Whatever we did in our childhood, frame us who we are today. The struggles, the pain, the happy moments, and all different emotions shaped who we until this point of our lives. In the novel, Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood, Elaine's character and recognition of herself as self-motivated and her horrible and good experiences and relations with others have grown Elaine as who she is in the novel. As for me, my previous girlhood reflected on me for whom I am at this very moment. Significant experiences
Elaine’s Identity: Cat’s Eye The novel Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood, discusses the theme of finding yourself, and how a person can truly affect who you are. Elaine possesses the trait of vulnerability and is a victim of verbal torture from a childhood friend Cordelia. What at first may seem like child plays, Cordelia impacts Elaine’s mental stability traumatically. This novel consistently foreshadows how Elaine will forever remain affected by Cordelia. Elaine is not able to come to terms with herself
It is difficult to reclaim one's autonomy after giving it up. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, autonomy is the state of existing or acting separately from others, and an automaton is an individual who acts in a mechanical fashion. In Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood, the protagonist Elaine recounts her experience of being bullied by her friends during her childhood. Elaine temporalized her own existence, crediting her social identity to her bullies, which resulted in her own loss of individuality
the weaker one? In our normal lives, many social structures has formed over generations. People are poor, people are rich, ans also there is a middle-class. With all of the structures, the poor are usually overruled by the rich. As the article, Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood clearly revealling the problem in our social structure is that not only the poor are being overuled by the rich, but also the powerful people are over controlling the weaker people as happens to the girl in the story. The art
while catalyzing the process to the objective attainment. Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye narrates the story of a girl growing up in Toronto. Elaine becomes the victim of bullying from her “friends”, Carol, Grace and Cordelia. When Cordelia joins the foursome’s group, Elaine is disadvantaged by the rules to follow in order to fit in the female figure. It is very difficult to ascertain why children bully each other however in Cat’s Eye, Elaine perceives her friends to be positive figures but in reality she
4.3 Performativity as Enforced by other sex In Cat’s Eye, Elaine is not only oppressed by women but men also contribute to her oppression. She has affairs with two men, but both failed. From the time when Elaine begins her first love-affair with her art teacher Josef Hrbik, he is the one who has the power over her as he starts to control her life with the excuse of improving her. He is actually in a similar situation to Cordelia, who was also very powerful. Once he suggests to her that she should
affected the lives of people of all colors, ages, and walks of life; specifically, conformity. As defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, conformity is “behavior that is the same as the behavior of most other people in a society, group, etc.” In Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood, the protagonist, Elaine Risley spent her childhood in fear of the disdain that comes with not complying with the social-norm, performing every request asked of her by her so-called comrades, and remains scarred by this experience
The Importance of the Narrator of The Handmaid's Tale The creation of Offred, the passive narrator of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, was intentional. The personality of the narrator in this novel is almost as important as the task bestowed upon her. Atwood chooses an average women, appreciative of past times, who lacks imagination and fervor, to contrast the typical feminist, represented in this novel by her mother and her
The experiences we have in childhood do much to shape our adult identity. In her novel Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood chronicles the life of artist Elaine Risley, and through a series of flashbacks shows the reader how she became her adult self. The retrospective showing of Elaine's artwork provides a framework for the retrospective of her journey from child to adult. Because Atwood was creating a fictional character, she was free to incorporate some very dramatic events that impacted Elaine's thoughts
In Anita Brookner’s review of Cat’s Eye, aptly titled ‘Unable to Get Out of the Abyss’, she considers the political and societal stance that Margaret Atwood chooses to take in her novel. Throughout the review in The Spectator, Brookner reflects on Elaine’s childhood and how her relationship with Cordelia is reflected in her art. While the analysis of Cat’s Eye has nuance, I believe it is fairly reductionist by placing all of the blame for Elaine’s trauma onto Cordelia, who no doubt has a complex