Atwood and Animals
Margaret Atwood has repeatedly made observations about our relationships to animals in her works. Atwood offers this observation about eating animals: "The animals die that we may live, they are substitute people...And we eat them, out of cans or otherwise; we are eaters of death, dead Christ-flesh resurrecting inside us, granting us life." Characters in her books link sexual oppression to meat-eating and consequently give up meat-eating. In The Edible Woman, Atwood's character Marian identifies with hunted animals and cries after hearing her fiancé's experience of hunting and eviscerating a rabbit. Marian stops eating meat but then later returns to it.
In Cat's Eye, the narrator recognizes the similarity between a turkey and a baby. She looks at "the turkey, which resembles a trussed, headless baby. It has thrown off its disguise as a meal and has revealed itself to me for what it is, a large dead bird." In Atwood's Surfacing, a dead heron represents purposeless killing and prompts thoughts about other senseless deaths.
Read more about this topic: Margaret Atwood
Famous quotes containing the words atwood and/or animals:
“you fit into me
like a hook into an eye”
—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)
“The saying, “The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored,” is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom.—A theme for a great poet would be God’s boredom on the seventh day of creation.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)