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Surfacing 3

Surfacing 3. Quest or Alienation? Discovery or Madness? Focus: chaps 16-18. Outline. Quest (Searching/Diving/Surfacing) and Alienation ; Power Struggle among David, Anna and Joe The Narrator’s Alienation ; Her Diving Experience – chap 17: the process , the past and her vision

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Surfacing 3

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  1. Surfacing 3 Quest or Alienation? Discovery or Madness? Focus: chaps 16-18

  2. Outline • Quest (Searching/Diving/Surfacing) and Alienation; • Power Struggle among David, Anna and Joe • The Narrator’s Alienation; • Her Diving Experience – chap 17: the process, the past and her vision • The Narrator’s view of Language and Signs • For next time: Part III

  3. Quest and Search for her Parents Search—for her father (and also her mother), for the Indian rock painting, and for her selves. Chap 15 – the searching with the father’s map for the Indian rock fails; Chap 17 – she goes to the cliff "It would be right," she says, "for my mother to have left something for me also, a legacy. His was complicated, tangled, but hers would be simple as a hand, it would be final. I was not completed yet; there had to be a gift from each of them" (chap 18: 150).

  4. Quest and Search for her Parents Quest for the mother’s simple truth  for nature p. 151 • Imagines humans as ‘filament plants’ • Wants to take her mother out of her ‘glass case’ End of Part II: '. . . nothing has died, everything is alive, everything is waiting to become alive.'

  5. Diving/Surfacing Surfacing: --both on the physical and spiritual levels • Swimming, diving and then surfacing; e.g. End of Part I: Swimming;  chaps 17; 2) Diving into the subconscious and bringing the repressed guilt to the surface e.g. There is "death . . . inside me,“ she layers it "over, a cyst, a tumor, black pearl." (146) 3) Chap 20 "He[Joe] trembles and then I can feel my lost child surfacing within me, forgiving me" (161-62).

  6. Against and Complicit with “the Americans/Humans” • Chap 15: the 'Americans' turn out to be from Toronto p. 129 • They "killed the heron anyway. It doesn't matter what country they're from . . . they're still Americans, they're what's in store for us, what we are turning into."

  7. Against and Complicit with “the Americans/Humans” • Chap 15 (2): • The protagonist feels "a sickening complicity" in the transgressions of others: "The trouble some people have being German," she says in reference to the Nazi atrocities, "I have being human" (129-30). • e.g. Her allowing the animals to be trapped and killed by her brother. “Because of my fear they were killed” (132)

  8. Against and Complicit with “the Americans/Humans” • Chap 18 • -- not the men she hates, but the Americans, the human beings  the aggressive, possessive and destructive tendencies in humans. • wants “there to be a mchine that could make them vanish” . . . • Is she too cruel to her fellow human beings? Is she going mad?

  9. Alienation • Ending of Part II (chap 19) -- ‘The voices murmur, they can’t discuss me, they know I’m listening. They’re avoiding me, they find me inappropriate; they think I should be filled with death, I should be in mourning. But nothing has died, everything is alive, everything is waiting to become alive.'

  10. David, Anna & Joe and the Narrator’s Alienation from them • Chap 16 –the 6th day. • What happen to Anna and David on this day? How does David look at it? Joe? And the narrator? • Chap 18 –the geometrical sex • What does this episode tell us more about Anna, David and Joe? How about the narrator and her question of ‘love’?

  11. Exploitation of Anna in David and Joe’s “Random Samples” • Put naked Anna together with ‘the dead bird’ –”your chance for stardom.” • David’s and Joe’s 136-137 – one brutal and domineering, and the other uncertain. • The narrator’s response – (136) “So we battled in secret, undeclared, and after a while I no longer fought back because I never won. The only defense was flight, invisibility.” p. 138 asks David for herself, but not for Anna.

  12. Exploitation of Anna in David and Joe’s “Random Samples” • David’s explanation (pp. 138-39) – self-justification

  13. Geometrical Sex • Joe and Anna as losers – comforting each other with sex? • David – p. 153 -- never take ‘no’ for no. -- sex separated from love, sexual organs detached from human bodies. -- goes to the narrator to get even with Anna. (154) -- “Second hand American was spreading over him”

  14. Further Alienation from the Three • The dinner scene – • The narrator observes the continuation of the ‘war’ between David and Anna, both of which know what happened. • The two join forces and turn around to attack the narrator. • Continued fragmentation of identities in the narrator’s eyes P. 155

  15. Further Alienation from the Three • Chap 19 “For him truth might still be possible, what will preserve him is the absence of words; but the others are already turning to metal, skins galvanizing, heads congealing to brass knobs, components and intricate wires ripening inside.” (160) • What would you do if you were the narrator? Do you think that the narrator is too detached and radical?

  16. Her Diving Experience – chap 17 • The difficult process of diving –the lake is shown to be layered p. 142  What does it mean? • 1) pain; 2) disorientation, 3) saw it. • What does the narrator find out when she dives?

  17. Her Diving Experience – the past • How is her real past remembered? • The brutal scene of abortion p. 144; lack of care, forced to do it 145; • More flashbacks in chap 18 –his being her first, her idol, her teacher; his wanting to separate their relationship from everything else. (150) • Acknowledges her ‘making a faked album.” • Regret – “I should have said no but I didn’t; that made me one of them too, a killer.”

  18. Her Diving Experience – vision Mythic vision of nature as a place of truth -- Beginning of this chapter: dead animals as Christ; • P. 146 She appreciates natural beings as ‘gods’ who give her what she needs; • Rock paintings– the place to learn truth

  19. The Narrator’s view of Language and Signs • Her mistrust of the words, and alienation from it -- “love” e.g. 30; 107. “I couldn’t use it [love] because it wasn’t mine.” “The voice wasn’t mine, it came from someone dressed as me, imitating me” p. 139 “’she loves you,’ I repeated. . .it was the magic word but it couldn’t work because I had no faith.”

  20. The Narrator’s view of Language and Signs • David’s wristwatch p. 153 –his dial or switch

  21. Part III • The narrator stays behind, and becomes “a natural woman.” • “a creature neither animal nor human, furless, only a dirty blanket, shoulders huddled over into a crouch, . . . The lips move by themselves.”

  22. Different Views on Part III • The narrator ‘goes “crazy” deliberately in order to empower herself.” (Annis Pratt) • Before the narrator can establish a strong sense of identity, she hits "rock bottom. . . . Fed up with the superficiality of her companions, [she] banishes them and submits to paranoia“(Patricia F. Goldblatt)

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