Audiobook
Written by Glòria Torner
BIOGRAPHY
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939, in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada). When she was seven years old, her family moved to Toronto, but she still spent much of her childhood in the northern Ontario and Quebec wilderness, where her father, an entomologist, conducted research in forests. Her love for nature influenced her writing. She became a voracious reader of literature: pocketbook mysteries, Canadian animal stories and comic books. She did not attend school full-time until she was twelve years old.
Atwood realised she wanted to write professionally when she was sixteen. She studied and received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto in 1961, where she published poems and articles in the college literary journal. Later, she studied and obtained a master’s degree in English literature from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1962.
Atwood married Jim Polk, an American writer, in 1968, but they divorced in 1973. She had a long-term relationship with the Canadian novelist Graeme Gibson, living together in Toronto until his death in 2019. She wrote about her lover, Gibson, in the poetry book, Dearly.
She is a prolific writer. Since 1961 she has published eighteen novels, eighteen books of poetry, eleven books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children’s books, two graphic novels and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Her autobiography, called Book of Lives: A Memoir, was published in 2025.
In addition to writing, she taught English literature at several Canadian and American universities.
The main
themes in her literature are:
Dystopian and speculative and science fiction.
Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin are historical novels, and the MaddAddam trilogy engages themes of genetic modification, pharmaceutical and corporate control, and man-made disaster.
This book, criticised as immoral in Christian societies, was adapted into a film in 1990, and an acclaimed TV series based on the novel was co-written by the author in 2017. In 2019 she wrote a sequel, The Testaments.
Afterwards, in The Heart Goes Last, the writer imagines a dystopian America in which a couple is compelled to join a community that functions like a prison.
The theory of Canadian identity and memory. This theory has garnered attention both in Canada and internationally in her principal work of literary criticism, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. She postulates that Canadian literature, and by extension Canadian identity, is characterised by the symbol of survival.
She has won, among other prices, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 2008, the Pen Pinter Prize, in 2016, and two Booker Prizes, in 2000 and 2019.
HAPPY
ENDINGS
Dystopian and speculative and science fiction.
Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin are historical novels, and the MaddAddam trilogy engages themes of genetic modification, pharmaceutical and corporate control, and man-made disaster.
This book, criticised as immoral in Christian societies, was adapted into a film in 1990, and an acclaimed TV series based on the novel was co-written by the author in 2017. In 2019 she wrote a sequel, The Testaments.
Afterwards, in The Heart Goes Last, the writer imagines a dystopian America in which a couple is compelled to join a community that functions like a prison.
The theory of Canadian identity and memory. This theory has garnered attention both in Canada and internationally in her principal work of literary criticism, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. She postulates that Canadian literature, and by extension Canadian identity, is characterised by the symbol of survival.
She has won, among other prices, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 2008, the Pen Pinter Prize, in 2016, and two Booker Prizes, in 2000 and 2019.
This short
story was first published in 1983 in the Canadian collection Murder in the Dark, and in1994 it was available in the United States in Good Bones and
Simple Murders.
It is a short story structured into eight sections: six varying, interlocked narratives and two brief sections, one at the beginning of the story, and the other one at the end.
In the first section (I think), Margaret Atwood decides to use the interrogative pronouns “Who” and “What,” following “The 5Ws”: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and one more, “H” How?” Many journalists use this framework to communicate the most relevant information of the story in a newspaper article. And these three sentences are used as an introduction by the narrator who addresses readers directly as you, and comments on the craft of storytelling during and after the narratives.
The six variations are written using these five plot elements. I’ll use this structure in the first one, but I think it is not necessary in the other ones.
Exposition: John and Mary fall in love and get married.
Rising action: they have good jobs, buy a beautiful house, and have two children.
Climax: they have some friends and a stimulating sex life.
Falling action: they retire and enjoy their hobbies.
Resolution: they die.
In this second storyline, Mary falls in love with John, who doesn’t love her, he only uses her for sex, but she hopes that he will come to love her. One day, John is in a restaurant with another woman, Madge. When Mary’s friends tell her he is cheating with Madge, Mary collects all the sleeping pills and aspirins she can find and takes them with half a bottle of sherry. She leaves a note for John, but she thinks he’ll discover her, take her to the hospital, and later marry her. But this fails to happen. Mary dies and John marries Madge.
Now, in the third structure, John, an old man, who has a steady respectable job, is married to Madge. He is having an affair with Mary, a young girl. She has sexual relations with him, but she doesn’t love him because she prefers James, who is the same age as her, has a motorcycle and a fabulous record collection. One day, James discovers John and Mary in the bed. James shoots the two of them and commits suicide. At the end, Madge marries Fred. It is a love triangle.
In this fourth storyline, Fred and Madge are happy together. They have a nice house near the seashore. One day, a tidal wave approaches their home. Despite the loss of their home, they are grateful to have survived the calamity that killed thousands. They remain together. This ending is very similar to the first one.
In the fifth storyline, Fred has a bad heart and he dies. Afterwards, Madge devotes herself to charity work. However, the narrator address directly to the reader in 2n person, and tells them that these details can be changed. You can choose: Madge could have different endings: cancer…
In the last storyline the narrator suggests that the story can be changed again, making John a revolutionary, and Mary a secret agent who starts a relationship with him in order to spy on him. This story is very similar to the first story.
The last section has two brief remarks: the narrator observes that the endings of different plots are the same: death is the only true ending that comes to all of us, and therefore to all characters. But the beginnings are more fun. Plot is fundamentally, just one thing happening after another. Intentionally, she forgets “where”, “how” and “why”.
It is a short story structured into eight sections: six varying, interlocked narratives and two brief sections, one at the beginning of the story, and the other one at the end.
In the first section (I think), Margaret Atwood decides to use the interrogative pronouns “Who” and “What,” following “The 5Ws”: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and one more, “H” How?” Many journalists use this framework to communicate the most relevant information of the story in a newspaper article. And these three sentences are used as an introduction by the narrator who addresses readers directly as you, and comments on the craft of storytelling during and after the narratives.
The six variations are written using these five plot elements. I’ll use this structure in the first one, but I think it is not necessary in the other ones.
Exposition: John and Mary fall in love and get married.
Rising action: they have good jobs, buy a beautiful house, and have two children.
Climax: they have some friends and a stimulating sex life.
Falling action: they retire and enjoy their hobbies.
Resolution: they die.
In this second storyline, Mary falls in love with John, who doesn’t love her, he only uses her for sex, but she hopes that he will come to love her. One day, John is in a restaurant with another woman, Madge. When Mary’s friends tell her he is cheating with Madge, Mary collects all the sleeping pills and aspirins she can find and takes them with half a bottle of sherry. She leaves a note for John, but she thinks he’ll discover her, take her to the hospital, and later marry her. But this fails to happen. Mary dies and John marries Madge.
Now, in the third structure, John, an old man, who has a steady respectable job, is married to Madge. He is having an affair with Mary, a young girl. She has sexual relations with him, but she doesn’t love him because she prefers James, who is the same age as her, has a motorcycle and a fabulous record collection. One day, James discovers John and Mary in the bed. James shoots the two of them and commits suicide. At the end, Madge marries Fred. It is a love triangle.
In this fourth storyline, Fred and Madge are happy together. They have a nice house near the seashore. One day, a tidal wave approaches their home. Despite the loss of their home, they are grateful to have survived the calamity that killed thousands. They remain together. This ending is very similar to the first one.
In the fifth storyline, Fred has a bad heart and he dies. Afterwards, Madge devotes herself to charity work. However, the narrator address directly to the reader in 2n person, and tells them that these details can be changed. You can choose: Madge could have different endings: cancer…
In the last storyline the narrator suggests that the story can be changed again, making John a revolutionary, and Mary a secret agent who starts a relationship with him in order to spy on him. This story is very similar to the first story.
The last section has two brief remarks: the narrator observes that the endings of different plots are the same: death is the only true ending that comes to all of us, and therefore to all characters. But the beginnings are more fun. Plot is fundamentally, just one thing happening after another. Intentionally, she forgets “where”, “how” and “why”.
Conclusion
Margaret Atwood writes a story about writing stories with six different scenarios, always with a relationship between a man and a woman. Plain stories without poetry and sensibility. Too much pessimism! And with an unreal title!
Margaret Atwood writes a story about writing stories with six different scenarios, always with a relationship between a man and a woman. Plain stories without poetry and sensibility. Too much pessimism! And with an unreal title!
QUESTIONS
-Do you think plot is only “one thing after another”? What do you know of Todorov’s Five Stages of Plot?
-According to a theory, girls usually prefer bad boys to goody-goody ones. Do you think it is a real fact or it is something conjuntural?
-What is happiness? What is for you the best/most original definition of happiness? How do you know if you're happy or you aren't? How do you know when other people are or arent happy? Is happiness an invention of the consumer society?
-Do you think plot is only “one thing after another”? What do you know of Todorov’s Five Stages of Plot?
-According to a theory, girls usually prefer bad boys to goody-goody ones. Do you think it is a real fact or it is something conjuntural?
-What is happiness? What is for you the best/most original definition of happiness? How do you know if you're happy or you aren't? How do you know when other people are or arent happy? Is happiness an invention of the consumer society?
VOCABULARY
live-in, tepid, run-down, higher, underwater, stoned, brawling
live-in, tepid, run-down, higher, underwater, stoned, brawling
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