THE BLIND ASSASSIN BOOK BY MAGARET ATWOOD (Book Report) - Essay Example

Dangerous Power The Blind Assassin is full of complex characters with motivations that are in part encouraged or restricted by what society around them permits. But however limited, choices are nevertheless possible and they must be made with consequences in mind. This is also true for Iris who, despite being ostensibly powerless, makes powerful choices, driven by what she believes to be a sense of justice but which reveals itself as something deeper and far more dangerous. Iris permits these hidden powerful emotions to override all feelings of responsibility, leaving her a shadow of the woman she once was.

This sense that somehow Iris was once whole and is now damaged is communicated, when she calls herself “…a brick-strewn vacant lot where some important building used to stand.” (Atwood 43)1 It becomes clear later that her ruin is of her own making, brought about through her deliberate blindness towards her own motivations that underlay the choices she made. Thus she says: I did believe, at first, that I only wanted justice. I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we’re about to do something harmful, to someone else. (497)In old age, Iris is painfully aware of at least some of her motives.

However, she is still not entirely honest because it is quite clear that she knew ‘back then’ as well. Thus “we do like to have such good opinions of our own motives” (497) communicates a sense of ‘deliberate’ self-deception. Her primary punishment is reserved for Laura, for the role she played in the lives of Richard and Alex and perhaps also because she was ‘good’. She also vindictively destroyed her husband’s career. What was it she wanted? Nothing much. Just a memorial of some kind.

But what is a memorial, when you come right down to it, but a commemoration of wounds endured? Endured and resented. Without memory there is no revenge.” (508)Revenge then was what Iris had wanted all along. This manifests itself also clearly in the spiteful way in which she communicates Alex’s death to Laura. “Laura, I hate to tell you this, I said, but whatever it was you did, it didn’t save Alex. Alex is dead.” (488)This ‘whatever’ Laura did to save Alex was giving in to Richard’s sexual demands and Iris was fully aware of Laura’s ‘martyr’ mindset.

Her sister had been a heavy burden to the young Iris and once, after Laura tried to sacrifice herself for her dead mother, Iris had been close to ‘letting go’. “.How hard it had been to hold on to her. How close I had come to letting go.” (151)Now destroying Laura’s fragile hold on her existence, Iris is ‘letting go’, condemning her sister to death, just as surely as if she had assassinated her. But even that is not enough for Iris; she must expunge Laura more completely, by also destroying Richard’s image of Laura.

His life in tatters, Richard still believes that Laura is innocent of having written the novel but is persuaded to believe otherwise by Iris: You don’t want to believe it,” I said, “because you were besotted with her. You can’t face the possibility that all the time you were having your squalid little flight with her, she must have been in and out of bed with another man – one she loved, unlike you. Or I assume that’s what the book means – doesn’t it?” (509) It has a false ring when Iris later says “if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions – you’d be doomed.” (517). She did know, at least in the case of Laura.

Or at least she could have known, had she not let her sense of injury and her thirst for revenge rule every decision she made. Iris is The Blind Assassin, and despite her limited power within the society she lives in, she is able to make powerful decisions, driven by a sense of injury and outrage and blind to the carnage she creates every time she lets her dark passions rule her.Reference List:Atwood, Margaret. The Blind Assassin. New York: Anchor Books, 2001. Print.