The Blind Assassin: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

Iris feels that she has to hurry because she is nearing the end, which she characterizes as “a warm safe haven.” Iris used to believe that she wanted justice and that her intentions were noble. However, people often think this before they commit harm. The notebooks of Laura’s that Iris found are in her trunk, preserved in their original state. Each of the notebooks had the name of a different school subject on it. A blurb on the cover of The Blind Assassin claims that Laura writes like an angel, and Iris says that this is actually true: Laura wrote in a simple, straightforward way, tallying up sins.

Back in 1945, Iris opens Laura’s Latin notebook first. Laura had ripped out most of the pages of her Latin homework, although there was one Virgil translation that Iris had helped her with. Iris remembers discussing Dido’s suicide with Laura, although Iris herself hadn’t been particularly interested in it. After looking at Latin, Iris opens Laura’s history book. Nothing is inside except the photograph of Laura and Alex Thomas, with Iris cuts out. Geography is almost completely empty too, as is French, as Laura had ripped all her French writing out. All that’s left is Alex’s list of invented words that the girls had found in the attic, which Laura claimed to have burned. 

Inside Mathematics, there is a list of dates, the first of which is the day Iris returned from her honeymoon in Europe. They last until Laura was taken to BellaVista. There are also words, which read: “Avilion, no. No. No. Sunnyside. No. Xanadu, no. No,” and so on, until they change to, “Water Nixie, X. ‘Besotted.’ Toronto again. X.” In this moment, Iris can’t believe how “blind” she had been and how wrong she was to assume that Alex was the father of Laura’s baby.

Iris puts the notebooks back in the drawer, thinking about how she now knows everything but has no real evidence to prove it. After Laura’s funeral, Richard goes to Ottawa, hoping that on this trip he will officially be asked to run for office. With Richard gone, Iris packs up her and Aimee’s belongings in her trunk. She leaves a letter for Richard saying that she knows what did done to Laura and that she never wants to speak to him again. She says she won’t get an official divorce and she pretends to have evidence in the form of Laura’s notebooks, which she threatens reveal if Richard tried to get custody of Aimee. She asks for enough money to buy a small house in Port Ticonderoga plus “maintenance” for Aimee.

Before leaving Toronto, Iris also goes to see Callie, who’s working on a commission of three female factory workers that’s to go on the wall of an insurance company. When confronted, Callie denies that she revealed Alex’s whereabouts to Richard. She claims that she’d initially helped Alex but that he disappeared without paying back the money he owed her. Iris isn’t sure if Richard had lied to Laura about Callie’s knowledge of Alex’s location or if Callie herself was lying, but ultimately it didn’t matter much either way.

Aimee is sad to be in Port Ticonderoga and she misses Richard. The town has changed and is adjusting to a new, peacetime way of life. Elwood Murray died in the war, as did Ron Hincks. Reenie is still working at Betty’s, despite receiving Ron’s pension and being in bad health. Six months after Iris moves back to town, Reenie dies of kidney failure. Addressing Myra again, Iris describes how heartbroken she was by this, although she did find that Reenie stayed present through the “commentary” that Iris could not help but hear inside her own head.   

Iris finds that going to Avilion is painful. Having let herself in using Reenie’s key, she looks around at the now dilapidated, dusty, and dirty environment. Iris finds the spot in the attic where Laura must have been living after running away from BellaVista. Richard doesn’t come to Port Ticonderoga, instead sending Winifred on his behalf. Coldly, Iris asks Winifred if Richard believed he was getting “two for the price of one” when he married Iris. Winifred denies Iris’s charges against him and demands that Iris let Richard see Aimee, but Iris refuses on the grounds of Richard’s evident sexual interest in young girls. When Winifred gasps that Aimee is Richard’s daughter, Iris almost reveals that she isn’t, but instead Iris keeps quiet.

Iris manages to buy her small house, although Aimee continues to resent her for taking them away from their previous luxurious life. Separated from Richard, Aimee idealizes him. Iris and Richard don’t get divorced, but rumors circulate that Iris is insane and that Richard is supporting her, which makes him look like a “saint.” Before The Blind Assassin is published, Iris’s life in Port Ticonderoga is peaceful enough. However, it’s during this period that she begins to be troubled by her conscious and she finds it difficult to sleep.

Iris sends The Blind Assassin to the publisher; the author biography notes that Laura wrote it in her early twenties, before her death in a car “accident” in 1945. When the novel is first published, it receives some critical praise but not much attention. However, then “moralists” begin taking interest in it, and suddenly its popularity explodes. Richard’s political rivals use it against him, and rumors circulate that Laura’s supposedly accidental death was actually a suicide. More information emerges, including the detail of Laura’s stay at BellaVista. Damning letters between Richard and Dr. Witherspoon are even published.

The scandal puts an abrupt end to Richard’s political ambitions. Richard calls Iris and berates her for ruining him, and Iris taunts him in reply, saying that while Richard was in love with Laura, she was having an affair with another man. Richard is furious, particularly because he realizes that the other man is the “pinko” from the picnic (Alex). Richard claims that he and Laura had consensual sex, but Iris replies that considering Richard was blackmailing Laura, it was actually rape. Shortly after this phone call, Richard goes missing and is found dead in the Water Nixie not long after. He actually dies in the boathouse, but Winifred makes it look like the boat was on the water so that it seems less like suicide.

After Richard’s death, Winifred declares “open war” on Iris, which takes the form of a custody battle over Aimee. Iris switches to addressing Aimee directly, discussing the terrible things Winifred must have said about her, then she switches back to the narrative. Iris travels the country selling antiques and often sleeps with the men she’s selling them to, giving fake names and staying at cheap motels. Winifred manages to get ahold of evidence of this, and she used it in court, which is how she wins custody of Aimee. As stipulated in Richard’s will, Winifred also controls Aimee’s trust fund.

Iris reveals that, as she has been hinting throughout the novel, she actually wrote The Blind Assassin—not Laura. She started writing it during the war, while she was waiting for Alex to return, and continued writing after she knew he was dead. Some might accuse her of being a coward for publishing it under Laura’s name. Yet she also feels that this act bestowed a kind of justice to Laura, as in some way Laura was indeed her “collaborator.” In a sense, neither of them was the “real author,” as the story had a life of its own. Iris recalls Laura as a child being confused about who sat at God’s left hand if Jesus sat at his right. She concludes that God must sit at a round table, so that “everyone sits at everyone else’s right hand.”

This could be a metaphor for how the sisters wrote the book together, with both and neither of them is its true author. While Iris didn’t know who she was writing the book for when she started it, she now sees that it is for Sabrina, to give her the full truth that she needs. She realizes it might be a shock for Sabrina to learn that she is not biologically related to either Richard or Winifred. Because Sabrina’s real father, Alex, was an orphan, much of Sabrina’s heritage is a mystery. However, this means that she is “free to reinvent [her]self at will.”