The Blind Assassin: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

In The Bind Assassin, the man moves again, away from the building with the janitor’s room. He moves to a new neighborhood where Emma Goldman is supposedly also living after having been exiled from the U.S. It is a poor, Jewish neighborhood filled with immigrants. The woman buys three apples as a “peace offering” for the man. Later, in bed, the man asks where the woman has been, noting that it has been weeks since he last saw her. However, the woman hesitates, saying that they should get back to the story instead. In the man’s story, the blind assassin tells the Servant of Rejoicing that he and the girl have a holy message for him, but that it must be delivered in private.

Once the blind assassin is alone with the girl and the Servant of Rejoicing, he tells the Servant he will instruct him how to sneak into Sakiel-Norn. First, the Servant should send a few men to give the password (which the assassin knows) at the gate, then these men should float a rope back down the canal so more of the People of Joy can pull themselves in against the current. Once enough people are inside, they can kill the guard at the gate and open it for all the rest to join. However, the assassin says that before any of this happens, he and the girl must make a kind of holy pilgrimage to a mountain.

This mountain is where the escaped slaves of Sakiel-Norn live in peaceful communities. They pretend to be wolves and undead women in order to scare away others and protect themselves, but in reality they will accept the girl and the blind assassin as fellow fugitives. The woman expresses shock that the man ends his story with private escape into a life of contentment rather than championing the greater good for all, but the man says that he is just reflecting historical truths. He says that while the blind assassin and the girl escape, the People of Joy raze Sakiel-Norn, killing all its inhabitants, so that “An entire culture is wiped from the universe.”

The blind assassin and girl escape, only to learn that the supposedly peaceful community of fugitives really is made up of undead women and wolves who eat them alive. The woman complains about this twist, but the man says that he must honor the way things are in reality, which means that there must be wolves. The woman asks the man if he is ever “unfaithful,” to which he replies, “No more than you are to me.” Yet after teasing her, he assures her that he never sleeps with other women. The woman then reveals the thing she had to tell him: she is going away for a month on a trip related to the upcoming war. The man is angry, even when the woman insists that she doesn’t want to go and doesn’t enjoy the luxurious life she leads.

A July 1936 article in Mayfair describes a luxury ship called the Queen Mary, comparing it to “a Waldorf-Astoria hotel,” afloat. Dances take place every evening onboard, with women dressed in the latest fashions.

In The Blind Assassin, the woman asks the man why he tells such sad stories, and he replies, “That’s the kind of stories I know.” Then he says if she insists on hearing a happy story, he can tell her one. This story is set on the Planet Xenor in the 99th year of the “Hundred Years’ War.” The aliens who live on Xenor are Lizard Men who are highly intelligent but also evil. They aim to capture Earthlings and breed a “super-race” of human-Lizard Men who would conquer the universe.

The Lizard Men first invade Earth in 1967 in an attack that kills millions of humans. However, the Earthlings fight back, and by 2066 they’re close to defeating the Xenorians. Two of the human fighters engaged in the war are a pair of old friends named Will and Boyd, who find themselves cornered by Lizard Men. Believing that they are facing death, the friends still manage to find a way to joke with each other. However, they are then suddenly yanked into a gravity field, causing them to pass out. When Will and Boyd regain consciousness, they are lying on golden sofas wearing shiny green robes. They feel peaceful and healthy. 

Suddenly, two extraordinarily beautiful women with golden skin and bizarre red net headdresses enter the room. The women welcome Will and Boyd to the plant Aa’A, informing the men that they fell there out of the sky and that their spacecraft was destroyed in the crash. The women express gratitude to the men for protecting Aa’A from the Xenorians. There are no men on Aa’A, meaning the women are virgins. The man doesn’t explicitly describe what happens next, but he indicates that Will and Boyd have sex with the women. Aa’A turns out to be a paradise where the men’s every need is fulfilled. No one is born or dies there—instead, the women renew themselves.

Despite the seemingly perfect nature of life on Aa’A, however, Will and Boyd soon grow dissatisfied. Even if they hit the women, they can’t really harm them and they suspect that the women don’t feel real pleasure either. They explored the planet and, having seen its contours, conclude that they are inside “a big transparent tit.” Will concluded that Aa’A was “too good to be true” and that it therefore “must be a trap.” The man ends the story here, saying that the woman wants a happy story and that now she has one. The woman tells the man that he is wrong about the peach women of Aa’A, though she won’t explain why.

A September 19, 1936 article in The Mail and Empire describes a speech Richard Griffen gave to the Empire Club in which he condemned the actions of the leftist Republicans and said that General Franco’s far-right intervention was inevitable. He recommends that Canada refrain from intervening in the Spanish Civil War, yet he adds that the fact that Canadian communists are traveling to fight in Spain could be seen as a good thing as it relieves the burden they place on the Canadian taxpayer.

In The Blind Assassin, the man brings the woman to the Top Hat Grill. It is a depressing establishment, populated by lonely, dejected men and off-duty sex workers. As the man recommends the hot beef sandwich to the woman, the woman is suspicious as to why they are going out to eat rather than staying in his room like they usually do. The man jokes that he can pay for the meal thanks to “the Lizard Men of Xenor.” He sold the story, and the check arrived yesterday. Conscious of the strange way the man is talking, the woman asks if he’s been drinking, but the man replies, “Not much.” He then reveals that he’s leaving Canada.

The woman says that she wishes she could come with him, and the man is half-disappointed that she is not having a more extreme reaction. The woman promises to wait for the man and to run away with him when he comes back. The man asks her to “leave him now,” but the woman replies that if she did, she would be stuck without any money. She makes the man promise that he’ll come back alive, saying that she doesn’t know what she’d do if he didn’t. The man suggests they go back to his room.