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Originally Posted by issybird
[...] I'm asking because I couldn't come up with a good explanation for this and ended up ascribing it to the same motivation that gave us such tedious detail about life in a Victorian house: because Atwood wanted to and not because it served a real purpose. [...]
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I think I did notice the recurring branch/tree thing, and the water thing, but didn't make anything of them. They never seemed to go anywhere and I didn't have the enthusiasm to stretch myself looking.
Especially given my own reaction to the writing, it's tempting to suggest that the entire book served no real purpose. There are no valid/useful conclusions we can draw from a fictionalised version of the events, but equally the author has been constrained in what she can say through the characters because she has tried to remain bound by the real events. There was nowhere she could go with this, and so it went nowhere.
That is a bit harsh and unfair ... probably. But I do wish she had picked one side of the fence or the other - fiction or non-fiction. The compromise, while it seemed well executed to me, was never going to be satisfying. Which corresponds to your later post:
Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I'm getting a little impatient with Atwood over this; I understand that she didn't want to pass judgment on Grace's innocence or guilt, in fact that's the whole story, but I think she was too prone to be suggestive without payoff. [...]
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As clever as the introduction of Jeremiah was for this purpose, you are quite right: with no pay off at the end it all feels like a waste of effort, and for me this book was a big effort.