Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Blind Assassin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Storytelling, Narrative, and Truth
Doomed Love
Oppression vs. Resistance
Violence and Death
Emulation, Repetition, and Identity
Summary
Analysis
In The Blind Assassin, the man opens the door to yet another apartment he is borrowing. For once, he has the luxury of a place to himself for four days. As the man waits for the woman to come join him, he fantasizes about running away to Mexico. He’s been working on a new idea for a science-fiction story about a group of aliens made up of “crystals in a high state of organization” who traveled to Earth and mistakenly assumed that Earthlings were like themselves. As a result, they thought that window panes and eyeglasses were the planet’s inhabitants. The man stops himself, realizing that this is only an idea, not a story. He’s tired of writing the cheap, titillating narratives that earn him money.
This fragment of an idea for a science-fiction story is arguably the most interesting piece of narrative that the man comes up with across the course of the novel. It speaks to the way in which living beings cannot help but understand the world around them as a kind of projection of themselves. For this reason, people gravitate toward what is familiar and project their own feelings onto their surroundings, including onto other people.
Themes
The man has run out of money and he hopes that the woman will bring him some. He also hopes she brings cigarettes. The man paces around the apartment and remembers an old lover who lived in the same building, a nurse who used to make him lavish breakfasts. After they broke up, the nurse married a lawyer, which pleased the man in a strange way, showing that “The sluts win sometimes.” He looks out the window and finally sees the woman walking over. When she arrives, she tells the man that she’s brought him a check, cigarettes, and a fifth of high-quality scotch that she stole from her bar at home. They embrace.
The harsh and derogatory way in which the man thinks about women could be interpreted as a sign of his latent misogyny, which the woman chooses to overlook out of love for him. Of course, having such attitudes was very common during this era, and it would have been rare to find a man who hadn’t absorbed sexist ways of thinking to some degree.
Themes
The woman has a bath; when she gets out, the man wraps her in a pink towel, which pleases her. Every time the woman is in one of these borrowed apartments she feels like she’s trespassing, yet she also wants to look through the cupboards and drawers. She’s searched the man’s belongings before, finding a driver’s license and birth certificate with two different names, neither of which are his real one. The man sings along to the radio. The woman asks him to keep telling her the story, calling it “my story.”
This passage raises the question of whether it is possible that the man and woman truly love each other considering that, at least on some level, they don’t really know each other. The woman seems to totally trust and devote herself to the man, yet the two forms of ID he carries with different names suggests that he may not be who she thinks he is.
Themes
In the man’s story, the blind assassin enters the chamber of the girl who is supposed to be sacrificed. Instead of attacking her, though, he gently takes her hand, having decided to have sex with her before he kills her. He asks if he can touch her, explaining that he’s blind, and she nods. Brought together by the most unlikely circumstances, they end up falling in love. The woman interrupts to say she is surprised to hear the man speaking of love, a concept he has dismissed in the past. The man says he is just representing truth: throughout history, people have fallen in love. He adds that the blind assassin is acting selfishly and may still kill the girl, and the woman accuses him of “backing down.” The man laughs and says that X has nothing to lose, a little like the man himself.
This passage reiterates the idea that despite the man’s best efforts to the contrary, he cannot help but fall into romantic ways of thinking. He tries to diminish the extent to which the story has turned into a narrative of love against the odds, but it is clear that—likely due to this own situation with the woman—this is the narrative he’s telling.
Themes
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A Toronto Star article from August 28, 1935 announces that the hunt for the missing 15-year-old “society schoolgirl” Laura Chase has been called off after she was found safe. Richard gives a quote to the newspaper in which he shares his and Iris’s relief. He explains that the whole matter was only a miscommunication about Laura’s holiday plans, and he denies the rumors that Laura ran away from home.
Once again, events that haven’t yet occurred in the main narrative are foreshadowed in a newspaper article, which gives only a glimpse (and perhaps a highly misleading one) into the event being described. The fact that Richard, rather than Norval, is the ones commenting on Laura’s disappearance suggests that Laura is now living with Richard and Iris.
Themes
In The Blind Assassin, the woman walks through the city, trying to blend in with her surroundings despite the fancy clothes she’s wearing. She knows that if she’s caught by the authorities, she will “renounce” the man immediately. She knows that she would escape without getting into serious trouble. Recently, the woman has had the sense that she’s being watched, and the fear she feels makes it all the more exciting and enjoyable to be with the man. Many aspects of his daily life are a mystery to her, and she knows that such mysteries are crucial to romance. The man has stopped smoking pre-rolled cigarettes as he can no longer afford them, although sometimes the woman brings him some that she steals from the cigarette box at home.
This passage illustrates how the stakes of hiding out are very different for the man and the woman. The woman finds the fact that she is being watched thrilling, even if it would also be disastrous for her if anyone found out about her affair with the man. By contrast, if the authorities were to capture the man, he may well be imprisoned, deported, or killed.
Themes
The woman walks past the apartment building where the man is staying, then back again. When she arrives, a voice in her head taunts her with the idea that the man won’t be there and that she’ll “never see him again.”
This taunting voice and the anxiety is provokes is a familiar part of the experience of being in love, although in this case there are added elements of uncertainty given the man’s risky situation.
Themes
The man lets the woman into the apartment, kissing her immediately. He explains that he had to leave the last place he was staying in a rush and that he is now living in the janitor’s room, pretending to the landlord that he is the janitor. The room barely even has a bed, and there is no lock on the door. Later, while the man and the woman are lying underneath a moldy blanket, the woman tells the man that he’s gotten too thin. He teases her that she isn’t reliable enough for him to depend on her for food. However, he then agrees to resume the story, noting that when they left off, the blind assassin was deciding “whether to cut [the girl’s] throat or love her forever.”
The fact that the woman keeps coming to the different places in the man is staying, no matter how dingy or decrepit, indicates the depth of her love for him. Yet the note on which this passage ends suggests that the man’s love may not be as pure and devoted as the woman’s. As the reader has seen, his feelings for her are tinged with resentment, hatred, and potentially even violence.
Themes
While the blind assassin is lying holding the girl, he hears the Lord of the Underworld arrive. The blind assassin hides the girl behind the door and lies the sentry’s dead body on the bed, hoping that the Lord of the Underworld might not (initially) notice the difference. When the Lord enters, the blind assassin manages to sneak out, taking the girl with him. They escape the temple into the outside air. Two of Zycron’s five moons are already out, with more coming, and thus they won’t be able to hide in the cover of darkness. The blind assassin considers abandoning or killing the girl in order to protect himself, but almost immediately decides against this.
The fact that the blind assassin repeatedly considers harming or killing the girl, while ultimately deciding not to do, so could be considered either romantic or sinister. Indeed, some would argue that the idealization of the thin line between love and violence is part of why abusive dynamics are often perceived as romantic, rather than dangerous and morally wrong.
Themes
The blind assassin and the girl need to get out of Sakiel-Norn. One possible path of escape is the canal that runs through the city. The girl cannot swim, but they manage to float together, with her clinging onto the blind assassin. As soon as they have traveled far enough away from the city, the blind assassin pulls them up onto the bank. After checking that no one is around, they embrace and have sex. Later, three spies sent by the People of Desolation find the boy and girl lying naked together. They are fascinated by the fact that the boy is blind and the girl is mute, and they choose to believe that these two are divine messengers. The blind assassin takes advantage of this, deciding to try and play the role of the messenger and speaking in riddles.
In this passage, it becomes even more clear that the blind assassin could be seen as a representation of the man, while the girl is the woman. Like the man, the blind assassin is a persecuted worker and rebel who uses the power of storytelling to survive. The fact that the man is clearly a representation of Alex (and the woman is presumably a representation of Laura) heightens the dizzying mirror effect of these multiple embedded narratives.
Themes
The blind assassin is also concerned about how to protect the girl. He decides that he will pretend they are two different kinds of divine messengers and that she interprets the messages he receives using hand gestures. At this point, the man stops telling the story, noting that he is troubled by his untrustworthy friends.
While storytelling might provide an escape from the grim and frightening reality of the man’s life, there are limits to how distracting it can be.
Themes
A 1936 Mayfair gossip article recounts the annual charity costume ball at the Royal York Hotel. The theme this year was “Xanadu” and the party was filled with “harems, servants, dancing girls and slaves, as well as damsels with dulcimers, merchants, courtesans, fakirs, soldiers of all nations, and beggars galore.” The ball was organized by Winifred, and Iris served on the committee.
This description of the fictional place Xanadu (taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Kahn) in many ways resembles Sakiel-Norn, which again emphasizes the sense of twinned narratives within Atwood’s novel.
Themes
In The Blind Assassin, the man is now renting a dingy room above a hardware store. Yet for all the dreary, barely-functional nature of the room, it is still paradise “compared to where he might be.” He hasn’t informed his friends about his current location, instead choosing to disappear without warning. He believes they were planning to sacrifice him as a scapegoat and “martyr” for the cause. He waits for the woman to arrive. Last time he saw her, he noticed a bruise on her thigh. When he asked about it, she said she “bumped into a door,” which was obviously a lie. While the man waits, he concocts a story about a group of explorers who discover an alien spaceship frozen inside ice.
Although it still hasn’t been made explicitly clear what the woman’s domestic situation is, it is fairly obvious that she is married, and in this passage it emerges that her husband likely beats her. Again, this was sadly common in the early 20th century (when The Blind Assassin takes place), and women had few rights to appeal to in order to stop such abuse taking place.
Themes
The man hasn’t given the characters names yet, so he calls them X, Y, Z, and B. B, the only woman among the explorers, is Russian and believes in “Free Love.” Once the explorers have melted the ice enough, they find a being inside: it has a “humanoid shape,” is “obviously male,” and is unconscious or possibly dead. The explorers decide to put the alien inside B’s tent, forcing her to sleep in another tent, and they all take turns keeping guard that night. During B’s shift, she is overcome by romantic curiosity and lust, and she decides to get into the tent with the alien, where she falls asleep.
This story is almost comically salacious and vulgar, yet is actually representative of some of the kinds of short stories published in science-fiction magazines at the time. The idea that the man would be able to earn money through publishing this kind of material is quite plausible, and it again reflects the unfortunate portrayal of women as inferior to men.
Themes
With B beside him, the alien starts to glow and the ice surrounding him melts. He gets up, and the green hair on his head—which now reveals itself to be tentacles—wraps around B’s throat. B wakes up in horror, but before long willingly succumbs to this “embrace,” letting the alien bite her and turn her into one of his own kind. The man pauses, rolling a cigarette and pondering where the story will go next. There are many options, but whatever happens, “Clothes will be torn off in the process.”
The man’s comment at the end of this passage indicates that he has a rather disdainful attitude toward his own writing—an understandable cynicism given the formulaic and silly nature of the stories that he knows will sell.
Themes
The man thinks about why he writes trashy stories like this, aware that it is both because he needs the money and because he is especially skilled at it. He once dreamed of writing more profound, noble literature, but he tells himself that it doesn’t appeal to “the average working man.” He looks at his watch and concludes that the woman is not coming.
Here, the man seems to justify the crude and silly nature of the stories he writes by claiming that they are working-class literature, whereas more sophisticated literature is bourgeois. Of course, this is rather patronizing to the working class.
Themes
