Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
I was thinking that the quilting theme went deeper than just being pieces to put together. In ch12 Grace speaks (to herself, to Dr Jordan she lies, which I take as significant) of wanting to make a Tree of Paradise pattern, but adapted to her own preferences. And she explains that it is "Tree" not "Trees" even when there are multiple trees in the quilt.
And later (Ch39):
So with quilting we seem to have a confusion of names and patterns, perhaps not unlike this story of the murders. And the patterns, still named the same, will be adapted by the quilter to be and say what the quilter wishes. I assume this is how we are expected to view the story.
There is another quilt-quote from the near the very end (ch53) which I rather like, again because of Grace's rather interesting take on religion:
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I don't disagree with you, and I applaud your effort in finding these references, but it still comes down to a lot of pieces that need to be put together to create a coherent whole. Of course, since Grace is the quilter, she controls the process, just as Atwood is controlling the process of presenting the story to the reader in fragments. What Grace creates, what Atwood creates, and what the reader creates may be different quilts from the same pieces.