Strap in you guys, because this is a wild ride.
So I’ll spare you the more boring details and do a condensed version of what happened. Grace continues to tell us about how her and Mc Dermint were captured and then out of trial. She talks about the emotional strain and pain of the trail, and how hard it was to have to sit through it. To learn more about Grace, Simon visits her lawyers office, but only gets more and more confused about Garce and her innocence.
With all other methods failing, Grace agrees to be out under hypnosis. One evening, Dr. DuPont (who is actually Geaces friend Jeremiah) comes to the House Grace works at, and in front of Simon, the Governor’s Wife, and many others, he hypnotized her. While under hypnosis, we are introduced once again to Mary Whitney.
It turns out that Grace has multiple identities living inside her. The blackouts that she experienced during the murders of Nancy Montgomery and Thomas Kinnear are actually her second personality taking over.
“Mary Whitney” tells the party that since Grace didn’t open the window when she died, Mary’s soul was trapped and found a home in Grace’s body. Mary tells us that she had Thomas Kinnear and James McDermont wrapped around her finger, and taunts Simon, asking if he wants to know “whether I did what you’d like to do with that little slut who’s got hold of your hand,” (400). Mary confessed that SHE was the one who strangled Nancy, not Grace. She begs them not to tell Grace about her, otherwise she’d get very upset.
Grace comes out of the trance having no memory of what happened. The book quickly cuts to a discussion of Grace waiting for her pardon to come in, and then finally receiving it. The book ends with Grace beginning a new life with Jamie Walsh, the man whose testimony put her away.
Now the big question: is it AP worthy? Well, I would have to say yes!
The amount of analysis needed to truly understand this book is tremendous. Every chapter requires a new depth of thought that the previous did not. For example, the beginning asks the simple question of innocence or guilt, while later parts of the book asks the reader to determine whether Gace is a good person or not. This question is funadamentally more difficult, because someone can be guilty but still a good person.
Another reason that this book is of AP worth is Margaret Atwood’s unique and complex style. Not only does she switch between two very unique viewpoints, but she also uses stylistic choices like leaving out quotation marks, to convey meaning. Leaving out the quotation marks makes the book a true narrative, a storytelling done by Grace. It makes the book seem like a conversation, as I said in one of my first blog posts.
Atwood also uses a great deal of literary devices in her work. She utilized many motifs, namely Peonies. As in her other works, she uses an imagery traditionally related to birth and life and turns it into a symbol of death. Any time peonies are mentioned, it is Grace talking about Nancy being dead or her own, very sad life.
For all of these reasons, this book is of great literary merit, and certainly worthy of being an AP book.
Friday, February 23, 2018
Friday, February 16, 2018
Post 3: They’re (Finally) Dead!
Hello again! Yes, you read that right: we finally got to the part of the book where Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery were murdered! It took a while, but we got there! Was the wait worth the big reveal? Absolutely not.
Since I last blogged, it seems like very little has happened. To begin with, Grace started to realize how sketchy the Kinnear residence is. She grows weary of Nancy, who is a devout worshipper having an affair with her employer, and Mr. Kinnear, who gets creepier with every sentence, and of course, James McDermont, who is the definition of the scary farmhand from hell, much like Judd from Oklahoma! While Grace tells her story, it becomes more and more clear that Dr. Jordan is developing unprofessional feelings for Grace, which can only add conflict to the story.
About half way through the reading, we come to find that a peddler from Grace’s past named Jerimiah is posing as a neurohypnotist named Dr. Jerome DuPont. He symbols to Grace to keep this a secret.
Then, the fated moment arrives: Thomas tells Grace of his plan to kill Nancy and Mr. Kinnear, and then rob them. Grace tries to stop the terrible plan, but she can only do so much when she feels she is against a madman. On the fated day, Grace tells Dr. Jordan that she only remembers hearing the sound of the ax hitting Nancy, but she blacked out. Then, later that day, McDermont killed Thomas Kinnear with a shot to the body. Grace and McDermont run away together, and McDermont tries to rape Grace to get “what he is owed”. She manages to stall his advances, and the section ends with Grace dreaming and then saying “Just then there was a knocking on the door,” (343).
Now that I have updated you on the state of the story, onto the analysis! Since now I fully understand the characters, I thought it would be best to give you a true explanation of them now:
Grace Marks: the “protagonist” of the story. Grace has been accused of aiding and abetting the murders of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery, though she herself does not know if she did it. Grace’s early life was quite tough, as she lost her mother and had to deal with a drunken father. Her only real friend, Mary Whitney, died of a botched abortion when Grace was 15. Unable to bear working where her friend died, Grace goes to the Kinnears for a fresh start. Her quiet demeanor and soft personality certainly makes the reader think she is innocent of any crime, but is she just a snake lying in the grass?
Dr. Simon Jordan: a psychologist from the States. He is studing Grace mostly out of curiousity, and I find him to be horribly creepy. He sits with Grace almost everyday to listen to her story and telling of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery, taking notes and asking questions to help uncover the truth. As far as personality goes, he seems to be obsessed with women, particularly Grace.
Thomas Kinnear: you’d think since he’s so important, he’d be in the book more. We know little of Thomas Kinnear besides the fact that he travels a great deal, keeps mostly to himself, and he’s having an affair with Nancy, his house runner. He too gives off creepy vibes to Grace, and seems to make subtle advances on her.
Nancy Montgomery: I don’t think anyone in this book likes Nancy. Her biggest personality trait is that she’s horrifically two-faced. She’ll scream at Grace and McDermont one minute, then joke nad laugh with them as if nothing has happened. She is incredibly jealous when Grace does anything for Mr. Kinnear and with throw a fit at Grace for the smallest things. Her temper makes her incredibly unlikeable, and makes it somewhat difficult for the reader to feel very bad about the fact that she’s dead (just being honest, guys).
James McDermont: the man with a worse temper than Nancy. Breathing around McDermont is all it takes to get him to sulk. Anytime he is described in the book, he is described as “glaring”. He develops an infatuation with Grace almost as soon as she starts at the Kinnear home; this infatuation comes with raging jealousy and feelings of possession, which lead him to think that Grace belongs to him and has “led him on” meaning she must have sex with him in order to pay a debt to him.
All in all, a lot of these characters are very unlikeable. It’s hard to root for any of them, except Grace; however, the reader must remember that Grace is the one telling the story. Not only that, but she is telling the story to a man who could help her get out of prison, so wouldn’t she make the story as favorable to her as possible? Wouldn’t she say that Mr. Kinnear was absent, Nancy was difficult, and McDermont was insane to help her own case? These are questions that must be asked anytime a first person narration is involved, but particularly in a case like this when the truth is so mysterious.
So, that’s all I have for this post! Thanks for joining me and tune in next week when I tell you whether Grace is innocent or guilty!
Since I last blogged, it seems like very little has happened. To begin with, Grace started to realize how sketchy the Kinnear residence is. She grows weary of Nancy, who is a devout worshipper having an affair with her employer, and Mr. Kinnear, who gets creepier with every sentence, and of course, James McDermont, who is the definition of the scary farmhand from hell, much like Judd from Oklahoma! While Grace tells her story, it becomes more and more clear that Dr. Jordan is developing unprofessional feelings for Grace, which can only add conflict to the story.
About half way through the reading, we come to find that a peddler from Grace’s past named Jerimiah is posing as a neurohypnotist named Dr. Jerome DuPont. He symbols to Grace to keep this a secret.
Then, the fated moment arrives: Thomas tells Grace of his plan to kill Nancy and Mr. Kinnear, and then rob them. Grace tries to stop the terrible plan, but she can only do so much when she feels she is against a madman. On the fated day, Grace tells Dr. Jordan that she only remembers hearing the sound of the ax hitting Nancy, but she blacked out. Then, later that day, McDermont killed Thomas Kinnear with a shot to the body. Grace and McDermont run away together, and McDermont tries to rape Grace to get “what he is owed”. She manages to stall his advances, and the section ends with Grace dreaming and then saying “Just then there was a knocking on the door,” (343).
Now that I have updated you on the state of the story, onto the analysis! Since now I fully understand the characters, I thought it would be best to give you a true explanation of them now:
Grace Marks: the “protagonist” of the story. Grace has been accused of aiding and abetting the murders of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery, though she herself does not know if she did it. Grace’s early life was quite tough, as she lost her mother and had to deal with a drunken father. Her only real friend, Mary Whitney, died of a botched abortion when Grace was 15. Unable to bear working where her friend died, Grace goes to the Kinnears for a fresh start. Her quiet demeanor and soft personality certainly makes the reader think she is innocent of any crime, but is she just a snake lying in the grass?
Dr. Simon Jordan: a psychologist from the States. He is studing Grace mostly out of curiousity, and I find him to be horribly creepy. He sits with Grace almost everyday to listen to her story and telling of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery, taking notes and asking questions to help uncover the truth. As far as personality goes, he seems to be obsessed with women, particularly Grace.
Thomas Kinnear: you’d think since he’s so important, he’d be in the book more. We know little of Thomas Kinnear besides the fact that he travels a great deal, keeps mostly to himself, and he’s having an affair with Nancy, his house runner. He too gives off creepy vibes to Grace, and seems to make subtle advances on her.
Nancy Montgomery: I don’t think anyone in this book likes Nancy. Her biggest personality trait is that she’s horrifically two-faced. She’ll scream at Grace and McDermont one minute, then joke nad laugh with them as if nothing has happened. She is incredibly jealous when Grace does anything for Mr. Kinnear and with throw a fit at Grace for the smallest things. Her temper makes her incredibly unlikeable, and makes it somewhat difficult for the reader to feel very bad about the fact that she’s dead (just being honest, guys).
James McDermont: the man with a worse temper than Nancy. Breathing around McDermont is all it takes to get him to sulk. Anytime he is described in the book, he is described as “glaring”. He develops an infatuation with Grace almost as soon as she starts at the Kinnear home; this infatuation comes with raging jealousy and feelings of possession, which lead him to think that Grace belongs to him and has “led him on” meaning she must have sex with him in order to pay a debt to him.
All in all, a lot of these characters are very unlikeable. It’s hard to root for any of them, except Grace; however, the reader must remember that Grace is the one telling the story. Not only that, but she is telling the story to a man who could help her get out of prison, so wouldn’t she make the story as favorable to her as possible? Wouldn’t she say that Mr. Kinnear was absent, Nancy was difficult, and McDermont was insane to help her own case? These are questions that must be asked anytime a first person narration is involved, but particularly in a case like this when the truth is so mysterious.
So, that’s all I have for this post! Thanks for joining me and tune in next week when I tell you whether Grace is innocent or guilty!
Thursday, February 8, 2018
Post 2: We’re at The Good Stuff
Welcome back! I’m sure you have all been anxiously awaiting the second installment of this Alias Grace blog.
I will be one of the first to admit that the book was slow to pick up in the beginning. In this section however, we learn a great deal about Grace’s backstory and what led to her living with at Thomas Kinnears in the first place. Most importantly, we learn about Mary Whitney, whom Grace has mentioned often, but we don’t know much about.
Grace tells us about Mary Whitney and her strong, brilliant, and bright personality. Mary is one who does not passively accept hat happens around her, but questions it and wishes to make it change. She frequently laments about how unfair The divide between the classes is. On page 150, Grace says “But it angered her that some people had so much and others so little, as she could not see any divine plan in it,” (150). This is just one of many instances where we learn of Mary’s forward thinking attitude and ways. She also comments frequently on the condition of women, telling Grace she must always be cautious of men and their dangerous ways. Mary Whitney reminds me a great deal of Moira form The Handmaid’s Tale because of this.
On that note, Grace reminds me of Offred, the main character of The Handmaid’s Tale. They both are passive, always watching the world around them. They also have similar backstories involved a lot of loss. I think that this is Margaret Atwood’s MO if you will of the protagonists in her book, as The Blind Assassin’s main character Iris was the same.
The tale of Mary Whitney is not one that ends happily. After Grace tells us of all of her time with Mary, she tells us that Mary—an unwed young lady in the early 1800s—is pregnant. The scandal that this would cause Mary is horrifying for the two to think about, and so they devise a plan to go visit a special doctor. Grace gives Mary all of her savings so she may afford the operation, which is essentially and abortion. Shortly after the abortion, Mary dies leaving Grace with an unimaginable amount of guilt; she has just lost the only friend she has ever known.
Mary’s death forces Grace to leave her place of work in search of another. After going through a few places, she finds herself employed at a shoemakers. The shoemaker’s wife then introduces Grace to Nancy Montgomery, one of the people Grace is said to have helped murder.
At the point in the book where Lilly and I stopped, Grace is working for Thomas Kinnear (the other person she is said to have murdered) and everything seems to be normal. This most likely means that in the next section, they will be dead. My main reason for believing this is that Grace literally says “It is strange to reflect that of all the people in that house, I was the only one of them left alive in six months time,” (209). So, the murder scene must be coming soon.
Last time I read, I made a note of a few things: first, I don’t trust Simon (the doctor talking with Grace) at all. Not one bit. It seems to me as though he is there under suspicious circumstances, and he is utterly self absorbed and a little creepy. It seems as though every interaction he has with a woman is sexual to him. When his landlady passes out, he considers taking advantage of her. “He has no wish to alter [their] situation, despite an image that leaps into his mind, unbidden—aroused, no doubt by the sight of a helpless woman extended upon his tumbled bed,” (142). Later, he meets a potential suitor and immediately imagines her as “a famous Parisian courtesan who had herself presented at a banquet this way; naked, of course. He occupies himself with undressing and garnishing Lydia,” (pg 193). These thoughts are not few and far between, and I fear that he may try to take advantage of Grace later in the book.
The book is getting quite interesting at this point, and I was actually a little upset that I had to put it down on several occasions. I’m hopeful that the next installment will be just as good as this one!
I will be one of the first to admit that the book was slow to pick up in the beginning. In this section however, we learn a great deal about Grace’s backstory and what led to her living with at Thomas Kinnears in the first place. Most importantly, we learn about Mary Whitney, whom Grace has mentioned often, but we don’t know much about.
Grace tells us about Mary Whitney and her strong, brilliant, and bright personality. Mary is one who does not passively accept hat happens around her, but questions it and wishes to make it change. She frequently laments about how unfair The divide between the classes is. On page 150, Grace says “But it angered her that some people had so much and others so little, as she could not see any divine plan in it,” (150). This is just one of many instances where we learn of Mary’s forward thinking attitude and ways. She also comments frequently on the condition of women, telling Grace she must always be cautious of men and their dangerous ways. Mary Whitney reminds me a great deal of Moira form The Handmaid’s Tale because of this.
On that note, Grace reminds me of Offred, the main character of The Handmaid’s Tale. They both are passive, always watching the world around them. They also have similar backstories involved a lot of loss. I think that this is Margaret Atwood’s MO if you will of the protagonists in her book, as The Blind Assassin’s main character Iris was the same.
The tale of Mary Whitney is not one that ends happily. After Grace tells us of all of her time with Mary, she tells us that Mary—an unwed young lady in the early 1800s—is pregnant. The scandal that this would cause Mary is horrifying for the two to think about, and so they devise a plan to go visit a special doctor. Grace gives Mary all of her savings so she may afford the operation, which is essentially and abortion. Shortly after the abortion, Mary dies leaving Grace with an unimaginable amount of guilt; she has just lost the only friend she has ever known.
Mary’s death forces Grace to leave her place of work in search of another. After going through a few places, she finds herself employed at a shoemakers. The shoemaker’s wife then introduces Grace to Nancy Montgomery, one of the people Grace is said to have helped murder.
At the point in the book where Lilly and I stopped, Grace is working for Thomas Kinnear (the other person she is said to have murdered) and everything seems to be normal. This most likely means that in the next section, they will be dead. My main reason for believing this is that Grace literally says “It is strange to reflect that of all the people in that house, I was the only one of them left alive in six months time,” (209). So, the murder scene must be coming soon.
Last time I read, I made a note of a few things: first, I don’t trust Simon (the doctor talking with Grace) at all. Not one bit. It seems to me as though he is there under suspicious circumstances, and he is utterly self absorbed and a little creepy. It seems as though every interaction he has with a woman is sexual to him. When his landlady passes out, he considers taking advantage of her. “He has no wish to alter [their] situation, despite an image that leaps into his mind, unbidden—aroused, no doubt by the sight of a helpless woman extended upon his tumbled bed,” (142). Later, he meets a potential suitor and immediately imagines her as “a famous Parisian courtesan who had herself presented at a banquet this way; naked, of course. He occupies himself with undressing and garnishing Lydia,” (pg 193). These thoughts are not few and far between, and I fear that he may try to take advantage of Grace later in the book.
The book is getting quite interesting at this point, and I was actually a little upset that I had to put it down on several occasions. I’m hopeful that the next installment will be just as good as this one!
Friday, February 2, 2018
Post 1: An introduction and key thoughts
Welcome! This blog is about one of Margaret Atwood's much less famous novels, Alias Grace. The book is set in mid-1800's Canada, where the Irish immigrant Grace Marks currently lives. Grace has been convicted of a crime she claims she did not commit, and her "accomplice" James McDermott was hanged for: the murder of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery.
Grace was deemed to be insane during the trial and has spent the last eight years in a penitentiary (she was sixteen when she was first locked up, and at the beginning of the book she's going to be turning twenty-four at her next birthday. The governor of the prison's wife uses Grace as a kind of housekeeper, and the beginning of the novel is split between the setting of the penitentiary and the governor's house, and also spends time in flashbacks. Dr. Simon Jordan spends a great deal of time with Grace, trying to unravel her mysterious mind. There's a better summary of the book here.
Now, on with the post!
First of all, Alias Grace has about the strangest format I could think of. There are parts, which are divided into chapters within. "Well, that's not too strange," you say to yourself, but no. It gets worse.
The chapters alternate between poetry, and what appear to be newspaper clippings. There's also the mixing of point's of view, which always throws me for a loop when I first start. Then, there's the fact that little to no quotation marks are used when Grace is talking. At first, I hated this, but now I have come to like it. It makes the book feel as though it is more of a conversation between the reader and Grace, except I never get to ask her a question.
The book is also all over the place. First Grace is talking about flowers very poetically, "Out of the gravel there are peonies growing. They come up through loose grey pebbles, their buds testing the air like snails' eyes, then swelling and opening," (5). This imagery is quite calming and very simple. It is immediately followed by "huge dark-red flowers all shining and glossy like satin. Then they burst and fall to the ground," (5). The contrast of the simplicity of flowers with the dark, blood-like imagery of the second part of the sentence is typical Atwood. In my experience with Atwood's writing style, it's common for her to pull you one way, but then shake you and go another.
So far, one of the major themes in the book is the treatment of woman, which is not a surprise given that it was written by Margaret Atwood. The very first parts of the book are focused solely on how horrible the conditions are for Grace. She talks about how terrible the food is, and how horrific the conditions are, and the fact that many of the other women in the penitentiary aren't even insane. She talks about the women who are alcoholics, and the women who are there to escape their husbands, and the women who just need a place to be in the winter.
Perhaps the most distressing thing about what Grace says about the prison/asylum is that everything she says sounds remarkably similar to something one would say about a mental institution or prison today. It took a while for it to really sink in for me, but our systems today are similar, in many ways, to the systems of the mid-1800s. Is that not disturbing? Since clearly, it didn't work then, shouldn't we know to change it not? This is something I am going to watch carefully as I read on, and I'd be interested to know what others think of this subject.
So far, I am very pleased with this section of Alias Grace and I cannot wait to read more!
Grace was deemed to be insane during the trial and has spent the last eight years in a penitentiary (she was sixteen when she was first locked up, and at the beginning of the book she's going to be turning twenty-four at her next birthday. The governor of the prison's wife uses Grace as a kind of housekeeper, and the beginning of the novel is split between the setting of the penitentiary and the governor's house, and also spends time in flashbacks. Dr. Simon Jordan spends a great deal of time with Grace, trying to unravel her mysterious mind. There's a better summary of the book here.
Now, on with the post!
First of all, Alias Grace has about the strangest format I could think of. There are parts, which are divided into chapters within. "Well, that's not too strange," you say to yourself, but no. It gets worse.
The chapters alternate between poetry, and what appear to be newspaper clippings. There's also the mixing of point's of view, which always throws me for a loop when I first start. Then, there's the fact that little to no quotation marks are used when Grace is talking. At first, I hated this, but now I have come to like it. It makes the book feel as though it is more of a conversation between the reader and Grace, except I never get to ask her a question.
The book is also all over the place. First Grace is talking about flowers very poetically, "Out of the gravel there are peonies growing. They come up through loose grey pebbles, their buds testing the air like snails' eyes, then swelling and opening," (5). This imagery is quite calming and very simple. It is immediately followed by "huge dark-red flowers all shining and glossy like satin. Then they burst and fall to the ground," (5). The contrast of the simplicity of flowers with the dark, blood-like imagery of the second part of the sentence is typical Atwood. In my experience with Atwood's writing style, it's common for her to pull you one way, but then shake you and go another.
So far, one of the major themes in the book is the treatment of woman, which is not a surprise given that it was written by Margaret Atwood. The very first parts of the book are focused solely on how horrible the conditions are for Grace. She talks about how terrible the food is, and how horrific the conditions are, and the fact that many of the other women in the penitentiary aren't even insane. She talks about the women who are alcoholics, and the women who are there to escape their husbands, and the women who just need a place to be in the winter.
Perhaps the most distressing thing about what Grace says about the prison/asylum is that everything she says sounds remarkably similar to something one would say about a mental institution or prison today. It took a while for it to really sink in for me, but our systems today are similar, in many ways, to the systems of the mid-1800s. Is that not disturbing? Since clearly, it didn't work then, shouldn't we know to change it not? This is something I am going to watch carefully as I read on, and I'd be interested to know what others think of this subject.
So far, I am very pleased with this section of Alias Grace and I cannot wait to read more!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)