The Blind Assassin symbolizes the impossibility of objective truth. With the same title as Atwood’s novel, The Blind Assassin is a book within the story that’s posthumously published under Laura Chase’s name, which the reader eventually comes to learn is actually written by Laura’s sister Iris. The novel is a roman-à-clef, meaning that it represents another (true) story but can only be understood with the correct “key” or frame of interpretation. For much of the narrative, then, the reader is led to believe that it tells the story of the upper-class Laura’s affair with communist union organizer and science-fiction writer Alex Thomas. However, it is eventually revealed that this interpretation is wrong and that the novel is actually the story of Iris’s extramarital affair with Alex.
In this way, as a book that is both factual at its core yet full of fictional abstractions and published under a false name, The Blind Assassin represents the fluidity of truth. Though Iris is the true author of the book, she claims, “I can’t say Laura didn’t write a word. Technically that’s accurate, but in another sense—what Laura would have called the spiritual sense—you could say she was my collaborator. The real author was neither one of us: a fist is more than the sum of its fingers.” This notion that a creative work like The Blind Assassin is greater than the sum of its parts suggests that an overall meaningful story is more important than the rigid fact it does or does contain—and perhaps that there are even different kinds of truth, like “the spiritual sense” that Iris alludes to. Ultimately, then, The Blind Assassin symbolizes the futility and impossibility of searching for a singular, objective reality.
The Blind Assassin Quotes in The Blind Assassin
She seems very young in the picture, too young, though she hadn’t considered herself too young at the time. He’s smiling too—the whiteness of his teeth shows up like a scratched match flaring—but he’s holding up his hand, as if to fend off in play, or else to protect himself from the camera, from the person who must be there, taking the picture; or else to protect himself from those in the future who might be looking at him, who might be looking at him though the square, lighted window of glazed paper. As if to protect himself from her. As if to protect her.
The Ygnirods were resentful of their lot in life, but concealed this with the pretense of stupidity. Once in a while they would stage a revolt, which would then be ruthlessly suppressed. The lowest among them were slaves, who could be bought and traded and also killed at will. They were prohibited by law from reading, but had secret codes that they scratched in the dirt with stones. The Snilfards harnessed them to ploughs.
The carpets were woven by slaves who were invariably children, because only the fingers of children were small enough for such intricate work. But the incessant close labour demanded of these children caused them to go blind by the age of eight or nine, and their blindness was the measure by which the carpet-sellers valued and extolled their merchandise: This carpet blinded ten children, they would say. This blinded fifteen, this twenty.
I tell you the stories I’m good at, he says. Also the ones you’ll believe. You wouldn’t believe sweet nothings, would you?
No. I wouldn’t believe them.
Like many peoples, ancient and modern, the Zycronians are afraid of virgins, dead ones especially. Women betrayed in love who have died unmarried are driven to seek in death what they’ve so unfortunately missed out on in life.
I feel sorry for him. I think he’s only doing the best he can.
I think we need another drink. How about it?
I bet you’re going to kill him off. You have that glint.
In all justice he’d deserve it. I think he’s a bastard, myself. But kings have to be, don’t they? Survival of the fittest and so forth. Weak to the wall.
You don’t really believe that.
You might say he grabbed what he could get. Why wouldn’t he? He had no scruples, his life was dog eat dog and it always had been. Or you could say they were both young so they didn’t know any better. The young habitually mistake lust for love, they’re infested with idealism of all kinds. And I haven’t said he didn’t kill her afterwards. As I’ve pointed out, he was nothing if not self-interested.
But it’s too good to be true, said Will. It must be a trap. It may even be some devilish mind-device of the Xenorians, to keep us from being in the war. It’s Paradise, but we can’t get out of it. And anything you can’t get out of is Hell.
But this isn’t Hell. It’s happiness, said one of the Peach Women who was materializing from the branch of a nearby tree. There’s nowhere to go from here. Relax. Enjoy yourselves. You’ll get used to it.
And that’s the end of the story.
That’s it? She says. You’re going to keep those two men cooped up in there forever?
I did what you wanted. You wanted happiness.
The sudden invasion changes things for the Zycronians. Barbarians and urbanites, incumbents and rebels, masters and slaves—all forget their differences and make common cause. Class barriers dissolve—the Snilfards discard their ancient titles along with their face masks, and roll up their sleeves, manning the barricades alongside the Ygnirods.
Laura herself didn’t know it, of course. She had no thought of playing the romantic heroine. She became that only later, in the frame of her own outcome and thus in the minds of her admirers. In the course of daily life she was frequently irritating, like anyone. Or dull. Or joyful, she could be that as well: given the right conditions, the secret of which was known only to her, she could drift off into a kind of rapture.
As for the book, Laura didn’t write a word of it. But you must have known for some time. I wrote it myself, during my long evenings alone, when I was waiting for Alex to come back, and then afterwards, once I knew he wouldn’t. I didn’t think of what I was doing as writing—just writing down. What I remembered, and also what I imagined, which is also the truth.
It was no great leap from that to naming Laura as the author. You might decide it was cowardice that inspired me, or a failure of nerve—I’ve never been fond of spotlights. Or simple prudence: my own name would have guaranteed the loss of Aimee, whom I lost in any case. But on second thought it was merely doing justice, because I can’t say Laura didn’t write a word. Technically that’s accurate, but in another sense—what Laura would have called the spiritual sense—you could say she was my collaborator. The real author was neither one of us: a fist is more than the sum of its fingers.
The photo has been cut; a third of it has been cut off. In the lower left corner there’s a hand, scissored off at the wrist, resting on the grass. It’s the hand of the other one, the one who is always in the picture whether seen or not. The hand that will set things down.
The Blind Assassin Symbol Timeline in The Blind Assassin
