Freedom and Fear of Nature: Margaret Atwood - Essay Example

Freedom and Fear of Nature Margaret Atwood is a Canadian and poet. Her works center mostly on feminism and environmentalism. One of her famousworks is The Wilderness Tips, a collection of short stories, mostly about an uncomprehending confusion and an elegiac bitterness about the past experiences of the main characters. One of the short stories in the anthology is “Death by Landscape.” The story revolves around Lois, a widowed mother with a childhood experience that she looks back with fear and uneasiness. Her art collection that she displayed in her new apartment shows landscapes that made her remember her camp experience during her childhood. The camp experience was at first an enjoyable time with her friends but after a terrifying incident, it became something unwanted. The way the story revolves around the wilderness as an object of her fear and unacceptance symbolizes the great effect of the environment in bringing up unwanted memories. Atwood also uses nature, in the story, as something liberating and menacing at the same time as signified through Lois’ experiences in the camp. The camp is a domesticated wilderness, made to resemble the true wilderness. At first, she does not like anything about the camp though she eventually liked the feeling of imitating Indians. She wants to be an Indian, adventurous, pure and aboriginal (Atwood, 110). The canoe trip that the camp offered gave her the sense of freedom, “floating free, on their own, cut loose” (Atwood, 112). She only enjoyed the camp more when she made a strong friendship with a camper named Lucy. They maintain their friendship through the years and went to summer camps together but at the last year of their camp together a tragedy happens. When they participate in a week-long wilderness excursion, the girls get separated from the group. Lucy never returns when she left Lois at the trail to a lookout point, a steep cliff that overlooks the lake. She manages to find the way back to the camp and informs the police about her missing friend. But even the police couldn’t find Lucy and Cappie, the head of the camp, insinuates that Lois pushed Lucy off the cliff. The event and what happened after makes it hard for Lois to let go of her friend. With that in mind, the wilderness haunts her. Though eventually, Lois is able to finally accept the wilderness as part of her. The wilderness is the trigger of the unhappy and disconcerting memories of the story. It represents something she didn’t want to bring back into her life. Because of the landscape paintings, the past experiences that brought sorrow to the main character’s life are brought out in the open once more. Her fear of nature is shown in her relief in not needing to worry about the lawn, ivy plants creeping up the wall or squirrels going into the attic because the condominium that she had just moved into had a security system and a solarium which housed plants (Atwood, 105). The fear of nature is a common theme in Atwood’s work wherein there is a need to control the nature and shut out the unknown brought by the environment. This is a characteristic of the colonial Canadian literature. It revolves around the need to build a wall against the invasive wilderness, which also symbolizes the unknown. This is exploited in the story, how Lois felt uneasiness as she hangs her artwork on the wall. She even describes the painting by how she feels someone or something looking back at her within it even if there were no animals or people in the painting. Lois sees Lucy in the painting, feeling her presence and almost seeing her even if her friend wasn’t in the painting. The painting of the landscape became a supernatural object connected to the wilderness that Lois fears. It became an object of the unknown. The environment and the nature becomes a sinister, foreboding object that magnifies the fear of the mysterious and the unknown. Lucy is figured as one within nature, a tree and as a ghost that haunts Lois. The tree then served as the indication of the supernatural and the concept of nature turned to monster prominent in the Canadian literature, especially in Atwood’s works. This is used as a tool to interpret the present anxieties and tension of Lucy between her and the paintings linking it to her past experiences. The story employed the environment as a symbolism of the foreboding of the unknown and how the environment can used to cover up for something bad or sinister, like making a murder look like an accident. There wasn’t any evidence in the story about what happened to Lucy, if Lois really pushed her off the cliff or not, and this was used to give the wilderness a more ominous atmosphere. Lucy’s disappearance is made to raise questions whether she was murdered, had an accident or committed suicide. In difference to Lois, Lucy is able to control the environment. Such empowerment is seen, if she indeed committed suicide, through her use of nature to disguise her death as an accident or murder. Here, it is seen how man can control his environment to his own purpose. The artwork of the Group Seven is described in the narration as an endless entanglement of trees, branches and rocks that almost resembles a maze (Atwood, 121). It is not peaceful but eerie. The painting is not a landscape at all but something that is more of a foreground and a background that seems to be infinite. One may be lost within it if he steps in the landscape. It does not show anything calm and soft. It is not tame but a picture of threat and hostility. This relates to the idea of the nature as an unknown entity with a life of its own. It shows how nature can be relaxing but completely mysterious as people do not understand how each tree, branch and rock are connected with each other and with the people that comes across its plains. Here, Atwood describes nature as something uninviting and uncomfortable for humans. She places in her narration the uneasiness of humans from the environment’s mystifying nature. She uses this to show readers that the environment has within it the capacity to create fear and apprehension with humans. It may seem a warning of how the environment can control humans, different from the common notion that humans can control everything around him. Atwood, being an environmentalist, shows the untouched picture of the environment through Lucy’s paintings and how it is free from the domination and manipulation of humans. Without the control over it, humans see it as a threatening entity that needs to be placed under its power. In the story though, Atwood shows that in can be the other way around, nature placing humans under its control. This is shown through Lois’ hypnotic fear on her paintings as described by Atwood as an unwanted presence within the painting that seems to watch her. However, there is still a hint of control that comes from the human side through Lois’ attempt to conquer her fear. She continues to paint nature and the wilderness even if she fears them. It is an effort to try to gain the normal control over nature though not in its entirety but least in painting it the way she wants it to be gives her that power over it. Nature becomes the primary point of telling the story of Lois. Atwood uses this to represent how nature can be both inviting and uninviting, how it can be both horrifying and peaceful. Lois’ fear of the nature represents the human’s fear of something uncontrollable within the nature. Lois’ attempt to control her fear represents human’s need to control something it is terrified of, the mystery of the unknown within nature. The wilderness serves not just a setting for the story. It’s role in the narration is a realization for the readers of how powerful nature can be. Humans desire to control it because humans fear it and humans crave for the peacefulness it brings. However, nature is an entity that controls humans through the freedom and fear that it brings on them. References Atwood, Margaret. “Death by Landscape.” Wilderness Tips. Toronto:Doubleday, 1991. Read More