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The Age Of Lead By Margaret Eleanor Atwood

Decent Essays

Margaret Eleanor Atwood a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1939. She grew up in Northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College. WRITE ABOUT HER WORK AND CRITICAL REACTIONS TO HER WORK.( How was she received?)

A short story “The Age of Lead” by Atwood explores woman’s relationship with her elusive lover and how looking back tends to help us understand our faults. The story opens with a television program about the discovery, and trench of a body which has been buried in ice for a century. The protagonists Jane recollects of the recent death of her friend Vincent, who has been the single most significant person in her life. They were lovers, and Jane started to wonder about the meaning of their relationship. She is terrified of death, yet she finds the program too compelling to turn off. The frozen body is identified as that of an Arctic explorer, John Torrington. Because he has frozen solid from the day of his death, he is remarkably well preserved. “The freezing water has pushed his lips away from his teeth into an astonished snarl, and he’s a beige color, like a gravy stain on linen, instead of pink, but everything is still there. He even has eyeballs, except that they aren’t white but the light brown of milky tea. With these tear stained eyes he regards Jane, an

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