The Blind Assassin

by

Margaret Atwood

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Chapter 1 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen, Laura Chase, Man, Woman
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin
Page Number: 4-5
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Man (speaker), Woman
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin, Sakiel-Norn
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Man (speaker), Iris Chase Griffen, Richard Griffen, Woman
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin, Sakiel-Norn
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Man (speaker), Woman (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin, Sakiel-Norn
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

She wasn’t married, she was married off, said Reenie, rolling out the gingersnaps. The family arranged it. That’s what was done in such families, and who’s to say it was any worse or better than choosing for yourself? In any case, Adelia Montfort did her duty, and lucky to have the chance, as she was getting long in the tooth—she must have been twenty-three, which was counted as over the hill in those days.

Related Characters: Reenie (speaker), Iris Chase Griffen, Adelia Montfort Chase , Benjamin Chase, Myra Sturgess
Related Symbols: Avilion
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:

When I was the age for it—thirteen, fourteen—I used to romanticize Adelia. I would gaze out of my window at night, over the lawns and the moon-silvered beds of ornamentals, and see her trailing wistfully through the grounds in a white lace tea gown. I gave her a languorous, world-weary, faintly mocking smile. Soon I added a lover. She would meet this lover outside the conservatory, which by that time was neglected—my father had no interested in steam-heated orange trees—but I restored it in my mind, and it supplied it with hothouse flowers […]

In reality the chances of Adelia having had a lover were nil. The town was too small, its morals too provincial, she had too far to fall. She wasn’t a fool. Also she had no money of her own.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Adelia Montfort Chase , Benjamin Chase
Related Symbols: Avilion
Page Number: 59-60
Explanation and Analysis:

And so Laura and I were brought up by her. We grew up inside her house; that is to say, inside her conception of herself. And inside her conception of who we ought to be, but weren’t. As she was dead by then, we couldn’t argue.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase, Adelia Montfort Chase , Benjamin Chase
Related Symbols: Avilion
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:

And then, after the wedding, there was the war. Love, then marriage, then catastrophe. In Reenie’s version, it seemed inevitable.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Alex Thomas, Reenie, Captain Norval Chase, Liliana Chase
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

What would that be like—to long, to yearn for one who is right there before your eyes, day in and day out? I’ll never know.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Alex Thomas, Richard Griffen, Captain Norval Chase, Liliana Chase
Page Number: 78
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Man (speaker), Woman
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin, Sakiel-Norn
Page Number: 115
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Man (speaker), Woman (speaker), King of Sakiel-Norn
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin, Sakiel-Norn
Page Number: 130-131
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Although I was beginning to like him better, I’m ashamed to admit that I was more than a little skeptical about this story. There was too much melodrama in it—too much luck, both bad and good. I was still too young to be a believer in coincidence. And if he’d been trying to make an impression on Laura—was he trying?—he couldn’t have chosen a better way.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Alex Thomas, Richard Griffen, Captain Norval Chase, Winifred Griffen Prior, Callista (Callie) Fitzsimmons
Related Symbols: Avilion
Page Number: 190
Explanation and Analysis:

Not only were they outside agitators, they were foreign outside agitators, which was somehow more frightening. Small dark men with moustaches, who’d signed their names in blood and sworn to be loyal unto death, and who would start riots and stop at nothing, and set bombs and creep in at night and slit our throats while we slept (according to Reenie). These were their methods, these ruthless Bolsheviks and union organizers, who were all the same at heart (according to Elwood Murray). They wanted Free Love, and the destruction of the family, and the deaths by firing squad of anyone who had money—any money at all—or a watch, or a wedding ring. This was what had been done in Russia. So it was said.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase, Alex Thomas, Reenie, Captain Norval Chase, Elwood Murray
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Man (speaker), Woman, Girl, Blind Assassin
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin
Page Number: 257
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging as a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

Impossible, of course.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker)
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

She takes after Laura in that respect: the same tendency towards absolutism, the same refusal to compromise, the same scorn for the grosser human failings. To get away with that, you have to be beautiful. Otherwise it seems mere peevishness.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase, Sabrina Griffen, Aimee Adelia Griffen
Page Number: 288
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Man (speaker), Woman (speaker), Will (speaker), Boyd
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin
Page Number: 355-356
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

I look back over what I’ve written and I know it’s wrong, not because of what I’ve set down, but because of what I’ve omitted. What isn’t there has a presence, like the absence of light.

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t’ necessarily get you the truth.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase, Richard Griffen, Winifred Griffen Prior, Mr. Erskine
Related Symbols: Avilion
Page Number: 395
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Man, Woman
Related Symbols: Sakiel-Norn, The Blind Assassin
Page Number: 400
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase, Man, Woman
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin
Page Number: 417
Explanation and Analysis:

Following the death of Norval, Laura has (reluctantly) been living with Richard, Winifred, and Iris in Toronto, where she has caused a great deal of trouble. Recently, Winifred has complained to Iris that Laura has been expressing outlandish ideas, such as saying that love is more important than marriage. When Iris confronts Laura about this in private, Laura replies with this quotation. From a contemporary perspective, it may seem obvious that Laura’s argument is at least partly correct. These days, many would argue that love is self-evidently more important than marriage. Furthermore, Laura’s argument about marriage being an “outworn institution” that is more an economic transaction than a sacred bond foreshadows the feminist claims that became popular later in the 20th century.

Significantly, Laura frames her critique of marriage not in a progressive feminist light, but rather in a Christian one. Following Jesus’s tradition of focusing on the principles behind rules rather than the rules themselves, Laura argues that love is what’s important, not marriage. One could argue that Laura’s need to draw on Christianity in order to justify this claim is evidence of the restrictions placed on women and their thought during this era. At the same time, it also obvious that Laura’s faith intensely informs the way she approaches the world—it isn’t just a cover for subversive views.

Related Characters: Laura Chase (speaker), Iris Chase Griffen, Richard Griffen, Captain Norval Chase, Winifred Griffen Prior
Page Number: 424
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

I was relieved: all might yet be well. Laura was still in town. She would talk to me later.

She has, too, though she tends to repeat herself, as the dead have a habit of doing. They say all the things they said to you in life; but they rarely say anything new.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase, Alex Thomas, Richard Griffen, Winifred Griffen Prior
Page Number: 491
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

How can I describe the pool of grief into which I was now falling? I can’t describe it, and so I won’t try.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase
Page Number: 500
Explanation and Analysis:

What did I want? 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 can be no revenge.

Lest we forget. Remember me. To you from failing hands we throw. Cries of the thirsty ghosts.

Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I’ve found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase, Richard Griffen
Page Number: 508
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase, Alex Thomas, Richard Griffen, Winifred Griffen Prior, Aimee Adelia Griffen
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin
Page Number: 512
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase, Alex Thomas, Aimee Adelia Griffen
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin
Page Number: 512
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Iris Chase Griffen (speaker), Laura Chase, Alex Thomas, Man, Woman, Sabrina Griffen
Related Symbols: The Blind Assassin
Page Number: 517
Explanation and Analysis:
No matches.