own agency by pursuing the relationship and has reclaimed a sense of self by discovering her capacity for pleasure, the woman can now engage with the man as an equal and make her own contribution to the narrative. This moment foreshadows how the woman on whom this character is based will eventually go on to write a successful novel herself. Nonetheless, the man and the woman have very different suggestions for the Zycron plot, which reflects their differing interpretations of how they predict their relationship will end. The man is much grimmer and more pessimistic, while the woman clings to the hope of a future together.

Laura and Iris continue to take divergent paths, with Laura more outwardly focused and Iris retreating inward and focusing on herself. Laura and Iris are both growing increasingly trapped and restricted, although this seems to bother the free-spirited Laura more than her sister. Iris tries to stay passive and agreeable and even puts up with the fact that Richard is physically abusing her because she wants to draw as little attention as possible to her unhappy marriage. If Iris is, in fact, having an affair with Alex during this time, it makes sense that she would also be preoccupied, distracted, and focused on the relationship that is giving her something to be hopeful about. When Iris learns that Laura has been skipping school and apparently wandering the streets of Toronto, her first reaction is fear that Laura might catch on to some secret that Iris is trying to hide. Iris’s investment in her own secrets and preoccupations makes her less attentive to Laura’s experience, even though she should be in a position to take some responsibility for her younger sister. Even when there is evidence of something strange in the behavior between Laura and Richard, Iris focuses on whether this behavior will make things more convenient for herself.


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